THE MUSLIM SPIRITUAL BOARD OF TATARSTAN, POLITICAL-TERRITORIAL TRANSFORMATION, AND THE CHANGING CHARACTER OF TATAR ISLAM
THE MUSLIM SPIRITUAL BOARD OF TATARSTAN, POLITICAL-TERRITORIAL TRANSFORMATION, AND THE CHANGING CHARACTER OF TATAR ISLAM

Summary/Abstract: The Republic of Tatarstan, a Muslim-majority region of the Russian Federation, is home to a post-Soviet Islamic revival now well into its third decade. Throughout the 1990s, the Tatars were recognized as practicing a liberal form of Islam, reported more as an attribute of ethno-national culture than a code of religious conduct. In recent years, however, the republic’s reputation for religious liberalism has been challenged, first, by a counter- revival of conservative Islamic traditions considered indigenous to the region and, second, by increasing evidence that religious fundamentalism has taken hold and grows in influence. This paper explores how changing political-territorial circumstances are implicated in this transformation. Analysis of practices and representations of the Muslim Spiritual Board of Tatarstan reveals that, as part of the republic’s sovereignty quest in the 1990s, this government-supported institution cultivated a preferred understanding of Islam that corresponded to visions of the region as the Tatars’ independent homeland. Over the past decade-plus, amid a rapid recentralization of the federation, support has shifted to Islamic practices deemed “traditional to Russia” as part of a broader multinational Russian identity crafted to fit visions of the country as a powerful, unified political space. Thus, the meaning of Islam in this place is mediated by competing visions of Tatarstan as a homeland.

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