In Russia’s Tatarstan region more and more young people are switching from Western-style dress to Muslim attire. More than just a fashion, the trend reflects a surging interest in Islam among the youth of this largely Muslim region on the Volga River, some 450 miles east of Moscow.
“Young people are looking for something more, something deeper than just discotheques, alcohol and sex,” said the shop’s 22-year-old clerk Elizha, who was dressed in a tightly wrapped blue headscarf and a black jacket and skirt.
Pavel Chikov, a 27-year-old rights activist, said the interest in Islam is a new phenomenon – within the past four years – that is reflected not only in clothing, but also in demand for food prepared according to Islamic dietary rules, called halal. Salami is a ubiquitous form of meat throughout Russia, but halal-style salami has appeared in Kazan markets only in the past year.
“It’s a natural process. No one is forcing this on us,” Chikov said.
Tatars tend to be moderate Muslims, and the region has had little of the religious tensions or extremist tendencies that has plagued other Muslim regions in Russia.
Raphael Khakimov, a political adviser to President Mintimer Shaimiyev, noted that just a handful of Tatars travelled to Chechnya to fight with Islamic separatists during the first war there. That was an anomaly for Tatarstan, he said, along with the arrest of several alleged members of the extremist Islamic group, Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
Khakimov said that since the Soviet collapse 14 years ago, nearly three dozen Islamic religious schools – called madrassas – have been built in Tatarstan, and many are tied to Russian Islamic University and its mainstream pedagogy.
Ilgiz Shigoballin, a 22-year-old assistant imam at the Nurallah mosque across the street from Gubaydullin’s store, said Friday services are now overflowing, with most of the interest coming from college-age and younger men and women.
“Young people are sick of having empty lives,” he said.
Mashallah the islamic revival is unstoppable people now see the alternative ideology of islam, and have seen the dismal failures of secualrism and in particular the capitalist experiment
