Gulsine Fatakhudinova, a 56-year-old Tatar Muslim, came lugging suitcases to pray at the lime-green mosque in central Moscow - one of dozens of people who arrived one recent day bundled in the weighty coats, fur hats and other winter garb they would soon cast off, at least temporarily.
Barred by the Soviets for decades from carrying out Islam's most sacred rite, such pilgrims were among the tens of thousands of Russian Muslims traveling to Saudi Arabia to join the masses in Mecca for the annual pilgrimage, or hajj, to one of Islam's holiest sites. Their numbers have swelled in the last several years thanks largely to Russia's growing wealth and increasing stability in the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region, including in Chechnya, where the effects of nearly a decade of war have begun to fade.
Fatakhudinova is making the journey for the second time.
"This year I am going for my mother, for my dead mother, who was unable to go on the hajj during her life," she said. She explained that her family had always been religious, even during the Soviet era, but had neither the means nor permission from the state to make the trip before her mother died.
"I am going for her," Fatakhudinova said, "so that before God, when we are resurrected, she will feel herself a hajji."
The Soviet government allowed just 18 people a year to make the trip, said Rushan Abbyasov, director of international relations at the Russian Council of Muftis. Now, the only restrictions on the number of pilgrims come from Saudi Arabia, which is host to the hajj.
This year, the Saudis increased the quota for Russian pilgrims to 26,000 people from 20,000, and despite estimated costs of $2,000 to $3,000 a person for the trip, Abbyasov said, all visas allotted for this year had been claimed. Chechnya is sending about 3,000 pilgrims for the five-day pilgrimage, which starts this week.
"This year, because of religious consciousness, the end of violence in the North Caucasus, and in Chechnya in particular, and the current growth of people's well-being, people can just allow themselves to do this," said Abdul-Vakhed Niyazov, president of the Islamic Cultural Center of Russia.
Muslims who are financially and physically able are required to perform the hajj at least once in their lives, though many believe that a relative can complete the pilgrimage on behalf of someone who died or is chronically ill.
Islam, like Orthodox Christianity, is in a state of revival here after years of confinement to the kitchens and basements of the Soviet Union, which severely restricted the open practice of all religions.
Russia has about 4,000 mosques now, compared with about 90 in the waning days of the Soviet Union. In Moscow, Muslim groceries and other stores selling Muslim fashions have appeared, and the first hospital catering to Muslims opened this month. Fourteen million to 23 million Muslims live in this country of about 140 million people, making Islam the largest minority religion. They live mostly in the Caucasus and in two autonomous republics, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan; there are also about two million Muslims living in Moscow.
The Kremlin has worked to facilitate the pilgrimage, part of a strategy to ward off potential unrest among the country's Muslims and monitor their activities, while also improving ties with Saudi Arabia, where Russia has budding economic interests. When President Vladimir Putin visited Saudi Arabia in February - the first Russian leader to do so in decades - his lobbying efforts helped persuade the Saudis to raise the quotas for Russian Muslims this year.
At a meeting with Russia's Muslim leaders in November, Putin pledged continued government assistance for the hajj.
The government has created a liaison office that offers pilgrims help with visas and transportation, and the state airline, Aeroflot, often gives pilgrims special rates. The government has also set up a $60 million fund to support Islamic culture, science and education, part of which is designated for state-accredited Muslim schools and universities.
Moscow is nevertheless concerned that Russian citizens could be exposed to extremist forms of Islam while on the hajj, and some analysts, including Evgeny Satanovskiy, president of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies in Moscow, say that government assistance to the pilgrims belies attempts to track their activities.
"We know that Saudi Arabia invests in the propaganda of the Saudi Arabian-style Islam, the Wahhabi-style Islam, much more than the whole Soviet Union for the whole Soviet history spent on the propaganda of the Communist ideology," Satanovskiy said.
Most Muslims - with the exception of some extremists in the North Caucasus - are highly integrated into Russian society, and many government officials and Muslim leaders worry that an influx of more conservative or even radical Islamic beliefs from places like Saudi Arabia could whip up discord.
The Russian press has reported recently that many security service personnel are among the pilgrims this year, evidence, some say, of a government effort to supervise Russian citizens while they are in Saudi Arabia. Officials and hajj organizers have denied that this is the case.
For now, the biggest problem the government has with the hajj is dealing with complaints by Saudi officials that Russian pilgrims are smuggling contraband into and out of the country, said Andrei Severtsov, who is in charge of the Department for Communications with Religious Organizations, a government body that mediates on religious matters and provides assistance to pilgrims.
Most often, he said, the culprits are from the relatively poor North Caucasus, where porous borders make smuggling easy and profitable. Last year, several were arrested trying to transport nearly a ton of bottled water.
Most often, however, the Saudis and other Muslims gathered in Mecca for the hajj react to Russians with curiosity, Abbyasov said.
"A good many people are surprised that there are Muslims in Russia," he said.
Source: IHT (English)
See also: Russia: First Muslim clinic
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