Duration: 30min 44sec
Topic: In this episode, I investigate the rise of Islam in Russia and Putin’s embrace of multiculturalism as state ideology. I dive into the evidence of the growing Islamization of Russia, how the Russian state subsidizes the activities of Islam in Russia, and how it’s illegal to criticize or ridicule Islam (and other state-protected religions). I look at the case of Russian teen Nikita Zhuravel who was recently charged with “offending the religious feelings” of Muslims for burning the Koran; despite being from Volgograd he was sent to Chechnya where he was beaten by the son of Chechnya’s vicious & corrupt Muslim ruler Ramzan Kadyrov. Also discussed are the numerous incidents of Islamic terrorism inside Russia & race riots which illustrate that, despite Putin proclaiming multiculturalism a successful model for Russia, it has been anything but that.
Video Script
Let’s have a look at a much under-discussed subject: Russia and Islam. Despite the fairy tales and memes that conservative dupes in the West promote on social media, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is not the Christian crusader paradise that they want you to believe. In fact, under Putin’s reign the pernicious influence of Islam has grown to dangerous levels throughout the Russian Federation.
A glimpse into this reality is the case of nineteen-year-old Russian citizen Nikita Zhuravel who was recently charged with “insulting believers’ feelings” because he burned the Koran in public. Radio Free Europe reported that he did this in the Russian city of Volgograd, but for some mysterious reason he was sent to the Islamic region of Chechnya to be tried in court there. (1) A disturbing video quickly emerged showing the son of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechyna’s president, brutally beating Zhuravel while in detention. Top Chechen officials came out and prasied the video of the beating. (2) Zhuravel later appeared in another humiliating video in which he appears to profess faith in Islam in front of Ramzan Kadyrov. Essentially a coerced conversion of a Russian citizen to Islam, all condoned by the Putin regime.
This example is more or less a case of Putin allowing Kadyrov to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws on Russians. Putin himself declared, “Insults to the prophet Mohammed are a violation of religious freedom and the violation of the sacred feelings of people who profess Islam.” (3) In Russia, you cannot publically insult or criticzie Islam, Christianity, Judaism or other religions.
Since Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, Muslims of Russia have erected 7,500 mosques or slightly more than one per day. (4) In 2015 Putin inaugurated the opening of Moscow’s grand mosque where he said that:
“Islam has become integral to Russia’s religious, cultural and social fabric. Traditions of Islam are based on eternal values of kindness, mercifulness and justice. Millions of people in our country practice this ancient religion. I want to stress that the state’s estimation of fruitful activities of Muslim organizations is very high and the state guarantees its citizens the opportunity to follow the norms of their religion including the pilgrimage to the holy places of Islam.” (5)
The Russian state under Vladimir Putin especially has played a central role in coddling Islam. A 2007 New York Times reported this:
“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 V. 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, Mr. 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.” (6)
While most of Russia’s Muslims live in the Caucasus southern regions, millions also live in the big cities and they’re prescence is growing. An Al Jazeera report tells us:
“With an official population of 12.5 million, Russia’s capital is now home to at least 1.5 million Muslims… This is by far more than the Muslim population of any other European city where the local population is not predominantly Muslim. ‘Moscow is slowly adapting to being Europe’s largest Muslim city, and Muslims are gradually adapting to it,’ Malashenko told Al Jazeera. Ethnic Tatars, Russia’s third largest ethnic group after Slavic Russians and Ukrainians, have lived here for centuries; Azeris settled here in the 1990s after fleeing the Armenian-Azeri war. They were followed by an ever-growing number of natives of Russia’s Caucasus – a multiethnic and heavily subsidised region plagued by insurgency and violence. Since the early 2000s, millions of labour migrants from ex-Soviet Central Asia have flooded into Russia, mostly seeking low-paid labour jobs. There is also a visible presence of Muslims from sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and the Middle East. [C]ountless bakeries, cafes and restaurants have sprouted throughout Moscow selling Central Asian flat bread and samosas, pilaf and kebabs. The presence of Muslims in Moscow prompted another trend – the growing number of ethnic Russians who convert to Islam.” (7)
There are over 5,000 registered religious Muslim organizations in Russia. (8) That will only continue to grow as Putin courts Muslims with statements like this saying Russian Orthodox Christianity is “closer to Islam than to Catholicism”. (9) In 2009 Putin’s right-hand man Dmitry Medvedev asserted that Russia is ‘an organic part’ of the Muslim world. Putin is facilitating this Islamification of Russia not only through subsidizing Islamic activities in Russia and forbidding critiicsm of the religion, but also through his lax immigration policies and special treatment of former Soviet Republics in Central Asia. Putin has sought to lessen border controls with former Soviet republics, saying in 2013, “The [existence of] visa requirements within the CIS would mean that we are pushing former Soviet republics away from us. We do not need to push them away. Rather, we need to forge closer relations with them. But we ought to make this process more civilized.” (10) He followed that up in 2014 by including Armenia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan in his Eurasian Economic Union.
According to UN Population Division estimates, as of 2013, the Russian Federation was second only to the United States in the sheer number of immigrants. (11) According to Statista the number one origin country of immigrants to Russia is Tajikistan followed by Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Krygyzstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Belarus, Turkmenistan. (12) According to FSB border service data, Russia recieved a record high number of labour migrants in 2019, with 2.4 million migrants arriving for work, 918K from Uzbekistan, 524K from Tajikistan, 265K from Kyrgyzstan, 165K from Ukraine, 105K from Kazakstan. (13) A 2019 report in Kommersant stated that Putin signed a plan of action on migration to attract up to 10 million immigrants from ex-Soviet countries to offset population decline. (14) To expedite this process, in 2020 Putin passed a dual-citizenship law allowing foreigners to obtain Russian citizenship and keep the other. (15)
Another report describes the process of Islamification of Russia’s countryside through immigration. It says:
“The arrival to urban centers and the countryside of Soliev and millions of other mostly Muslim labor migrants from Central Asia is at the center of what could emerge as Russia’s most radical ethnic makeover in centuries. “In 10 years, the village will either disappear or become foreign,” says retiree Viktor, declining to give his last name. He is a resident of the neighboring village of Bortnikovo, where a paltry 12 houses have full-time residents. Polls point to fears among many of Russia’s 142 million people of an uncontrolled influx of migrants eager to snatch up jobs and wildly tilt the country’s demographics in favor of the newcomers. Vyacheslav Postavnin, a former deputy director of Russia’s Federal Migration Service who now heads the 21st Century Migration Fund, a Moscow-based think tank, compares it to the storied Mongol invasion of the 13th century that was followed by Islamization and the settling of former nomads in what is now southern Russia. “The last bastion is the quick construction of Orthodox churches,” Postavnin says of ethnic Russians’ mistrust of the cultural and religious implications of immigration, “because the number of adherents of Islam is growing. Almost all of Rozhdestveno’s Tajik families hail from Gorno-Badakhshan, an especially poor, mountainous region that accounts for nearly half of Tajikistan’s territory. Tajiks were early and eager labor migrants to post-Soviet Russia, and hundreds of thousands now have citizenship there, officials say. While it didn’t distinguish between Russian nationals and foreigners, the last nationwide census, in 2010, showed fourfold increases in the number of ethnic Tajiks and Kyrgyz in the Russian countryside… But the census generally excludes temporary labor migrants… of which there are millions, on and off the books.” (16)
An article in New Lines Magazine dove into the demographics of the Russian city of Kazan, describing it as, “One Russian city offers a glimpse of the country’s increasingly Muslim and non-Slavic future”. (17) It writes:
“Yet in contemplating the future of Russia, a third city could someday join the ranks of these two juggernauts: Kazan, the capital of the region of Tatarstan. Located almost 450 miles to the east of Moscow, Kazan may seem an unlikely occupant of such a role. But Kazan offers perhaps the clearest illustration of Russia’s identity as a transcontinental, multiethnic country straddling both Europe and Asia. And as Russia’s demographics shift in the coming decades away from a predominantly Slavic, Orthodox Christian population to one that is increasingly Muslim and non-Slavic, the country’s very national identity is likely to evolve. In this way, Kazan could serve as both an important symbol and harbinger for things to come in Russia, one that foreshadows both challenges and opportunities for the country.” The city fosters “a unique identity within Russia — at once European and Asian, but not entirely part of the West or the East. This was reflected both geographically, with Russia stretching across both continents, and in the country’s cultural and political makeup. This is a phenomenon that has persisted to this day, with Kazan serving to epitomize the blend of East and West that serves as a crucial part of Russia’s identity in the modern era. Indeed, Kazan is one of the most diverse cities in Russia, with its population of over 1.2 million people evenly split between ethnic Russians (48.6%) and ethnic Tatars (47.6%). The Tatar and Russian languages can be heard in roughly equal measure walking the city’s streets, and Kazan’s architecture mixes eastern and western styles throughout the city. Alongside the Kremlin’s administration buildings and the Orthodox Annunciation Cathedral stands the Qolşärif Mosque, with its facade of white tiles, turquoise dome, and four piercing minarets. Inaugurated in 2005 with the help of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Qolşärif is the largest mosque in Europe outside Istanbul. It is a testament to the long roots of Islam’s influence in Russia and its coexistence with Orthodoxy, having been rebuilt four centuries after the original mosque was burned down in Ivan’s conquest.”
A Bloomberg report noted the same: “While Europe and the U.S. tighten border controls, former Soviet states are encouraged by Moscow to send their workers. Russia had 161,000 foreigners come into the country in 2015 and stay. In 2016, that number increased to 196,000, according to the Russian Foreign Trade Academy and Gaidar Institute. Work-permit sales in Moscow rose by 10 percent last year, too. With most immigrants coming from former Soviet states like Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, the migration has proven beneficial to all involved: Those two countries top the list of global economies relying on remittances, according to the World Bank. … the government in February announced 200,000 previously deported Tajiks would be allowed back into Russia.” (17a)
This increasing Islamization led Russia’s chef mufti to come out and predict that the country’s Muslim population would grow to 30% of the whole population within a few decades. (18) Birthrate statistics show that Slavic Russian women have the lowest rates while the ethnic minorities that tend to be Muslim have higher rates. (19) Coupled with the low birthrates among ethnic Russian women, are high rates of emigration. A study showed that 5 million Russians left the country under Putin’s rule, 300,000 people left Russia annually between 2016-2019, and about 10 million Russians live abroad, the third largest ex-pat population in the world. (20) (21) More than 3.8 million Russians have left the country in the first three months of 2022 because of the war with Ukraine. (21a) One out of five Russian respondents told a Levada Center pollster that they would “absolutely” or “most likely” want to emigrate from the country. (22) A study by The Lancet in 2014 indicated that the probability of a Russian man dying before he turns 55 is 25 percent. In 2018, every fourth death in Russia occurred before the age of 60. Factors include poor medical care and nutrition as well as lack of exercise and a high incidence – particularly among men – of deaths due to alcohol and tobacco use, unintentional poisoning, and suicide. (23)
The multi-ethnic and multi-religious nature of Russia is the official state ideology embedded in the country’s constitution. The Russian constituton of 1993 says this:
“We, the multinational people of the Russian Federation, united by a common fate on our land, establishing human rights and freedoms, civic peace and accord, preserving the historically established state unity, proceeding from the universally recognized principles of equality and self-determination of peoples… The bearer of sovereignty and the only source of power in the Russian Federation shall be its multinational people. The State shall guarantee the equality of rights and freedoms of man and citizen, regardless of sex, race, nationality, language, origin, religion, etc. All forms of limitations of human rights on social, racial, national, linguistic or religious grounds shall be banned. … The propaganda or agitation instigating social, racial, national or religious hatred and strife shall not be allowed. The propaganda of social, racial, national, religious or linguistic supremacy shall be banned.” (24)
Putin echoed these sentiments in 2007 when he said: “With the passage of centuries, Russia has been strengthened and developed as a multi-ethnic and multi-faith country. And those that preach the ideas of nationalism, xenophobia and religious intolerance must be set rigid barriers.” (25) In a 2013 speech at the Valdai club Putin said this: “Nationalists must remember that by calling into question our multi-ethnic character, and exploiting the issue of Russian, Tatar, Caucasian, Siberian or any other nationalism or separatism, means that we are starting to destroy our genetic code. In effect, we will begin to destroy ourselves.” (26)
Putin has repeated this theme again and again. In 2020 he declared diversity the “foundation of Russia’s strength”. (27) In 2021, he said Russia is “as much a melting pot as the US” and added this:
“The entire world refers to the US as a ‘melting pot’ that ‘melts down’ people of all nations, ethnicities, religions and so on. What’s bad about it? All of them are proud: the Irish, the Europeans, the Eastern Europeans, everyone, people of Latin American, African origin. Many of them are proud to be US citizens. That’s just great. This is what is meant by ‘melting pot.’ And Russia is a ‘melting pot’ as well” (28)
The same year he denounced ethnic nationalism as “caveman nationalism and “warned against using nationalist slogans like ‘Russia is just for Russians,’ stating his belief that members of each relevant ethnic group should feel at home in the country.” (29) (30 / cut to clips) In a more recent clip from 2023, Putin promotes mixed marriages between Russians and minority ethnic groups as a “safety buffer” against internal strife. (30a / clip) Pro-Putin Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin said anyone of any race can become RUssian by adopting its langauge and culture. (30b / clip) Belarus’ president Lukashenko made a similar comment advocating the mixing of Belarussian women with foreign men. (30c / clip)
Despite Putin’s delusional proclamations that Russian multiculturalism has been a success, it has been anything but that. Ethnic tensions have been high for a long time. Russia fought two bloody wars against Muslim Chechen separatists in the 90s and early 2000s resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. Muslim extremists have launched dozens of terrorist attacks into Russia since then like the the Moscow theater hostage crisis (2002), the Beslan school siege (2004), the 2006 Moscow market bombing, 2010 Moscow Metro bombings, 2011 Domodedovo International Airport bombing, 2013 Volgograd bus bombing, 2017 Saint Petersburg Metro bombing and many others, all of which were perpetrated by Muslims. In 2016 a nanny of Uzbek origin beheaded a child in her care and waved the severed head around in a Moscow street. She later told prosecutors that Allah commanded her to do it as revenge for Putin’s airstrikes against Muslim militants in Syria. Another atrocious case of the failure of Russia’s multiculturalism. (31)
Race riots in Russia have occurred on a few occasions. In 2010 and 2013 race riots broke out in Moscow in response to the murder of Egor Sviridov and Egor Shcherbakov by Muslim Caucasus migrants. (32) (33) (34) The general mood of Russians against immigrants, especially Muslims, has been born out in polls.
Al Jazeera: “whether Russian-born or immigrant, secular or practising, Muslims don’t feel welcome here. This is partly due to the fact that many Russians feel threatened by this influx of Muslims. The attacks carried out by Chechen fighters and female suicide bombers since the early 2000s also still frighten many. Although there are no separate polls available for Moscow, a 2013 survey by VTsIOM, a state-owned pollster has found that almost one in seven Russians don’t want to have Muslim neighbours, one-fourth do not want to live near a Caucasus native, and 28 percent don’t want Central Asians next door. Some 45 percent of Russians support the nationalist slogan of “Russia for ethnic Russians”, the poll found.” (35)
RFERL: “Polls point to fears among many of Russia’s 142 million people of an uncontrolled influx of migrants eager to snatch up jobs and wildly tilt the country’s demographics in favor of the newcomers. Four-fifths of Russians say the Kremlin “must limit” the flow of migrants, and two-fifths believe migrants should live in “specially assigned areas,” according to a survey last year by state-run pollster VTsIOM. And more than one in four Russians feels ‘irritation, dislike, or fear’ specifically toward Central Asians, according to a more recent survey by independent pollster Levada.” (36)
Foreign Affairs noted that, apart from the obvious conflicts in Chechnya and Dagestan that have raged for decades, Islamic militancy is making its way to other Russian cities with a high Muslim population: “In Kazan, there are signs of public unrest. The city recently witnessed a series of incendiary attacks by young Muslims on church buildings. This sort of thing is not publicized in Russia’s state media — nor mentioned by Crews — but one can find reports of these episodes on the Internet. And the Salafists whom Crews argues are “distributed in small pockets throughout the country” may not be as apolitical as he suggests. Although there are currently few terrorists in Russia from outside the Caucasus, that might not be true for long.” (37)
This is very much a process that Russia is exporting to Ukraine after its invasion. As Russia erases all traces of Ukrainian language and culture (38)(39)(40), it Russifies these occupied territories and ships in Russians(41). In cities like Mariupol locals have reported seeing many thousands of Chechen and Dagestani Muslim men who are menacing local Ukrainian women. (42) (43 / clip)
Ethnic tensions, replacement migration, race riots and non-stop Islamic terror… these are the fruits of Putin’s Russian multiculturalism.
SOURCES
(1) https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-koran-burning-investigation-chechnya-volgograd-zhuravel/32422652.html
(2) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2023/08/18/chechen-officials-praise-kadyrovs-son-for-beating-teenager-accused-of-burning-koran-a82173
(3) https://www.trtworld.com/asia/putin-insulting-prophet-muhammad-is-not-freedom-of-expression-52961
(4) https://tass.com/society/821145
(5) https://archive.ph/e8Ca1
(6) https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/17/world/europe/17hajj.html / https://forum.ismaili.net/viewtopic.php?t=2615
(7) https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2015/7/22/despite-animosity-moscows-muslims-change-the-city
(8) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Russia
(9) https://risu.ua/en/window-on-eurasia-putin-says-orthodoxy-closer-to-islam-than-catholicism-is_n43445
(10) https://lorddreadnought.livejournal.com/18500.html / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Economic_Union
(11) https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/russia-the-worlds-second-largest-immigration-haven-11053
(12) https://www.statista.com/statistics/1203451/immigration-by-country-in-russia/
(13) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/16/russias-fsb-publishes-foreign-worker-statistics-for-first-time-in-20-years-a66895
(14) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/03/14/kremlin-seeks-russian-speaking-migrants-to-offset-population-decline-a64806
(15) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/04/17/russia-passes-dual-citizenship-law-hoping-to-add-10m-citizens-a70036
(16) https://www.rferl.org/a/how-muslim-migrants-are-reshaping-russia-s-dying-countryside-one-village-at-a-time/29237540.html
(17) https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-city-of-kazan-and-russias-non-slavic-future/
(17a) https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-14/russia-s-alternative-universe-immigrants-welcome#xj4y7vzkg
(18) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/03/05/russia-will-be-one-third-muslim-in-15-years-chief-mufti-predicts-a64706
(19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_federal_subjects_of_Russia_by_total_fertility_rate#TFR_by_ethnic_group
(20) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/10/13/5-million-russian-citizens-left-russia-under-putin-a75246
(21) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/01/16/official-data-vastly-underestimates-russian-emigration-report-a64158
(21a) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/05/06/nearly-4m-russians-left-russia-in-early-2022-fsb-a77603
(22) https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/06/09/share-of-russians-willing-to-move-abroad-hits-decade-high-poll-a74164
(23) https://www.rferl.org/a/migrants-welcome-is-russia-trying-to-solve-its-demographic-crisis-by-attracting-foreigners-/30677952.html
(24) http://www.constitution.ru/en/10003000-01.htm
(25) https://web.archive.org/web/20081121051233/http://www.interethnic.org/EngNews/121107_9.html
(26) https://archive.ph/nFthV
(27) https://tass.com/society/1164893
(28) https://tass.com/society/1352701
(29) https://archive.ph/gc8Aa#selection-951.29-951.203
(30) Video clips of Putin saying diversity is a strength
(30a) Mixed marriages clip of Putin
(30b) clip of Dugin
(30c) Lukashenko clip
(31) https://www.reuters.com/article/russia-murder-child-idINL8N16B172 / https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-uzbek-nanny-beheading-allah/27584624.html
(32) https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/race-riots-in-russia / https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/19/spartak-moscow-race-riots-ultranationalist
(33) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Manezhnaya_Square_riot_trials
(34) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Biryulyovo_riots
(35) https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2015/7/22/despite-animosity-moscows-muslims-change-the-city
(36) https://www.rferl.org/a/how-muslim-migrants-are-reshaping-russia-s-dying-countryside-one-village-at-a-time/29237540.html
(37) https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2014-04-17/russias-muslim-reality
(38) https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-erasing-mariupol-499dceae43ed77f2ebfe750ea99b9ad9
(39) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/may/18/its-like-the-ussr-residents-on-life-in-mariupol-a-year-since-russian-occupation
(40) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-66393949
(41) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-66393949
(42) https://coffeeordie.com/mariupol-survivors-stories
(43) clips of Dagestani and girl in Mariupol
