UKRAINE Elmira Muratova1 1 Muslim Populations the Number Of
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UKRAINE Elmira Muratova1 1 Muslim Populations The number of Muslims in Ukraine is the subject of a certain amount of speculation. Muslim leaders and other interested parties insist that there are 1.5–2 million Muslims in the country, although the 2001 national census recorded only 436,000 Muslims by birth (0.9% of the population).2 There are 40 ethnic groups that traditionally practise Islam, the biggest being Crimean Tatars (248,000), Volga-Ural Tatars (73,000) and Azerbaijanis (45,000). The Crimean Tatars constitute about 57% of the all Ukrainian Muslims. They are the only indigenous Muslim people of Ukraine, hav- ing settled in the territory of the modern Crimean Autonomous Republic in the early fifteenth century. Today the Crimean Tatars live mostly in the Crimea, Kherson and Zaporozhe regions. The Ukrainian communi- ties of the Volga-Ural Tatars appeared during the industrialisation of the Donbas area in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today they predominately live in the Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson regions. The majority of the Azerbaijanis settled in the eastern regions of the country—Donetsk, Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk.3 The history of Islam in Ukraine is related to the history of the expansion and development of the religion in the Crimean peninsula. Islam came to Crimea with Muslim traders and Sufi missionaries from Asia Minor in the ninth to eleventh centuries. During the Crimean Khanate (1443–1783) Islam became the state religion. For several centuries Crimea was the 1 Dr. Elmira Muratova is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science, Taurida National V.I. Vernadsky University, Simferopol, Ukraine. 2 CD “Natsional’nyi sklad naselennya Ukrainy ta yogo movni oznaki za danymi Vseukrains’kogo perepisu naselennya 2001 roku” (CD “National make-up of the Ukrain- ian population and its language features based on the 2001 All-Ukrainian census”) (Kiev: Derjkomstat, 2003). The author was not able update statistical information (number of Muslim communities, mosques, etc.) because the Committee on the Nationalities and Religious Affairs has been closed. Its functions were delegated to the Ministry of Culture which has not carried out any statistical work yet. 3 Bogomolov, A. et al., Islams’ka identichnist’ v Ukra’ini (Islamic Identity in Ukraine) (Kiev: AMES Publishers, 2005), pp. 16–23. 608 elmira muratova centre of Muslim culture in the region, and a huge number of mosques, madrasas, mektebes (elementary schools), and mausoleums were set up. By the end of the eighteenth century there were about 1,600 mosques, 25 madrasas and a lot of mektebes in Crimea.4 The annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth century was a considerable blow to the independent and consistent development of Islam. The mass emigration of the Crimean Tatars resulted in many villages being aban- doned and mosques, madrasas and mektebes closed down. By 1914, there were only 729 mosques left in Crimea and the number of Muslim clergy fell to 942.5 Soviet power delivered the final blow to the development of Islam in Crimea. By 1940, there were no active mosques in the peninsula; many were closed on the pretext that they were in a poor condition and turned into clubs, grocery stores, schools, etc. In May 1944, the remaining Muslim population of Crimea (about 200,000 people) were deported from their homeland to the Central Asian republics. The return of Crimean Tatars (about 13 per cent of the Crimean population in 2011) and collapse of the USSR contributed to the current Islamic revival in Crimea. 2 Islam and the State Ukraine is a secular state where religion is separated from the state and the education system. According to the relatively liberal law “On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organisations” (Pro svobodu sovisti ta religiini organizatsii) passed in 1991, a religious community may be registered if it has a minimum membership of ten adults over the age of 18. On the basis of this law, 557 Muslim communities were registered in Ukraine by early 2010.6 The legislation on religion also includes two acts which were issued to help religious organisations to repossess property taken from 4 Aleksandrov, I., O musul’manskom dukhovenstve i upravlenii dukhovnymi delami musul’man v Krymu posle ego prisoyedineniya k Rossii (On Muslim clergy and Muslims affairs’ spiritual administration in Crimea after its annexation to Russia) (Simferopol: Tipografiya Tavricheskogo gubernskogo zemstva, 1914), p. 8. 5 Krichinsky, A., Ocherki russkoi politiki na okrainakh: k istorii religioznykh pritesnenii krymskikh tatar (Essays on Russian policy at the margins: towards a history of the religious oppression of the Crimean Tatars) (Baku: Izdanie soyuza musul’manskoi trudovoi intel- ligentsii, 1919), chapter 1, p. 43. 6 Report on the network of churches and religious organisations in Ukraine on 1 January 2010, Committee on the nationalities and religions affairs, Department of state- religious relations and freedom of conscience (www.scnm.gov.ua), accessed on 18 January 2011..