Traditional Nation, Radical Alien: Islam and Religious Nationalism in Russia

• In Event: 2429 - Open Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Roundtable 17

Abstract

How does nationalism interact with non-state institutions to develop as both substantive and symbolic identity? This paper tracks the project of Russian nationalism in the post-Soviet period and its ambivalent operationalization of Islam as both constitutive of and alien to the Russian nation. State and popular actors have emphasized the role of religion in the multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state to mobilize public support, frame policy, and integrate as well as exclude portions of the population. The Muslim Spiritual Boards of Russia, one of a set of quasi-corporatist institutions that regulate religious life among constituent communities and negotiate the status of religion between the state and public, play a direct role in responding to and crafting narratives around competing conceptions of the Russian nation. This project aims to embed the Spiritual Boards in the context of the wider non-state social sphere, shifting popular pressures, and the priorities of the state. In particular, it focuses on Moscow; a case that provides the greatest degree of analytical leverage across these factors and is uniquely critical as the center of the state and major religious institutions, while representative of broader shifts in in-migration and popular attitudes. I make a preliminary argument that the Spiritual Boards increasingly construct Islam as a source of patriotic morals and values, in line with other quasi-corporatist institutions, while channeling growing nationalist grievances toward the specter of ‘foreign’ Islam. The paper will use archival documents, publications and speeches, and ethnographic evidence to show how the Moscow-based Spiritual Boards produce Islam and Russian identity from their founding in 1992 to the present.

Author

• Jeffrey Bilik, University of Michigan