Ravil Gainutdin recently made headlines in both Russian and international media with his statement that in 15 years the Muslim population in Russia will make up about 30% of the total population. In terms of the modern information society, one can conclude that the hype has been successful. But what about the substance of this statement?
After performing the basic arithmetic operations of addition, subtraction, and multiplication, the statement was analyzed by well-known journalist and public figure Maxim Shevchenko. And there is not much to add to his conclusions — this is indeed elementary arithmetic.
But the more interesting question is about the political meaning and consequences of such statements, not for Russian society as a whole, but for Muslims themselves. Ravil Gainutdin decided to use the demographic card to reiterate the lack of mosques for Muslims in Moscow and the need to build new ones. He has been doing this for about 15 years, starting with his unfulfilled promise to build mosques in every district of Moscow.
Moreover, in the case of Moscow, the demographic card is working against Ravil Gainutdin. Why is that? Because in Moscow the arrival of this bright demographic Muslim future, which he predicts for Russia, is not to be expected — it has practically already arrived. According to official data, on major religious holidays more people gather in mosques than in Orthodox churches. And if we add up the number of Muslims living permanently or temporarily in Moscow, who can be mechanically classified as Muslims on the basis of ethnicity, their current share may be slightly less than 30%.
And now the question is: how did Ravil Gainutdin, who is shaking this resource in front of the Russians, use it in the future, for example, to solve the problem of the mosques he already has in Moscow? Unfortunately, he did not. Just as he, pretending to be the leader of Russian Muslims, did not use their demographic and other potential in the struggle for their demands, which he regularly expressed.
From a famous hadith we know that there will be times when there will be many Muslims, but no one will take them into account because they will be like the foam of the sea carried away by the waves. There are many examples of such an attitude in the world — for example, in India, where there are over 165 million Muslims and their population has increased by 36% since 2001. It seems that according to Ravil Gainutdin’s logic, their political influence should also have increased, but it is quite the opposite — Hindu chauvinists came to power (including on the slogans of fighting the «Islamic threat») and turned Muslims into pariahs. By the way, does Ravil Gainutdin not think that his statements actually play into the hands of his Orthodox colleagues such as Vsevolod Chaplin and Dmitry Smirnov, who cunningly use them to mobilize Orthodox Christians against the «Islamic threat»?
The bitter truth for Ravil Gainutdin and all Muslims in Russia is that our main problem is not a lack of numbers. Muslims in Russia currently make up about 15% of the total population, which is about the same as in India. However, unlike in India, where Muslims were scattered throughout the country after the partition of Greater India into India and Pakistan, forming a majority only in occupied Kashmir, the Muslim population in Russia is the titular population of several republics.
Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Karachay-Cherkessia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan — these are only the republics where Muslims constitute an absolute or relative majority. In addition, there are territories with their significant and historically rooted presence, ranging from the Republic of Adygea and Crimea, which legally belongs to Ukraine, but whose actual annexation to Russia Ravil Gainutdin enthusiastically approved, to a number of regions and autonomous districts in Siberia — the former Siberian Khanate, or Tatar and Bashkir regions of the Urals.
The number of Muslims and the territories they already have are sufficient to be taken into account in Russia. However, two interrelated reasons prevent this: first, the quality of Muslims themselves, which allows them to be ignored, disregarded and mistreated; and second, Russia is not the legal, democratic, federal state proclaimed in the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
But what have the Council of Muftis of Russia and Ravil Gainutdin personally contributed to these two factors? What have they done to mobilize Muslims to fight for their positions when there were still opportunities to do so — both in the country and within their organization?
In countries like the United Kingdom, where Muslims are, among other things, immigrants rather than co-founders of a federal state, they come out in their thousands to demonstrate in defense of the rights of their co-religionists in the country and the world, both on their own and in alliance with British political forces. They are influencing the political processes in the country, shaping their own agenda, resulting in the mayor of the capital being openly identified as a Muslim, and Muslim representatives in both chambers of parliament, as well as among other mayors, and so on.
As we can see, it is not necessary to have 30% of the country’s population for all this to happen — Muslims in the UK are only 5%. But the political and civic quality of these Muslims is such that they are taken into account more than Muslims in India or Russia, where they make up about 15%, and than they will be taken into account even if their number reaches 30% under the current nature of their presence.
In conclusion, we are the last to deny the importance of the demographic factor. It is extremely important, and the fact that time is actually working for Muslims in this sense (though not as quickly and radically as Ravil Khatrat describes) is wonderful and gives hope that this quantity will eventually turn into quality and become an impressive force that will make its presence known.
But demography is an opportunity, not a guarantee. Moreover, in some cases it can be a risk factor as a challenge, because if the number of Muslims continues to grow and statements like Ravil Gainutdin’s are made without adequate participation of Muslims in the political processes of the country to protect their positions, it can end very badly. In this regard, one remembers the joke about Turkish teenagers teasing a German old lady in a tram, telling her that there are already 4 million Turks there, and she reminded them with a smile that before the war there were 6 million Jews in Europe…
Jokes aside, history is replete with examples of the rapid disappearance of large populations in various countries during political upheavals. It also has examples of the opposite, when smaller but well-organized and mobilized groups significantly increased their political influence at crucial moments. This is something that Ravil Gainutdin and those Muslims who enthusiastically supported his demographic-populist statement should think about.