For most outside observers, Russian Islam looks like a single official structure that speaks in a loyal voice when the Kremlin needs it to. In reality, Russia’s Muslim institutions have never been so simple. They are fragmented, competitive and deeply shaped by the state. 

The old rivalry between Talgat Tadzhuddin and Ravil Gainutdin that defined the politics of Russian Islam began long before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It was a bureaucratic turf war, noisy and unresolved, but the state found it useful.

The split goes back to the early 1990s. Tadzhuddin, who had led the Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims (TsDUM) since 1980, quietly ended the tradition of periodic leadership elections after barely surviving his second term. He declared himself Supreme Mufti for life, with the blessing of the party and government. 

When the U.S.S.R. collapsed, those who disagreed finally had room to push back. In 1994, Gainutdin broke away and established what would eventually become the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Russian Federation (DUM RF), the organizational spine of the Council of Muftis of Russia.

These two institutions represent fundamentally different visions. TsDUM, based in Ufa, positions itself as a direct heir of the Orenburg Mohammedan Spiritual Assembly created under Catherine II in 1788, an institution designed from the start as a state instrument of control. Islamologist Islam Tokhlu describes Tadzhuddin as “the fruit of Catherine the Great’s dreams,” a man who embodies a complete merger of Islam and Orthodox state culture. Tadzhuddin has kissed the hands of two patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, sprinkled “holy water” in a television studio, kissed an Orthodox icon during a church ceremony, and in 2003 proposed renaming his organization the “Islamic Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Holy Rus.” In 2015, speaking at the World Russian People’s Council, he declared: “When we are together, this is the caliphate. We call our caliphate Holy Rus.”

DUM RF operated differently. It built publishing houses, ran international conferences and tried to maintain ties with global Islamic scholarship. Gainutdin’s structure presents itself as a more modern, educated and federal Islamic center, one that works not only with Tatars and Bashkirs,........

© The Moscow Times