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believers as a man closer to God and he enjoys greater respect among them.
Hajj is one of the main means of establishing closer contacts of this country's Muslim umma with Muslim communities of Asian and African countries. Hajj is regarded in present-day Russia as a pillar of Islam and a very important element of international religious ties.
"Rossiya i Arabsky mir: istoriya i sovremennost," Ufa, 2012, pp. 70-72.
G. Guzelbayeva,
Sociologist, Kazan
ISLAMIC IDENTITY OF YOUNG TATARS IN THE REPUBLIC OF TATARSTAN
The revival of religious sentiments and the greater role of religion at personal and social levels have been observed in the world for the past several decades. Sociologists and politicians talk of "religious renaissance," "deprivatization" of religion, and even of "desecularization."
According to the data of a sociological survey carried out by the sociology chair of Kazan Federal University in February - March 2012, most inhabitants of the Republic of Tatarstan (89.5 percent) regard themselves Muslims or Orthodox Christians. Slightly over half of them believe in Islam.
Beginning from the early 1990s old mosques have been restored and new ones built. The number of people visiting them has steadily been growing, more Muslim publications have come off the press, new Muslim education establishments have been opened, and more religious organizations and Islamic initiative groups have been set up. More
Tatars observe religious rites and rituals now. This is the case of Tatar young people.
Sociological investigations of recent years give ground to assert that the level of religiousness among young educated people is rising more rapidly than in other socio-cultural strata. As to the Republic of Tatarstan, its capital Kazan has become the most active center of growing religiousness due to a great number of universities and other educational institutions.
Religious Consciousness (beliefs)
According to our sociological surveys in 2008 and 2011, it can be stated that the level of religious identity among young Tatars is sufficiently high. Almost 90 percent of Tatar young people consider themselves believers. Ninety-two percent of them assert that they believe in Islam, 3.8 percent - in another religion, and four percent say that they don't belong to any faith.
Practically, all Tatars are Muslims. Identification of the Tatars with Islam has become part of their ethnic identification. However, despite a high level of religious consciousness, far from all Tatars fulfill obligatory religious orders. Of all young people polled, 43 percent said that they adhere to religious values and correlate their deeds and thoughts to religious rules; 57 percent of young people call the values they cherish universal.
Religious Behavior (practice)
Talking of religious behavior, it should be noted that manifestation of faith among a considerable part of people usually boils down to rites and rituals connected with birth, marriage and death.
As is known, even non-religious people turn to religion at such crucial moments of life. Only four percent of young Tatars do not attach any significance to the ceremonies connected with these events.
A considerable number of Tatar young people like headscarves worn by girls and women. The degree of outward religiousness, especially in its ritual sphere, has become greater during the past two decades. More people now attend prayers at mosques, observe fasts and follow other rules and regulations prescribed by Islam.
Today, 19 percent of young Tatars perform namaz, but only five percent do it regularly - five times each day.
In general, Tatar young people attach certain importance to the presence of religion in their family life. Twenty-six percent of those polled said "No" to the question of whether they could marry a person of another faith. Forty-five percent of young people said they prefer to choose a spouse of the same nationality. This confirms the fact that the self-consciousness of Tatar young people is dominated by ethnic cultural values.
Young Tatars are tolerant to representatives of other religions. Sixty percent say they are quite friendly to them, and 35 percent are neutral.
A group of deeply religious Muslims can be singled out among Tatar young people, who account for six percent of all young Tatars and reveal a high degree of religious self-consciousness (Islamic identity). This is confirmed by their behavior oriented to Islamic canons: they believe in Islam, consider themselves religious, faith is their guide with which they try to correlate all their thoughts and deeds; they observe all rules and regulations of Islam - Muslim rituals for marriage and birth of a child, they pray and do namaz regularly, attend mosque, observe restrictions in food and clothes according to the Sharia law, and choose partner in life from among Muslims.
This group is relatively small, but it is growing, if rather slowly. Quite a few members of this group are included in public life, and their activity is often connected with Islam.
Most young Muslims hold the view that modern man has the right to choose religion and faith. Thus, the trend of new religiousness is observed among Tatar young people among whom adoption of faith and Islam is accompanied with personal inner striving for religion and combining observance of rites and rituals with profound religious thinking.
Finally, we'd like to put forward certain considerations connected with the growing religiousness of Muslims in Tatarstan.
Greater religiousness of Tatars as compared to Russians had always been noted both in prerevolutionary time and in the Soviet epoch. Today young Tatars more often than Russians regard their grandparents and parents religious people and speak of their "religious upbringing." Today Islam plays the role of a barrier against assimilation in another ethnic and another confessional community, which is important for the Tatars who are a minority in a country which insistently emphasizes its Orthodox Christian character. The Tatars answer this by the growing influence of Islam and greater Muslim identity. In Tatarstan propaganda of Islam is more active and more successful (as compared with Orthodox Christianity in Russia). This is also due to the work of missionaries from Arab countries and young people who have studied in Islamic countries.
Tatars, perhaps, more than representatives of other ethnic groups, see in religion a means of revival of ethnic culture. This is connected with the striving to preserve national identity which induced the Tatars to display a more positive attitude to Islam than the Russians to Orthodox Christianity.
The project "Islamic Identity of Tatar Young People in the Republic of Tatarstan" continued in 2012 and 2013.
"Ucheniye zapiski Kazanskogo universiteta Gumanitarniye Nauki," Kazan, 2012, vol. 154, book 6, pp. 76-86.
Irina Beshta,
Senior instructor, Simferopol Scientific Center (City of Simferopol)
CONFESSIONAL EVALUATION OF IDENTITY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF CRIMEA
The Crimea is a unique region of Ukraine in many aspects: geographical, historical, national, ethnic and religious. The Crimea is the crossing point of the histories of two world empires - the Ottoman and the Russian. It is the place of coexistence of the two major world religions - Christianity and Islam, and different ethnic groups connected by common historical experience, both positive and negative.
The disintegration of the U.S.S.R., the "socialist camp," and the bipolar world has evoked not only mass migrations and repatriation of ethnic groups, but also a search for new identities by countries of the Black Sea region, during which nationalistic tendencies have grown rapidly, historical differences, interethnic and inter-religious conflicts have exacerbated, and competing national interests have emerged for all to see.
All these phenomena, processes and trends have touched, to a certain extent, the Crimea, and are now represented in its social medium.
