Head of Council of Muftis Gives Number of Muslims Who Live in Moscow

Interfax ^ | 9/23/19

[marshmallow]

Moscow, September 23, Interfax - Over 2.5 million Muslims now live in Moscow, Russian Council of Muftis head Ravil Gainutdin said.

"Over 2.5 million Muslims now live in Moscow alone, and at least one million Muslims live in the Moscow region and in St. Petersburg. The number of Muslims is in the hundreds of thousands in the Yekaterinburg, Perm, Tyumen, Omsk, and Rostov metropolitan areas," Gainutdin said in his report given at the 7th congress of the Muslim Spiritual Board of Russia in Moscow on Monday.

In the meantime, the head of the Council of Muftis recently gave a higher number. "I now hear from the Moscow administration that 3-4 million city residents, both permanent and temporary, are Muslims," he said in an interview published in the Friday edition of the newspaper Izvestia.

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Putin factors this into his Middle East shenaningans.

[Lurkinanloomin]

That’s not good for the Ruskies....

[Clemenza]

Russia has had huge Muslim populations in their “Empire” for centuries. Historically they have used coercion and repression, usually the former.

[dangus]

Don’t believe it. I remember 30 years ago, the Muslims were claiming there were 10 million Muslim Americans, on the logic that every person from any nation that had ever been Muslim was Muslim.

The highest good estimate is that there are about 11 million culturally OR religiously Muslim people in Russia. Of these, only about 3 million identify as belonging to any given sect of Islam. 0 percent of ethnic Russians report being Muslim; Muslims are predominantly Tatars, Avars, Bashkirs and Kazakhs, with only the Avars predominantly identifying with any given sect of Islam (Sunni).

According to Ipsos global trends in 2016, only 1% of internet-connected young adults identified as Muslim.

The International Social Survey Program in 2015 found that 6.2% of Russian citizens identified as Muslim, compared to 79% who identified as Christian.

The Russian Public Opinion Foundation found 6% of Russian citizens

[NorseViking]

True enough. The Western sholars tend to simplify things. They see 10 million Tatars or other groups which are historically Muslim and count them all for Muslims which is not true in case of Russia. The same works for Moscow. They count Dagestanis who moved to Moscow and count them as Muslims in Moscow and it is wrong. Although there are shining examples of Islamists 70% of Dagestanis are moving to Moscow precisely becausу they had enough of Islam.