The head of the Spiritual Assembly of Muslims of Russia, Mufti Albir Krganov, said that Muslims and their families can celebrate the New Year on an equal basis with representatives of other religions.
Thus, the mufti denied the myth that the New Year celebration makes Muslims traitors to the faith. In his opinion, this judgment is spread by radicals.
Krganov pointed out that both in Russia and in other countries the New Year is considered a secular holiday and has nothing to do with religion.
Russia has the largest Muslim population in Europe; and according to US Department of State in 2017, Muslims in Russia numbered 14 million or roughly 10% of the total population. According to a comprehensive survey conducted in 2012, Muslims were 6.5% of Russia’s population.
The Muslim community in Russia continues to grow, having reached 25 million, according to the grand mufti of Russia, Sheikh Rawil Gaynetdin.
In an interview earlier, Grand Mufti of Russia Sheikh Rawil Gaynetdin has told Anadolu news agency that the Muslim community in Russia is indigenous and continues to grow in acceptance with Russia’s other faiths.
- Regional concentration: Sheikh Gaynetdin said most Muslims in the country live in the Moscow region and other major metropolitan areas such as St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg.
- There is also a high concentration of followers of Islam in the regions where Islamic states were located before the formation of a single Russian state; today, these regions are Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, the republics of the North Caucasus, the mufti said.
- Official recognition: He also noted that Islam was declared as the state religion in one of the states located in the territory of present-day Russia – in the Volga Bulgaria, in 922, which was 66 years earlier than the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity as the state religion of Kievan Rus.
- He said the number of Muslims was also mentioned in the population census.
- Composition: The majority of Russian Muslims are Sunnis of Hanafi school of thought but there are also some Sunnis of Shafi’i school and Shia, Gaynetdin said.
- “Russian Shias are mainly Azeris and Tajiks from Pamir and they are small in number. Most Shias live in Derbent, southern Dagestan.
- “In Moscow, only one community is registered as Shia,” he said.
