Dr. A. Kopanski

Courtesy: The Message International, Copyright ©, All Rights Reserved.

Islam is experiencing a revival in the Baltics, and it has inspired the founding of a new regional movement: The Muslim Confederation of the Baltic Sea (MCBS). This Confederation has brought together Muslims of Beylorussia, Lithuania, Poland, Estonia, and Latvia.

MCBS, whose unofficial headquarter is the Baltic seaport of Gdansk-Gdynia, is pushing beyond national boundaries by closely cooperating with Islamic movements and centers in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland. It is now working toward publishing a multi-lingual journal, and plans to start a Muslim radio station.

The symbols of hope for the future is the newly built mosque at Gdansk with the tallest minaret in northern Europe. The mass reversion to Islam by an entire village near Kielce who then announced the formation of Jednosc Muzulmanska (Organization for Muslim Unity). Muslims fed up with bureaucratic delaying tactics are threatening to go ahead with the construction of a new mosque in Warsaw, the Polish capital.

Today, Poland is a changed country. Some of the jailers are in jail, but most of them are enjoying "early retirement." There is a ray of hope in the gloom that hovers over the country. The tiny Muslim community has regained its religious rights after fifty years of discrimination and acculturation. According to current records there are only about 3,000 'registered' and 'un-registered' believers among 37 million Christians and atheistic Poles.

This microscopic oasis of Islam in a sea of Roman Catholicism has waged a struggle for 600 years to preserve its identity. The history of this isolated Muslim community is both painful and glorious, they were persecuted by both the Catholics and the Communists. Before World War II, there were 21 mosques in Poland and Lithuania; now there are only two each in Poland (Kruszyniany and Bohoniki) and Lithuania. These mosques were restored to Muslims by the new democratic government.

The Muslim community in Gdansk forms a close-knit community of friends, relatives, and members of the ahretni bracia (the ikhwan). Among them are two activists: Dr. Selim Mirza Chazbijewin, editor of the Caliphate Movement and the quarterly Muslim Life. He is also chairman of the Polish Muslim Heritage Foundation. Chazbijewicz regularly visits Muslim communities inside the Soviet Union. The other is Sister Halima Szabanowia, an active da'wah worker of the Polish Muslim Cultural Association. The Islamic revival has an important resource in those foreign Muslim students who married Polish women and settled there. They speak fluent Polish and are effective in da'wah; among such workers is Mazeen Zain Din, the ustaz of the Gdansk Darul Ulum.

Bialystock in eastern Poland has the largest Muslim population; regular prayers are held at the local university campus and there are plans to build a mosque soon. There present mosque is wooden shack. Near this city are two of the country's oldest mosques in Bohoniki and Kruszyniany. In nearby Gorzow Wiellropolski, there is a community of 150 Polish and Lithuanian Muslims expelled from areas annexed by the Soviets in 1945.

There are signs of budding cooperation between Polish and Bosnian Muslims, and at least four young Poles are studying in the famous Madrassah Husrevbeg in Sarajevo, Bosnia. They will eventually take up positions with Muslim communities in Poland.

In the Lithuanian capital of Kaunas, the communists converted a beautiful mosque into a public library, several others were razed or converted into warehouses. When the Soviets invaded Poland and Lithuania in 1939, they deported the Muslims of Lithuania and Byelorussia to Siberian concentration camps. Today, these Muslim survivors of the 'Gulag' are rebuilding their mosques and working toward founding their own organization.

The Muslims in the Beylorussian capital of Minsk have organized their own publishing house (al Kitab). Its first product is a Beylorussian translation of the Qur'an.

The Baltic city of Gdansk has more than one distinguishing feature besides being the birthplace of "Solidarity" and having the tallest minaret in northern Europe, it has become the rallying point for Muslim unity. The Gdansk- based Muslim Revival Movement (MRM) has issued a call for the restoration of the Khilafa. The black and green flags of the movement now flutter in the cities of Tataristan, Bashkiria, Dagestan, Checheno-Ingushetia, Crimea, and Idel-Ural. These countries populated by Tataro-Turkic and Caucasian Muslims have declared themselves independent or sovereign states inside the Republic of Russia.

In Moscow, Saratov, Kazan, Bakhchyseray, Ufa, Tartu, Groziny, Buinayksk, and Novosibirsk, the All-Russian Hizbe Islami has established its offices and printing houses. This movement is led by Moscow-based Rauf Sadikov and Mustafa Hasanov, and the Kazan-based Idris Irek Garifov. The old and powerful 'tariqas' of Nakshbandis and Qadiris from Imam Shamyl's mountains of Dagestan have reestablished several brotherhoods not only in the Caucasus, Tatarisstan, and Russia, but also in Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia.

The traditional brotherhoods and the new Islamic movements are cooperating with Muslims in Central Asia where the "commonwealth" of Turkestan (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan, Kazakistan, and Kirghistan) is striving to restore the power of Islam which had been suppressed during the 80-year communist regime.

In the Muslim areas of the European Soviet Union, two major trends seem to be emerging: pan-Turkism, and pan-Islamism. Both of them are heirs of the pre-Bolshevik era of the Russian and Ottoman empires. The pan-Turkist movement dominated by the traditionalists has an ethnic appeal, and envisages a glorious Muslim 'Turan' or United Turkestan stretching from Istanbul to Urmuqi in Chinese-occupied Eastern Turkestan. In addition to stressing a common social and cultural heritage, they emphasize the common dialects of Turkic Turkestan.

The pan-Islamists, who would qualify to be labeled 'fundamentalists' by the West, are spreading the message of Islamic unity and federalism. They are aiming to found a New Caliphate - a sort of Muslim United States of Euroasia which will ultimately be a part of greater Muslim world. Their appeal is simple: Iman and the Islamic way of life. These mostly young and educated bearded men and veiled women are active in many of the cities in Dagestan, Tataristan, and Bashkiria.

Interestingly, even the modernist factions of the pan-Turkish movement do not like to be identified with Kemalist Turkish nationalism, nor do they want to ape the West.

In recent times, several Islamic and pan-Turanist newspapers and magazines have started publication in the European part of the Republic of Russia (including Moscow), Tataristan, Bashkiria, Crimea, Dagestan, and Idel-Ural. Some of these are the irregularly published Turkestan of Estonia, the Russian-language Crimean-Tatar Kasevat published from the small town of Rodnikovoe, near Simerpool in Crimea.

In Crimea where the Tatars have come home, forty-four years after being deported by Stalin, are reasserting their Islamicity. Today, the muazin calls the believers to prayer from the minaret of the sole remaining mosque in Bakhchyseray. The Islamic trend is represented by such newspapers as the Russian-language Saratov-based Musulmanskly Vestnik (Muslim Herald), and Avde-Vozverashchenye (Revival) from Bakhchyseray, the old capital of the Crimean Khanate.

The city of Astrakhan, in southern Russia, is the regional headquarters of the Islamic Party of the Volga Tatars. But the most fervent revivalist activity in the European Soviet republics springs from the famous old madressa of Kazan, the capital of Tataristan, and from the imams of Ufa, capital of Bashkiria.

The level of enthusiasm from Islam could be gauged from the protests that took place in Dagestan during July this year. Saudi Arabia had donated 1,500 tickets for the hajj, but each and every Daghestani, Lagini, Checheni, and Ingusheti wanted to make the journey. It was after 80 years that such an opportunity had arisen. The Soviets had to send in the troops to restore order.

Courtesy: The Message International, Copyright ©.