An estimated 1 million Muslims live in Moscow, making it Europe's most Islamic city -- at least ethnically. Outwardly, though, the onion domes of Russian Orthodoxy dominate the cityscape. The Moscow Cathedral Mosque, the city's oldest, built in 1904, is a small building, literally in the shadow of the basketball arena built for the 1980 Olympics. The Council of Muftis has begun construction of a larger mosque next door, reflecting Islam's expansion in Russia. Islam's practices its prayers, its separation of men and women are universal, but the shoes are unmistakably Russian.
Islam's revival in the North Caucasus, on Russia's southern frontier, has been
accompanied by suspicion, conflict and, in Chechnya, war. In Cherkessk, capital of Karachayevo-Cherkessia, there is only one small mosque, built by believers in 1997. A billboard -- quoting the Prophet Muhammad, in Russian, raises funds for a new one. At the city's Islamic Institute, opened in 1993, 66 students learn the tenets of Islam, as well as Arabic, though under the scrutiny of the state, which remains suspicious of those who study Islam outside of state-sanctioned institutions.
At the Muslim cemetery in Nalchik, in neighboring Kabardino-Balkariya, etchings on headstones belie the influence of Russian culture; as Islam proscribes such imagery. The cemetery's newest graves include those killed in two days of fighting in October, provoked by government repression against devout Muslims.
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