Russian Muslims Go on the Hajj with Official Support

As Islam in Russia undergoes a revival, more and more local Muslims are determined to fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam and undertake the hajj—the pilgrimage to the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. The most recent pilgrimage, in December 2007, saw record numbers of Muslims travel from across Russia to take part in what is seen as a holy duty among those who are physically and financially able to travel.

The Saudi method for working out quotas per country is to allow one place on the hajj for each 1,000 Muslims living in any given country. Because Russian censuses don’t ask about religion, nobody knows exactly how many Muslims live in Russia, and estimates vary between 8 million and 20 million. The Saudis already took the higher end of the estimate in setting the Russian allocation at 20,500, but flouted their own system to give an extra few thousand places, irritating some other Muslim countries in the process. In December last year, Russia was granted an additional 4,500 spaces in the allocation that the Saudi authorities give to each country, boosting the numbers from 20,500 to 25,000. It was rumored that the additional spaces were granted after personal lobbying from President Vladimir Putin, who made his first trip to Saudi Arabia last year.

Even this figure seems to have been well exceeded, however, with officials in the Dagestani capital of Makhachkala claiming that 17,000 pilgrims from Dagestan alone made the journey. In recent years, the number of people willing and able to make the hajj in Russia was below the official quota, but in 2007, demand exceeded even the newly revised quota—something that indicates both a revival of Islamic practices among Russia’s Muslims and an increase in wealth, which makes the journey more plausible. Many first-time hajj participants dedicate their pilgrimages to elderly or deceased relatives who were forbidden from making the journey during the Soviet period or unable to during the 1990s.

Muslim pilgrims walk around the Kaaba in Mecca as part of the hajj.Traditionally, more than half the pilgrims are from Dagestan, and Chechnya claims the second highest number of Russian pilgrims. There is also a contingent of Tatars and Bashkirs, but as Islam is less entrenched in these regions, their numbers taking the opportunity are not as high. There have been allegations in the past that the hajj has been used as a pretext to smuggle goods into and out of Russia, with many Dagestanis accused of loading up cars full of wares, and the same people travelling to the hajj year after year. These charges led the Russian authorities to introduce limits a few years ago on how much may be brought into Russia duty free.

Official estimates—which could well be lower than the real numbers—say that around 26,000 Russians traveled to Saudi Arabia last December . Aeroflot scheduled special flights from Mineralny Vody in the North Caucasus direct to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, while others flew out of Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport to Jordan, and then took transport on from there.

“Mecca is a holy place for every Muslim, and if they can afford it, they should visit at least once in a lifetime,” one elderly bearded Muslim man told Russian television before beginning his journey from Domodedovo. “It’s the home of Allah and also the tomb of the Prophet Mohammed.”

“I’ve already been there, but my son was killed and now I’m going again, to pray for him,” a woman told the TV cameras. “Hajj was given as an order from Allah, and anyone who can must go there.”

Not everyone had the resources to be able to travel by plane though, and many pilgrims took lengthy routes, either over the Black Sea to Trabzon and then onwards by bus, or all the way from Russia to Saudi Arabia by bus. One group of pilgrims was trapped for over a week on the return journey waiting for a ferry in the Turkish port city of Trabzon, after storms prevented them from sailing.

One even more extreme story hit the headlines in 2007—Dzhanar-Aliyev Magomed-Ali, a 63-year old Chechen, cycled all the way from his home in the Caucasus Mountains to Mecca and back. The pensioner crossed 13 states on his bike, apparently after his mother appeared to him in a dream and told him that he must perform the hajj, and perform it on a bicycle. He traveled through Azerbaijan, Iran and war-torn Iraq, where he claimed a group of American soldiers smashed his bicycle and called him a “Russian pig.” He had to head back to Iran, and bypassed Iraq by riding through Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, Syria and Jordan before finally making it to his destination country—the Saudi kingdom.

“The Russian authorities have a two-sided approach to Russian Muslims doing the hajj,” said Sergei Markednov of the Institute of Military and Political Analysis. On the one hand, the authorities are worried about the possible radicalization of Russian Muslims when they travel abroad and come into contact with more aggressive strands of Islamic thinking. The hajj is seen as less risky than actual study abroad at foreign madrassahs though, when Russian Muslims remain in other countries for an extended period of time and thus have a higher chance of being radicalized. And in regions such as Dagestan, there is also a likelihood that they could come into contact with radical Islamic teaching without having to leave the boundaries of Russia.

But although there is some disquiet among Russian authorities and the official Muslim spiritual bodies about the number of Muslims who now want to make the hajj, there is another side of the story. With Russia very keen to win allies in different parts of the world, its image as a multi-confessional country is important. “Russia is friendly with Iran, and is part of the Organization of the Islamic Conference,” said Markedonov. “Also, many regional leaders see the hajj as good PR—[Chechen President] Ramzan Kadyrov even went himself.”

This use of the hajj as a tool to boost Russia’s standing in the Middle East is nothing new, says Eileen Kane, a post-doctoral researcher at Columbia University’s Harriman Institute. “Starting in the 1840s, and continuing throughout the 19th century, the authorities made it easier for Muslims to go on the hajj, and helped subsidize it,” she said. Competing with the UK for influence in the Middle East—a region where the British had many more business and trade links than the Russians—the pilgrims made a good excuse for getting a foothold in the area. In 1880 a Russian consulate was opened in Baghdad, and in 1891 in Jeddah.

“They were doing a similar thing to what Putin is doing now,” said Kane. “The thinking was that people were going on the hajj, there was no way to stop them, and by helping them it was possible to get a foothold in regions where Russia had strategic interests but no real reason to be there.”

In the middle of the 19th century, only around 1,000 pilgrims made the journey each year, while by the end of the Tsarist period, there were over 10,000 pilgrims officially recorded annually on the hajj, and the real number was much higher. Most of these were from the Caucasus and Central Asian territories of the empire.

Now, Russia no longer has the Central Asian territories but has a huge number of Muslims within its modern day borders—a population which, unlike the rest of the country, is not in decline but still growing. As more of these Muslims rediscover the faith that had to be kept quiet during the Soviet period, demand for places on the yearly pilgrimage to fulfill the fifth pillar of Islam is likely to continue growing.