The Foreign Service Journal, April 2007

the lookout for migrants who are not registered to live in their town, are constantly asking dark-skinned people for identification. Slavic or other light-skinned migrants gener- ally avoid this harassment, while even longtime residents of cities such as Moscow or St. Petersburg, if they are ethnically Azeri or Chechen, are vulnerable. At the same time, the local media in these cities frequently report about migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus cheating customers in markets, being involved in crime and generally causing trouble. Police use the vul- nerability of unregistered migrants to blackmail market traders and collect bribes. An anti-immigrant mood in much of urban Russia has led to a rapid rise in the number of violent attacks against Muslims (and non-whites in general) over the past sever- al years. Although some of these attacks are perpetrated by individual criminals looking for easy targets for rob- bery, most are carried out by gangs of Russian skinheads who deliberately target non-whites as part of a campaign of “racial cleansing” to rid the cities of people they con- sider undesirable. Discrimination and violence against Muslims in Russia’s major cities are not caused by anti-Muslim senti- ment, per se. They result rather from fears among locals of being swamped by culturally dissimilar migrants and, in some cases, racist attitudes against darker-skinned people. Fears of immigrants largely stem from the influx of migrants from the Caucasus, Central Asia and East Asia over the 15 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. These migrants come to Moscow and other cities mainly for economic reasons, though some are seeking to escape conflicts in their homelands. Given the relatively low birth rates and high death rates among ethnic Russians, some people worry that the Russian Federation’s demographic balance will increas- ingly shift toward non-Russians and especially Muslims, who are feared because they are seen to have different cultural values from the Slavic majority. The Chechen war, and especially the occasional terrorist acts carried out by Chechen rebels in Moscow and elsewhere, have con- tributed to a hostile attitude toward people from the Caucasus and other non-Slavs. These are often lumped together into a single group that is seen as radical or at least prone to sympathize with radicals in Chech- nya. The effect of this form of racism on Russia’s Muslims is hard to gauge definitively. Most migrants are too busy trying to support themselves and feel too vulnerable to retribu- tion to get involved in any kind of political resistance to the racism and discrimination that they suffer. Muslims who have lived in cities for a long time may feel little sympathy for the recent migrants, especially since the longtime city-dwellers are likely to belong to different ethnic groups and are often quite Russified culturally and linguistically. There may be occasional cases of local Muslim youth fighting back against skinhead gangs, but these are not likely to change the general situation, and may serve only to harden the attitudes of the rest of the population against the migrants. The Future of Russia’s Muslims Despite the fears of Russia’s demographic doomsayers, Russia will remain a predominantly Slavic country for at least the next century. Even with their faster population growth rates, Muslims are likely to remain less than 20 percent of Russia’s total population. Nevertheless, they could potentially play a very significant role in Russian political life. Given the increase in anti-Muslim and racist attitudes among Russia’s Slavic population, the failure of Russia’s leadership to solve its radical Islam problem may lead to an increase in support for more nationalist alternatives. This trend could already be seen in the unexpectedly strong showing of the Rodina Party in the 2003 State Duma elections. The nationalist, xenophobic trend will continue to grow stronger if politicians in Moscow fail to distinguish between dangerous and potentially violent radicals, and pious Muslims who are not presently radi- calized but could turn to violence because of discrimina- tion and abuse by local officials and police. The Russian government has used the specter of Islamic radicalism to maintain its popularity and to justify its continuing war against Chechen rebels. At the same time, the government has made efforts to use Russia’s Muslim population to increase ties with the larger Muslim F O C U S 46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / A P R I L 2 0 0 7 Discrimination and violence against Muslims in Russia’s major cities are not caused by anti-Muslim sentiment, per se.