Islam in Belarus

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A continuous presence of Islam in Belarus began in the 14th century. From this time it was primarily associated with the Lipka Tatars, many of whom settled in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth while continuing their traditions and religious beliefs. The Lipka Tatars themselves did not call themselves that. They preferred to be called Belarusian Muslims,^[2] as they considered themselves more educated and religious than the nomadic Tatars. That is why the Turkic languages spoken by other Tatars did not take root among the Belarusian Tatars. The Belarusian Muslims spoke Old Belarusian, which was the state language in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. But they wrote in Arabic letters. This is how the Arabic script of the Belarusian language appeared.^[2]

With the advent of the Soviet Union, many Muslims left Belarus for other countries, particularly Poland. Presently, the Belarusian Muslim community consists of remaining Lipka Tatars, as well as recent immigrants from the Middle East. As of 2007, there were 45,000 Muslims in Belarus, representing 0.5% of the total population.^[3]

The Tale of Bygone Years (12th century) contains a story about Vladimir's the Great choice of faith, which goes as follows. In 986, ambassadors from the Volga Bulgars arrived to Vladimir, offering him the opportunity to convert to Islam. When they told the prince about the rituals that must be observed, including the ban on drinking wine, Vladimir responded with the famous phrase: "Drinking is the joy of Rus'," after which he rejected the Bulgars' offer.

The history of Islam in Belarus began in the 14th century, as the Grand Duchy of Lithuania invited Tatars from the Golden Horde to assist with the protection of their borders.

The appearance of the first Tatars in Belarus falls on the reign of the Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas. History has preserved information that, having conquered the lands of Kievan Rus, Duke Gediminas moved further with his army, in the direction of the southwest, but unexpectedly encountered the nomadic tribes of the Tatars and Kipchaks. The Grand Duke came up with the following idea: to use the warlike nomads as defenders of the borders of the Belarusian-Lithuanian state. After all, the Tatars were considered excellent warriors — horsemen, it was not for nothing that they were said to be born and grow up in the saddle. Duke Gediminas invited the Tatars to serve in his army^[4]

The Grand Dukes Algirdas and Keistut were no longer limited to using the Tatars only as border defenders, but also invited them to participate in their campaigns against the same knights-crusaders. Returning from service, the Tatars received the right to settle within the borders of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, near cities and castles.^[4]

Vytautas the Great took a more active role in Tatar affairs. He expanded Tatar settlements across his realm, aiming to build a militarized social class. After his 1397 campaign against the Golden Horde, he brought thousands of prisoners to Lithuania. In 1398, returning from Crimea, he resettled several Karaite families — Jewish Khazars — in Trakai, who later spread to Vilnius and Panevėžys.

During the 1410 Battle of Grunwald, the sons of Khan Tokhtamysh—who once burned Moscow—fought alongside Vytautas against the Teutonic Knights. They were led by the famed Tatar commander Sultan Jalal ad-Din, whose cavalry dealt heavy losses to the crusaders. The last Grand Master of the Teutonic Order, Ulrich von Jungingen, was slain by Khan Bogardyn.

The largest Muslim community in Belarus was in Ivye. According to legend, it was founded by «Noble Batald» (probably Vitovt the Great^[5])

The Ivye Tatars, offering their prayers to Allah, still call him "noble Batald". For help in the Battle of Grunwald, he gave the Muslims the Muravshchizna tract, which was located a little more than a kilometer from the Ivye castle. This is how the community was born.^[6] But the local Tatars got their own temple, a mosque, much later.^[6] Muslims also called Vytautas the «white khan» because the color white in the symbolism of the Turkic nomads meant the western direction. The prayer for Vytautas, which was read during Friday church services in mosques until the 20th century, remained in the tradition of the Belarusian Muslims.

Vytautas also received nickname «Vattad», the mainstay of Islam in the West,^[7][8] and they pronounced his name together with the names of the caliphs — the rulers of Islam.

Outwardly, the Tatars were not much different from the local population — fair-haired and light-eyed Europeans. They soon forgot their native language, but firmly preserved religious traditions. In fact, it was Islam with its clear regulation of all spheres of a believer's life that did not allow the Tatars to assimilate and preserved their ethnic identity. The Tatars were united by the laws of the Muslim community - the ummah, which was something like a "state within a state". There, the rules of mutual control and mutual assistance were strictly observed not only on religious, but also on everyday issues. The number of Tatars grew rapidly. In the 16th century, their number on Belarusian lands exceeded 20 thousand, 12 cathedral mosques were built. In the 17-18th centuries, the number of Muslims in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth reached 60 thousand, and there were more than four hundred mosques.^[9]

The Tatars, however, soon settled in Lithuania, as well as in neighbouring Poland, and by the end of the 16th century, an estimated 100,000 Tatars lived in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, including the descendants of border guards, voluntary immigrants, and prisoners of war. From this group came the Lipka Tatars. In the early 19th century, several Tatars fled to the Ottoman Empire amidst rumours of forced baptisms of Muslims.^[10]

In 1686, the Minsk Tafsir was published in Minsk, a manuscript of the Polish-Lithuanian Tatars from 1686, containing the text of the Quran with a translation into Polish. It is the first translation of the Quran into Polish and Slavic in general^[11] and the third into a European language.

During the Russian Civil War and the Polish–Soviet War, Muslim leaders protected Jews from pogroms; the mullah of Uzda hid the local Jewish population in his cellar, and helped Jews flee westwards by disguising them as Muslims.^[12] In the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, Islam was a target of religious persecution; in 1935, closures of mosques began, the mullah of Uzda was deported to Siberia, and the mullah and muezzin of Smilavichy were executed.

During the Eastern Front of World War II, Nazi Germany sought to express itself as a protector of Islam, and there were attempts to win over the Belarusian Muslim community.^[13] In 1942, during the German occupation of Byelorussia, the Minsk Mosque, which had been closed in 1936 and used as a food bank, was reopened.^[14] The 1st Eastern Muslim SS Regiment also fought Belarusian partisans in Minsk Region until being merged into the SS-Sonderregiment Dirlewanger.^[15]

From 1944 to 1946, many Lipka Tatar religious leaders, fearing renewed religious persecution, fled Belarus for Poland. This complicated the work of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults of the Soviet Union. The community of Iwye, in Grodno Region, became the largest recognised religious community in Belarus. In the 1950s, the Iwye Muslims continued celebrating Eid al-Adha and did not work on Fridays. After the dissolution of the Kletsk Islamic community in 1960, Iwye was the only remaining Islamic community in Belarus, though private practice of Islam continued.^[16]

In 1994, the First All-Belarusian Congress of Muslims was held. As a result, the Muslim Religious Community of the Republic of Belarus was founded. From its foundation until 2005, the Muslim Religious Community of the Republic of Belarus was headed by Ismail Alieksandrovič. Since 2005, it has been led by Abu-Biekir Šabanovič.

In 2007, the Ahmadiyya Muslims were banned from practising their faith openly, and given a similar status to other banned religious groups^[which?] in the country. Unable to obtain state registration, Ahmadi Muslims in the country, who number about 30, including 13 native Belarusians, cannot conduct their activities formally as a group, such as importing or distributing literature, gathering together for prayers or meetings, and having an official representative.^[17]

Belarus is the only country in Europe to have jailed a newspaper editor for publishing the Danish cartoons of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. On 18 January 2008, Alexander Sdvizhkov was jailed for three years for 'incitement of religious hatred'.^[18]

Today, there are 7 mosques in Belarus: Smilavichy, Iwye, Slonim, and Navahrudak in the Grodno Region, Minsk and Kletsk in the Minsk Region, and Vidzy in the Vitebsk Region.^[19] From 1900 to 1902, a mosque was constructed in Minsk, but it was destroyed^[why?] in 1962. On 11 November 2016, a replica of the mosque was opened in Minsk.^[20] There are 30 religious organisations officially registered, and 25 religious communities, of which 24 are Sunni and one is Shia. Most Belarusian Muslims are Sunni, of the Hanafi school.^[21]

Lipka Tatars no longer speak their native language, and primarily switched to Belarusian, Russian, and Polish. However, for the purposes of religious practices, Arabic is used. Historically, the Belarusian Arabic alphabet was developed by Muslims to write the Belarusian language in the Arabic script, then commonly used by Tatars, as they abandoned their own Tatar language for Belarusian. However, the Belarusian Arabic alphabet has fallen out of use in the modern age.

Relations between the Christianity and Islam in Belarus are very tense, but there have been no direct clashes.^[9] Since the early 1990s, the Muslim community of Belarus has become an arena for the propaganda of various trends of Islam that are not traditional for Belarus. An analysis of modern Muslim literature widespread in Belarus allows us to conclude that some of the materials were sources with a radical orientation.^[22][23]

Preachers from Arab countries have appeared in Belarus. In particular, Wahhabis, who convince young people that they practice the “wrong Islam”: they read the Quran poorly, do not pray in accordance with religious canons, and make many mistakes. Thus, a group of radically minded, mostly young, Muslims appeared, which, although not numerous, caused increasing irritation among representatives of the older generation. The breakaway Muslims even wanted to create their own youth movement in Belarus. And then the state intervened in the relations within the Muslim community: the preachers were deported from Belarus, and the radically minded youth were “dispersed and calmed down”.^[24]

The largest information case of radicalization of Islam is connected with the report of the KGB of the Republic of Belarus in late 2014 about the detention of a group of Salafis, which "was formed under the influence of the religious-extremist organization "Hizb ut-Tahrir"." Among those detained were 8 foreign citizens and 12 Belarusians. Law enforcement agencies did not wait for the Muslims to commit specific offenses or crimes: foreigners were deported from the country, and "loyal preventive measures were applied to citizens of Belarus". According to the KGB, the Salafis were supposed to conduct illegal missionary activity in the territory of Minsk, Grodno and Mogilev regions. At the same time, a group of people representing any extremist religious organization was identified in Belarus for the first time. Previously, "individuals who, as a rule, were transiting through the territory of Belarus" were detained. However, journalists note that the KGB has a whole division dealing with the issue of radical Islamists, which “closes issues across the entire republic.” Religious scholars involved in the examination of new religious movements in our country expressed the opinion that “this is not the first and not the last case in Belarus".

As reported by the Minister of Internal Affairs of Belarus I.A. Shunevich in 2016, the police knew of 10 militants of the “Islamic State” who have or had Belarusian citizenship.^[25] But the most well-known person is 33-year-old Denis Vasiliev, who died in battles on the Syrian-Iraqi border at the end of November 2015. The Kurdish resource writes that in 2014 he participated in the massacre of Kurdish Yazidis in Sinjar.^[26] A Belarusian Abu Sophia al-Belarusi headed the Malhama Tactical in Syria.^[27]

Probably the most famous Belarusian Muslim today is Daniil Lyashuk, nicknamed Mujahid, a former fighter of the Tornado unit that fought in Donbass against the Novorossiya militia. In September 2015, Mujahid was detained by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies on suspicion of committing torture and homosexual rape of residents of the Luhansk region. According to the chief military prosecutor of Ukraine, Anatoly Matios, Lyashuk “professes the values of the extremist organization Islamic State”^[28]

In May 2016, 24-year-old Ivan Sopov (known in virtual space as Genrikh Litvin), the administrator of the groups “Historical and Political Disputes” and “Baltic-Black Sea Union” on the social network VK, was detained in Moscow. Sopov was born in the Smolensk region and until recently positioned himself as a Belarusian nationalist. According to preliminary data, several months before this, Sopov converted to Islam, grew a Wahhabi beard and began to hatch a plan to travel to Syria to participate in military operations on the side of the "Islamic State".

Eduard (Rasul) Muravitsky, a member of the Belarusian national mixed martial arts team who converted to Islam, said in one of his interviews:

I have noticed that more and more ethnic Belarusians are converting to Islam. Of course, everyone has their own motives, but it seems to me that there is one common factor: people need support, unity. And Islam provides this. Here is an example: a regular "mugging" on the street - someone "hooked" a Belarusian. And what will passers-by do? Let's not deceive ourselves - most will pretend that nothing happened and speed up their pace. But try to hook a Muslim if his brothers in faith are nearby - people will immediately come running and fight back!

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  Tatar cemetery in Belarus.
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  Mosque in Iwye
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  Mosque in Smilavichy
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  Mosque in Minsk (destroyed in 1962)
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  Mosque in Minsk (built in 2016)

• Religion in Belarus
• Freedom of religion in Belarus

• Muslim Spiritual Board in the Republic of Belarus Republican Religious Association (News)
• Muslim Spiritual Board in the Republic of Belarus Republican Religious Association
• Belarusian Cathedral Mosque site Archived 27 October 2020 at the Wayback Machine