RELIGION

Iakov TROFIMOV

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Iakov Trofimov, Ph.D. (Philos.), professor at the Karaganda “Bolashak” Institute of Actual Education (Karaganda, Kazakhstan)

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Kazakhstan is a multi-confessional state with over 3,500 religious communities of 62 various confessions. According to my calculations, nearly 70 percent of the believers are Muslims; 28 percent, Orthodox Christians; 1 percent, Catholics; about 0.5 percent, Protestants, and followers of other faiths constitute less than 0.01 percent.

Islam is the main confession in the republic—there are about 2,000 communities, 1,779 of them registered. It is interesting to note that in recent years, three Shi‘a and one Sufi community appeared, besides the traditional Sunni communities of Hanafi madhab. The figure of 70 percent Muslims is fairly conventional because many members of the traditionally Islamic ethnoses (Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Dungans, Chechens, Azeris, Uighurs, etc.) do not always follow the Islamic rules. Kayrat Satybaldy, leader of the Ak Orda (The White Horde) movement, has pointed out: “The number of Muslims who strictly adhere to the main Shari‘a rules is no more than 1.5 million (out of ten million.—Ia.T.) if we include in this number those who do not perform Friday rights yet regularly attend the mosques to ask the imams to pray for themselves or their relatives, etc.”

The multi-ethnic nature of the Muslim communities is responsible for the strictly ethnic features of the mosques (Kazakh, Uzbek, Dungan, Chechen, Azeri, and Uighur), while the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Kazakhstan (SAMK) cannot cope with the situation. First, it emerged because the Kazakh language used in most mosques is unknown to……………

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