Muslims in Russia: The 25-Million-Strong Community in the World's Largest Country (UK British Muslim Guide)

The 25-million-strong Muslim community in the world's largest country

Russia is home to one of the largest Muslim populations in Europe — between 20 and 25 million Muslims by most estimates, around 14% to 17% of the country's population. They are not recent migrants. They are indigenous: Tatars, Bashkirs, Chechens, Avars, Ingush, Kumyks, Karachays, Balkars, Nogais and dozens of smaller ethnic groups whose ancestors have been Muslim for over a thousand years. For British Muslim families curious about their global ummah — and particularly British Muslim families with Tatar, Chechen, Azerbaijani or Central Asian heritage — this guide is the introduction.

Population and geography

Indicator	Figure
Estimated Muslim population of Russia	20–25 million
Percentage of Russian population	14–17%
Largest Muslim ethnic groups	Tatars (~5.3m), Bashkirs (~1.6m), Chechens (~1.7m), Avars (~1m), and dozens of smaller groups
Republics with Muslim majorities	Chechnya (~95%), Ingushetia (~98%), Dagestan (~83%), Kabardino-Balkaria (~70%), Karachay-Cherkessia (~65%), Tatarstan (~54%), Bashkortostan (~38%)
Largest Muslim cities	Moscow (estimated 2-2.5 million Muslims, mostly migrant), Kazan (~600,000), Ufa, Makhachkala, Grozny
Number of registered mosques	~8,000
Madhhab	Predominantly Hanafi (Tatars, Bashkirs, Central Asian migrants); Shafi'i in the North Caucasus (Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia)

The two main Muslim regions of Russia

The Volga-Ural region

The Volga-Ural region — including the modern republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan — is home to the Tatars and Bashkirs, the two largest indigenous Muslim ethnic groups in Russia. Their ancestors embraced Islam in the 10th century, when Almish ibn Yiltawar, the king of the Volga Bulghars, formally converted in 922 CE after sending an embassy to the Abbasid caliph al-Muqtadir in Baghdad. The famous Arab traveller Ibn Faḍlān accompanied that embassy and wrote one of the most detailed early accounts of the Volga peoples — a document still studied by historians today.

Kazan, the modern capital of Tatarstan, has been an Islamic centre for over a thousand years. The Qol Sharif Mosque inside the Kazan Kremlin was rebuilt in 2005 on the site of the original 16th-century mosque destroyed by Ivan the Terrible's conquest of Kazan in 1552 — a conquest that began the long, complex history of Russian Muslims under Russian state authority.

The North Caucasus

The republics of the North Caucasus — Dagestan, Chechnya, Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia and North Ossetia (which has both Muslim and Christian populations) — are home to several million Muslims. Their Islamic history reaches back to the Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries, when the city of Derbent in Dagestan became one of the earliest Islamic outposts in the Caucasus. Derbent's Juma Mosque, built in 734 CE, is the oldest mosque in Russia and one of the oldest still in use anywhere in the former Soviet space.

The North Caucasus has a distinctive Sufi tradition, particularly the Naqshbandi and Qadiri tariqahs, which have shaped religious life and political resistance in the region for centuries. Imam Shamil — the great 19th-century leader of the Caucasian resistance to Russian imperial expansion — was a Naqshbandi shaykh and remains a foundational figure in the historical memory of Dagestani and Chechen Muslims.

Russian Muslims under three regimes

The Tsarist period (1552–1917)

From the conquest of Kazan in 1552 to the 1917 Revolution, Russian Muslims lived under the Tsarist state. Their experience varied dramatically across centuries — from intense forced-conversion campaigns in the early period, to the establishment of the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly in 1788 by Catherine the Great (the first official Russian state body for managing Muslim religious affairs), to the relative cultural revival of the late 19th-century Tatar Jadidist reform movement led by figures like Ismail Gasprinski and Musa Bigiev. The Jadidist movement built networks of modernised Islamic schools across the Russian empire and is the intellectual ancestor of much subsequent Tatar and Central Asian Islamic thought.

The Soviet period (1917–1991)

The Soviet period was the most brutal in Russian Muslim history. Stalinist anti-religious campaigns closed the overwhelming majority of mosques — from approximately 26,000 mosques in the Russian Empire in 1917 to fewer than 200 by the 1980s. Religious scholars were executed or sent to Gulag camps. Pilgrimage to Makkah was effectively impossible for ordinary Muslims. Yet underground religious life continued — through Sufi tariqah networks especially in the North Caucasus, through quiet domestic teaching of children, and through preservation of basic ritual practice in private homes. The fact that Russian Islam survived the Soviet century at all is one of the great untold stories of modern Muslim history.

The post-Soviet period (1991–present)

Since 1991, Russian Islam has gone through a substantial revival. Thousands of mosques have been rebuilt or built anew. Islamic publishing, education and pilgrimage have all resumed. The Moscow Cathedral Mosque was massively rebuilt and reopened in 2015 with a capacity of 10,000. Major Islamic universities operate in Kazan and Makhachkala. Over 25,000 Russian Muslims perform Hajj each year (a significant number, though small relative to the population). Russian Muslim media, including major TV channels and online outlets, serve a substantial audience.

This revival has not been uncomplicated. The two Chechen wars of the 1990s and 2000s, conflicts in Dagestan, and the ongoing tension between Russian state security policy and certain forms of Islamic practice (particularly Salafi-leaning interpretations) have all shaped the lived experience of being a Russian Muslim in the 21st century.

Tatar Muslims in Britain

The British Tatar community is small but established, primarily descended from Tatar Muslims who came to the UK after the Russian Revolution and after WWII, plus more recent arrivals from Tatarstan since 1991. Most are concentrated in London. The British Tatar community has historically gathered around the South Lodge Mosque (Wilbury Way, London) and through cultural associations like the Tatar-Bashkir Cultural Society of Great Britain.

For British Muslim families with Tatar or Bashkir heritage, knowing this background is part of knowing who you are. The Volga Bulghars embraced Islam before the English embraced Christianity in many parts of England — your ancestors were Muslim before mine were even baptised.

Chechen, Dagestani and other Caucasian communities in Britain

Smaller but significant Caucasian Muslim communities exist in the UK, primarily refugees and asylum-seekers from the Chechen wars, plus more recent migration. Most are concentrated in London (particularly West London) with smaller communities in Manchester and Birmingham. Caucasian Muslims in Britain often gather around mosques serving broader Sunni communities rather than maintaining ethnically-specific institutions.

What British Muslim families can learn from Russian Muslims

1. Islam can survive seventy years of state hostility. The Soviet experience proves that Islam does not need state support to survive — what it needs is dedicated families who teach their children quietly. British Muslim families worried about secular pressures on their children should remember: Russian Muslim families kept Islam alive through far worse.
2. Islamic identity can be both ethnic and religious. A Tatar Muslim is both Tatar and Muslim; the two are not in tension. British Muslim families can learn to hold their dual identities (British and Muslim, or British-Pakistani-Muslim, etc.) with the same integration.
3. Reform movements within Islam have a long history. The Jadidist movement of the late 19th century shows that thoughtful, reform-oriented engagement with modernity is not a 21st-century invention — Russian Muslim scholars were doing it 130 years ago.
4. The ummah is geographically larger than Saudi Arabia and South Asia. British Muslim children growing up in Bradford or Birmingham often have an unconsciously Pakistan-shaped or Arab-shaped picture of the global ummah. Russian Muslims are a useful corrective: 25 million Muslims in the world's largest country, mostly invisible in British Muslim discourse.

Frequently asked questions

Where to go next

For more on the global ummah from a British Muslim perspective, see our guides on Muslims in the United Kingdom and East London Mosque. To learn the Quran with an Al-Azhar-graduate teacher who can connect Quranic teaching to the wider Muslim world, book a free trial lesson.