Islamic Leadership and the State in Eurasia

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Description

The book presents the first integrated study of the relationship between official Islamic leadership (muftiship), non-official Islamic authorities, grassroots Muslim communities and the state in post-Communist Eurasia, encompassing Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, the Volga-Urals, Crimea, the North Caucasus, Azerbaijan and ex-Soviet Central Asia. It employs a history-based perspective and compares this relationship to that in both the Middle East and Western Europe. It argues that the nature and role of official Islamic leadership, as well as state-Muslim relations in most of the post-Soviet lands, have largely retained their particular national and broader Eurasian character, which distinguishes them from what prevails in the Middle East and Western Europe. At the same time, the increasing political Europeanisation of Lithuania and Ukraine since 2014 and, to some extent, Belarus, has accounted for their divergence towards the Western model of state-Muslim relations.

Reviews

In this well-documented and up-to-date study, Galina Yemelianova traces the complex relationship between Islamic and political authorities in the Muslim-populated parts of Eurasia and deftly illustrates the resilience of Islam against external domination and internal challenges. This book will be a welcome addition to many university courses on Islam and Russian and Eurasian history and also of interest to a wider general readership. Dr Bhavna Dave, SOAS University of London, UK.

Central Asia and the Caucasus do not loom large in the imagination of most in the West, and yet, this region was the zone of the Silk Road, the trading route that tied together the periphery of Eurasia. It was also the zone of greatest contact between Christianity and Islam. Not only did Islam reach into the area when great empires existed there, but it has persisted down to the present when these empires have devolved into nations or ethnic regions. The varying adaptations of Islam that have emerged offer a wide range of case studies. Dr. Yemelianova has a deep and extensive grasp of this region, both from scholarly sources and from field work across the region. As an author of numerous articles and books on Islam and Central Asia, her fluency in both Russian and Arabic enable her to forge a unique perspective on the changes that Islam has undergone in this vast region. John Colarusso, McMaster University, Canada

This book is one of the most ambitious and comprehensive scholarly works about Islam in post-Soviet Eurasia to date. The main argument is that the historical evolution of this region has shaped the nature and forms of Islamic leadership and its relationship with the state and Muslim grassroots communities and thus gave it a unique Eurasian character. To demonstrate this, the book covers immense ground both temporally and geographically. It analyses the development of Islam in general, and the relationship between the state, Islamic leaders, and Muslim communities in particular beginning from the birth of Prophet Muhammad in c. 571 CE and the early arrival of Islam to the region, continuing until the present time Sofie Bedford, IRES Institute for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University, Caucasus Survey.

Author Bio

Galina M.Yemelianova has researched and taught for over thirty years on various aspects of Middle Eastern and Eurasian history, and contemporary Muslim and ethno-national politics.