The Weight of Tradition. “Traditional” vs. “Non-Traditional” Islam in Russia’s Volga Region

My research focuses on Islamic renewal movements amongst the Muslim populations of the Volga region in the Russian Federation. In this paper, I critically engage with a hegemonic scholarly and media discourse about “traditional Russian Islam”, outlining its intellectual genealogy and describing its social outcomes. Thereafter, on the grounds of my ethnographic findings gathered from sixteen months of fieldwork in the Republic of Tatarstan, I proceed to summarise a model to map the major trends and trajectories within the Russian ummah.