Free Republic

Russia is becoming increasingly a Muslim country. Russia counts about 15 million people (in a total population of over 146 million, including two million in annexed Crimea) of Muslim background, or about 11 percent of its population. All are not fervent believers, and even fewer practice Islam routinely. Moscow has the largest Muslim community in Europe: about one million Muslim residents and up to 1.5 million Muslim migrant workers. Given demographic changes, Muslims will represent between one third (the most conservative estimate) and one half (the most generous estimate) of the Russian population by around 2050. Russia’s Muslims mostly belong...

SEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS   Strongman Ramzan Kadyrov was installed by Putin to squelch Chechnya's Islamist insurrection. But Kadyrov's adoption of sharia and political Islam in the region are challenging Russia's secular constitutional order. MOSCOW—Russia fought two bloody wars in its Caucasus republic of Chechnya, ostensibly to crush an emerging threat of Islamist extremism on its own soil. So it is with no small irony that the strongman Moscow installed to run a pacified Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, is increasingly posing a similar challenge to Russia's secular constitutional order. Mr. Kadyrov is imposing sharia (Islamic law) on his population – and lately,...

A senior Russian Orthodox cleric has strongly opposed a populist politician’s suggestion to fight terrorism by imposing birth control in the predominantly Muslim regions. The idea has already caused a major scandal. The head of the Holy Synod’s department for relations between the Church and society, Vsevolod Chaplin, says all peoples must develop freely and have as many children as they consider necessary. “Russia can have a future only as a community of all peoples that created it and that have formed it over many centuries. This is why the people of the Caucasus who play a serious role in...