RIYADH, March 15 (IslamOnline) - Russian Muslims appealed to Muslim countries on Thursday, particularly oil-rich Saudi Arabia, to help them come closer to Islam by donating funds and religious material in their native language, the Saudi news agency reported.
"There are some 20 million Muslims in Russia who are passionately eager to learn more about their religion," said Mohammed Salah, president of the Russian Islamic Council during a visit to Riyadh this week. "They are trying hard to adhere to their own identity and character."
Salah who was in Riyadh for meetings with Muslim leaders in Saudi Arabia said that he was expecting Muslim countries to donate Islamic books and reference material, and help print religious texts in Russian, making Islamic texts accessible to millions of Russians.
The Riyadh-based International Conference for Muslim Youths said it would respond to the call. The conference often publishes religious books in different languages to help non-Arabic speaking Muslims obtain a better understanding of Islam.
Saudi Arabia has been a traditional friend of Muslims in the former Soviet Union due to their links to Wahhabism, a form of practicing Islam widely adopted now in Saudi Arabia. Among Sunni groups, the Saudi Wahhabis in particular have been active in Central Asia and Muslim regions of the Caucasus.
Saudi Arabia has often helped construct mosques and bring in the Qur'an printed in local languages. Wahhabis, generally, receive their money from Saudi Arabia. However, their presence in the North Caucasus and the Fergana Valley in Central Asia is not well received by other sects, particularly the various Sufi orders that have been present in the Muslim areas of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) for centuries.
Islam in Central Asia and the Caucasus was preserved, first in Tsarist Russia and then in the Soviet Union, through Sufi orders, mainly by - but far from exclusively - the Naqshbandiya order.
Though Islam had spread north into the Caucasus and Central Asia during the early Muslim expansions of the 7th and 8th centuries, Sufism spread in Central Asia in the 12th century and into the northern Caucasus in the early 18th century.
