Anti-Muslim Fear Narrative and the Ban on Said Nursi's Works as “Extremist Literature” in Russia
Abstract
<jats:p>This article analyzes the causes and consequences of Islamophobia in the Russian
Federation following the story of the Russian ban on the works of a scholar of Islam
from Turkey, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1878–1960), despite the overall positive reception
of his ideas and followers by Russia's Muslims. It positions Russia's existing domestic
anti-Muslim prejudices, which evolved in the contexts of the Chechen conflict and
the influx of migrant workers from culturally Muslim former Soviet republics to cosmopolitan
Russian cities, against the background of the post-9/11 global fear narrative about
Muslims. These Islamophobic attitudes in turn informed and justified anti-Muslim policies
in Russia, as the Russian state, following broader trends of centralization and illiberalization
in the country, abandoned the pluralist policies toward religion of the early post-Soviet
years and reverted to the late-Soviet model of regulation and containment in the past
two decades.</jats:p>
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/29393Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1017/slr.2020.8Publication Info
Tuna, Mustafa (2020). Anti-Muslim Fear Narrative and the Ban on Said Nursi's Works as “Extremist Literature”
in Russia. Slavic Review, 79(1). pp. 28-50. 10.1017/slr.2020.8. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/29393.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Mustafa Ozgur Tuna
Associate Professor of Slavic and Eurasian Studies
Mustafa Tuna (Ph.D. 2009, Princeton University) is Associate Professor at the Departments
of Slavic and Eurasian Studies & History at Duke University and is affiliated with
the Duke Islamic Studies Center. His research focuses on Islam and modernity, which
he has studied primarily in the historical contexts of Central Eurasia, especially
the Russian empire's Volga-Ural region, Central Asia, and modern Turkey. His earlier
research examines the often-intertwined roles of Islam, social networks

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