Islam in Belarus

The period of the initial spread of Islam in the territory of modern Belarus falls on the XIV-XVI centuries, which was due to the fact that several princes of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania invited Tatar Muslims from the Crimea and the Golden Horde to serve in the protection of state borders. Already in the XIV century, the Tatars turned to more “sedentary” occupations. By the end of the XVI century, more than 100 thousand Tatars settled in the territory of modern Belarus and Lithuania and the north-east of Poland , including hired security guards, voluntary immigrants, as well as prisoners of war of the Tatars. An ethno-territorial group Polish-Lithuanian Tatars formed from these Tatars . In the beginning and the middle of the XIX century, part of the Tatars moved to the Ottoman Empire because of rumors of forced baptism ^[2] .

Tatars practice Sunni Islam , Hanafi madhhab ^[3] . Inter-ethnic marriages with Belarusians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Russians are common, but did not lead to the complete assimilation of the Tatars.

Coming from different ethnic groups, the Tatars lost their native language and switched mainly to Belarusian, Polish and Russian. However, Arabic is used in religious practice. In 1858, a translation of the Koran into Polish was published for the Tatars of the western provinces, the most common at that time among the Tatars of the Belarusian provinces, and in 1907, at their request, a translation into Russian ^[4] .

XX century

During the Civil War, Muslims hid Jews from pogroms. It is known that the Uzda mullah on July 12, 1920 hid Jews from the Poles in his cellar. On that day, the Poles found a Jew, R. S. Marshak, who had escaped himself as a Tartar from the Uzda mullah (moreover, residents of the mullah house confirmed this) ^[5] .

In the Byelorussian SSR, active Muslim believers were subjected to repression. In 1935, the closure and destruction of some mosques began. The Uzda mullah and his family were exiled to the north of the USSR, the Smilovichi mullah and the muezzin were shot. The Minsk mosque, which was closed in 1936 and adapted to the food base, began work again in 1942, under the conditions of German occupation ^{[6] [7]} .

Many Tatars, including mullahs (imams), left the BSSR for Poland in 1944–1946, which complicated the registration of religious communities in the office of the authorized Council for Religious Cults at the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the BSSR. The community in Ivie (Murasciousness) has become the largest registered. In the 1950s, sacrifices to Kurban-bairam continued in Ivye, and local residents did not work on Fridays, but they worked out a compulsory minimum of working days on the collective farm. After the dissolution of the dumpling community in 1960, only one registered Muslim community in Murashchizna remained in the BSSR, although in other settlements the Tatars continued to celebrate holidays in private in homes and in mizar (cemeteries) ^{[8] [9]} .

In 1994, the first All-Belarusian Muslim Congress was held. As a result, the Muslim religious community of the Republic of Belarus was founded, which until 2005 was headed by Dr. Ismail Alexandrovich (born in 1929), and since 2005, Abu-Bekir Shabanovich (born in 1939).

In 1997 there were 23 Islamic communities, including 19 in the western regions of Belarus.

In 2007, 30 Muslim religious organizations were registered in Belarus ^[10] .

In 2016, there were 25 Muslim religious communities in the country, including 24 Sunni and 1 Shiite. There were 7 mosques, 1 mosque was built in Minsk ^[11] .

The first mosques appeared on the territory of Belarus during the XIV-XV centuries. By 1946, 13 mosques remained on the territory of the BSSR, 3 more mosques were destroyed during the Great Patriotic War ^[8] . In 1994, the mosque was opened in Slonim , and in 1996 - in Smilovichi . In July 1997, in commemoration of the 600th anniversary of the appearance of the Tatars in Belarus, the opening ceremony of a mosque in Novogrudok took place ^[12] . In the 19th century, a mosque was built in the city of Ivye , which is considered a monument of Belarusian wooden architecture. Today in Belarus there are 5 operating mosques. By mid-2002, there were 27 Muslim communities in Belarus.

According to Kanapatsky , the Islamic Association focuses its efforts on the completion of the construction of a mosque in Minsk (with the support of the Office of Religious Affairs of the Republic of Turkey), as well as the repair of a mosque in Smilovichi and Muslim cemeteries throughout the country. In addition to Smilovichi and Minsk, there are also mosques in the cities of Gomel, Ivye , Slonim , and Novogrudok in the Grodno region ; in Kletsk in Minsk region ; and in Vidzy in Vitebsk region . The mosque of the XVIII century, erected in the village of Dovbucchi Smorgon district , dismantled and stored in the Belarusian State Museum of Folk Architecture and Life ^[13] .

The mosque in Minsk was opened on November 11, 2016 ^[14] . The mosque in the Belarusian capital was before. She was on the site of the hotel "Yubileinaya". In 1949, the Minsk mosque was selected in favor of DOSFLOT , and in November, 163 people wrote a letter to I.V. Stalin was asked to return the mosque to the believers ^[8] . During the years of militant atheism, the mosque was destroyed in 1962 ^[15] .

• Muslims of Belarus (rus.)
• Cathedral Mosque in Minsk (Rus.)

• Polish-Lithuanian Tatars - about the ethnographic Muslim group in Belarus
• Belarusian Arabic alphabet - an unusual way to write the Belarusian language
• Manuscripts of the Belarusian Tatars of the end of the XVII - beginning of the XX century from the collection of the Central Library of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus