RELIGION

Iakov TROFIMOV

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Iakov Trofimov, Ph.D. (Philos.), professor at the Karaganda “Bolashak” Institute of Actual Education (Karaganda, Kazakhstan)

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As of 1 January, 2006, there were over 5,000 religious communities in Kazakhstan belonging to 62 confessions (3,500 of them were Muslim communities, while about 1,500 followed other confessions). According to my own calculations, Muslims comprise about 70 percent of the believers, 28 percent are Orthodox Christians; 1 percent are Catholics; about 1 percent are Protestants, and less than 0.1 percent belong to other confessions. Most of the communities are multinational, but there is any number of mononational communities of Kazakhs, Jews, Chechens, Uighurs, Dungans, Azeris, Armenians, Ukrainians, Koreans, and other ethnic groups.

There is no agreement about the exact number of confessions and denominations and their communities present in the republic: official statistics cite a figure of 46 confessions and denominations united into about 3,800 communities, while experts believe that there are over 6,000 religious communities in Kazakhstan. In the absence of reliable monitoring, I have to rely on my private talks with the clergy and believers, as well as on my personal analysis of the press.

Islam is the main religion in Kazakhstan, which is a polyethnic and, therefore, poly-religious country. The local Muslims are either Sunnis (of the Hanafi, Shafi‘i and Hanbali madhabs, Hizb ut-Tahrir, and the Tablighi Jamaat) or belong to three Shi‘a and Sufi trends. There are also small occult sects of……………

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