Russia

The predominantly Muslim region of southern Russia has opened its first Islamic university in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan. It aims to educate Muslim clerics, and is co-sponsored by the Russian council of muftis. Many of the project’s major backers hail the university as a necessary step to prevent foreign Muslim extremism from affecting a fairly large and underrepresented Russian Muslim population. The university will eventually come under the control of the federal Ministry of Education in Moscow.

— BBC World Service
Sept. 29, 2000