WENR

eWENR, March/April 2001: Commonwealth of Independent States

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