The history of all times and peoples demostrates that in the crisis periods, accompanied by protest atmosphere in society, revolutionary, traditional, and reformist moods get spread. Dialectical relationship between them, manifested in mutual combat, could be viewed at the macro-level – in the context of the development of society as a whole, as well as at the micro-level – in the context of life experiences and behavior of individuals. Nowadays, given the current situation in the Muslim world (a similar situation is observed in many other civilizational areals), readers are off ered a cautionary tale of the life and works of the great poet-philosopher, public fi gure, Muhammad Iqbal, who passed a way from a dedication to the revolutionary ideas to the adherence to traditionalism, and then to the awareness of the need for creative, reformist approach to traditions. It is this evolution of Iqbal that permits to assess him as " the Poet of Tomorrow".

Muslim socialist views of M. Vahitov are formed under infl uence of 1905–1907 revolution events (acquaintance to Bolshevik H. Yamashev). After the February revolution he returned to Kazan (after education in St. Petersburg), where became a central fi gure in social-democratic movement. At the beginning of April 1917 Vahitov organized and headed Muslim socialist committee which pursued a policy in course of social-democratic movement. This committee stood up for spreading Socialist ideas in the milieu of proletariat and peasants and for the formation of national counsel as an organ of national autonomy. The 7 August 1918 after taking Kazan by the “Whites” armed forces Vahitov was captured and the 19 August shouted by verdict of court martial in dark circumstances.

This article deals with the ideas of the greatest neomodernist thinker of Indonesia – Nurcholish Madjid (1939–2005). Author analyzes his contextual approach to the Qur’an, his understanding of universal and relative in Islam, his sociological views, his understanding of the universal ethics, and his views on Sufi sm and Perennial school. Author shows that Madjid’s philosophy may be evaluated as synthesis of Islamic traditionalism and Islamic modernism, and its relevance for the modern Islamic thought is very big.

For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar University has been the center of Islamic scholarship, education, and thought. Muslims educated at Al-Azhar have extended Egypt's infl uence far beyond her borders. The article traces the main stages of reforming thisfamous university in the Arab East in the XIX – early XX centuries. Early in the nineteenth century, Egypt forged ahead of the rest of the Muslim world in secular education, after Mohammad Ali set up the fi rst modern medical, engineering, and military educational institutionsin the area. During British colonial rule of Egypt, state- controlled education was structured to serve British interests while Egyptians and non-English foreigners worked to expand private and religious education.During the early part of the twentieth century, Al-Azhar became the center for reformist views of Islam, mainly under the infl uence of Muhammad Abduh, who taught there. Although some of his views did not gain acceptance, a change in the intellectual climate had begun to take hold.

In this article the author considers the fundamental doctrine of the Muslim philosophy (Falsafa) about the harmony of reason i. e. philosophy and faith i. e. religion. In this context Ibn Rushd (Averroes, 1126–1198) elaborated an ingenious theory concerning the allegorical interpretation of the Qur’an. The aforementioned doctrine has special importance for the contemporary Islamic Reformist and Modernist thought.

The article provides an overview of information on one of the alleged predecessors of the Second Mus-lim parish of the city of Moscow — the district Derbentskoye in the White city (present in the area of metro station “Turgenevskaya”). The author believes the toponym is derived from the Dagestani city of Derbent and provides evidence that it could leave behind the medieval embassy of the Caucasian states of the XV–XVII centuries, by analogy with other Embassy residences (Crimean, Nogai, Lithuanian, English courts, etc.). In neighboring Push-karskaya Sloboda stayed the Embassy of Georgia; there was also a quarter inhabited by Germans nearby. In the same times Kumyks, Qizilbashis (ancestors of modern Azerbaij ani Turks) and other representatives of the Caucasian peoples are mentioned among the inhabitants of Moscow. The sources of the XV–XVII centuries describe Der-bent as the key point of trade and diplomatic contacts of the Moscow state with the states of the Caucasus.

This article is devoted to the history of Kazan city from the February Revolution till the proclamation of the Autonomous Tatar Soviet Socialist Republic the 27 May 1920. The author analyzes the process of organization of authority in the city in the period of revolutions of 1917 (i. e. in March-October) and then during the fi rst years of Soviet regime, which coincided with the Civil war period. We came to a conclusion that during these years the Bolsheviks-Communists, who began their activities numbering only several persons, got a total monopoly of power in Kazan and its gubernia. The Tatar Muslim movement had to incorporate itself into this Communist Soviet movement in order to reach at least partly its aims and to gain the proclamation of abridged Tatar territorial autonomy as a part of Soviet state.

The paper traces a micro-history of the return of Islam to the public sphere examining it at the level of a distinct Muslim congregation (jama‘at) in Northern Dagestan. The most serious impact of the dissolution of the Soviet kolkhoz system was the division of a previously united community into two separate congregations in the mountains and the lowlands. The emergence of Is-lam in the public sphere in the 1990s brought about an abrupt polarisation of Dagestani society, which disintegrated into several antagonist factions of Salafis and traditionalists. However, the congregation’s majority has been changing its religious orientation according to the situation, siding sometimes with one faction, sometimes with the other.

The paper is devoted to the study of Ishanism in Perm region. By the Ishanism in Russian islamology is meant a particular form of Su-fi sm in the Volga-Ural region, which have had its own followers not only in the Muslim clergy, but also in various strata of educated Muslims. The author took oral interviews in Perm looking for the followers of ishan Zaynullah Rasulev today. Ishanism in the Volga-Ural region as a whole, and in the Perm region in particular was associated with Rasulev as the most famous ishan. The study of the archival case called “Anti-Soviet Organization of Ishanism” (1948) helped to clarify the destinies of the arrested Muslims. Since they have received sentences as followers of ishanism (there is the name of Zaynullah Rasulev in the archival document), it was important to verify the interrogation protocols and other documents by means of oral history. Oral historical sources allow us to investigate postmemory, i.e. the memory of the living generations about the events of the past, in this case about the Ishanism traditions in Perm region during the Soviet period. The oral interviews have revealed the actual Zaynullah Rasulev’s followers in Perm region. As a result of the study it is possible to conclude: before the Revolution in Troitsk Zaynullah Rasulev’s madrasah which was called “Rasuliyyah” there were Muslims from Perm region. In addition, oral interviews suggested that the Muslims arrested in 1948 were Ishanist.

The paper deals with the Sufi sm in Dagestan as with the particular intra-Islamic phenomenon and the way of spiritual development of Muslim community. Besides that, the author emphasizes the positive infl uence of Sufi practices on process of ensuring of social stability and on cultural level of interconfessional communication in the modern Dagestan society.

This paper deals with the problems of staffi ng the military clergy, in particular, the Muslim clergy in Russian armed forces. The author describes the structure of the management of military clerics in the system of the Main Directorate for Work with the Personnel of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. He gives arguments in favour of the need for military imams in the Russian army. Reasons for the minimal presence of the Muslim clergy in the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation are also indicated in the paper. The author proposes ways of solving the problem of attracting Muslim clergy cadres. The conclusions of the article are based on information obtained during in-depth interviews of offi cials of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation who are specialized in work with believers servicemen.

The article describes a number of the Prophet Muhammad’s notions about the circumstances of interaction with supernatural beings reconstructed on the basis of the Hadith material. These notions are refl ected in such actions of the Prophet as wrapping up during the sending down of revelations, wearing clothes inside out during the performance of the ritual, refusal of certain types of food, etc. Such practices largely refl ect the ancient Arabian ideas about the behavior of a person being in contact with the transcendent. They can also be compared with similar rituals related to other cultures.