Piety, Authority and “Popular Ijtihad” in the Online Space of Russian Muslims during the Pandemic

Abstract

This article examines the first reactions of the Russian Muslim community in the social networks to the spread of the coronavirus (mostly February-May 2020). We turn to the concepts of authority and legitimacy; the ideas of Brian Turner on the performative role of information technology for the institution of religious authority; Gary Bunt’s discussion of the democratization of Islamic knowledge in the online environment; Olivier Roy’s concept of individualization of Islam; and Peter Mandaville’s idea of decentralization of power in the Islamic tradition. This study seeks to answer two interrelated questions: who and how reinterprets the category of Islamic piety in the context of the pandemic and to what extent the online environment transforms the Islamic tradition as a whole. Based on textual analysis of individual publications on social networks and interviews with editors of public websites, the common narratives of Russian Muslim discourse on the pandemic were identified as follows: a retaliation against China for the oppression of Muslim Uighurs; the search for the signs of the coming doomsday; various approaches to the reinterpretation of religious piety. We suggest the term “popular” or “spontaneous” ijtihad to describe the variety of individualized strategies stimulated by the crisis. The construction of these strategies would not have been possible without the virtual environment, characterized by the polyarchic community of “online ulema” and the digitalization of religious practices.