Russia becoming a Muslim state!
Mon, 2006-05-22 00:14
By Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury

Imagine Russia in 2050! According to Paul Goble, a specialist on ethnic minorities in the Russian Federation has predicted that within the next several decades, Russia will become a Muslim majority state. There is another bad news with fast decline in country’s population. This has already become a headache for Russian politicians and policy makers. President Vladimir Putin has called already for Russian women to have more children, because demographers predict that Russia’s population will fall from 143 million to 100 million by 2050. This situation has alarmed Russians as well Western leaders, more so because analysts estimate that Muslims will comprise the majority group in Russia’s population in few decades.

The Muslim population growth rate since 1989 is between 40 and 50 percent, depending on ethnic groups. Today Russia has about 8,000 mosques while 15 years there were only 300 mosques. According to statistics, by the end of 2015, number of mosques in Russia will cross 25,000. These statistics are frightening for many ethnic Russians who associate Islam with the Kremlin’s war against insurgents in Chechnya. Russia is shrinking. Alarmed by the situation, Putin has offered incentives to women who will have more children. the rest