Celebrating Miss Muslim Pageants and Opposing Rock Concerts: Contrasting the Religious Authority and Leadership of Two Muslim Women in Kazan

Abstract

This chapter examines how experience as religious instructors in mosques equipped two Muslim women - Naila Ziganshina and Almira Adiatullina - to become prominent leaders and activists in Kazan, Russia. It lays out a theoretical framework for understanding Muslim women's authority within invited and invented spaces. The chapter places each case study within the historical and cultural context of Tatarstan and Russia at the beginning of the new millennium. It analyses the religious and social authority of Ziganshina and Adiatullina as two examples of Muslim women in positions of leadership in a Muslim minority country. Building on interviews with Adiatullina and Ziganshina, the chapter argues that Tatar Muslim women have asserted authority within the informal structures of civil society organizations and the formal structures of the Islamic Spiritual Boards. Keywords:Almira Adiatullina; Kazan; Muslim women; Naila Ziganshina; religious authority; Russia; Tatarstan