Upon arrival to Europe, many Muslim immigrants from the post-Soviet states use their newly won freedom of expression and association for joining religious communities. The immigrant communities return to their theological foundations that were suffocated during the Soviet rule. However, this return goes beyond the pre-Soviet practice of Islamic belief and takes more non-traditional forms in the European context. Not only do labor migrants or migrants with low income and education tend to connect along religious lines, but students and businessmen also join religious networks.

Seventy years of communist rule suppressed religious identities across the Soviet space, be that Christian, Muslim or any other religion. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, religious sentiments saw a revival in most of the post-Soviet states, including the Central Asian states, southern Russia and the Caucasus. With that, all post-Soviet states tried to maintain a rather liberal approach towards religion compared to other Islamic countries. Especially in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, religious traditions were practiced only on special holidays, while Islam plays a marginal role in everyday life.

In the immigrant societies in Europe, the Central Asian and South Caucasus immigrants often choose to build social networks according to their religious identities, as opposed to political, ethnic, historical or professional grounds. Most of them build social networks with Middle Eastern, North African, Balkan and Turkish communities and not with non-Muslim or secular post-Soviet immigrant communities or the local population. An increased internationalization of Islamic communities can be observed across Europe, and post-Soviet Muslims have become an integral part of that. By joining larger diasporas on the basis of Islam, Central Asian and Caucasian immigrants are exposed to the political views perpetuated in these Muslim communities.

Unlike immigrants from the Middle Eastern and North African states, Muslim immigrants from the post-Soviet states have a common Soviet past and did not experience West European colonial domination in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a common element for most other immigrants. Despite the fact that a set of distinctive features characterize Muslim immigrants from the post-Soviet states compared to other Muslim communities, religious identity plays a dominant role in their integration into the West European reality. Formal participation includes joining religious institutions such as mosques, religious schools and cultural-religious organizations. Informal participation includes practice of religious traditions in family events and inter-ethnic marriages.

Although no specific statistical findings exist, annually hundreds of Muslim immigrants from post-Soviet states migrate to EU states for short or long terms as labor migrants, students, and political asylum seekers. The number of political asylum seekers has been rising in Norway, Sweden, Germany and East European states. To give one example, in summer 2005, the UN High Commissioner on Refugees transported 439 Uzbek refugees to various EU states as a result of violent suppression of riots in Uzbekistan.

In light of the looming transformation of political regimes in the Central Asian states and on-going political tensions in the Caucasus, the number of asylum seekers from former Soviet states is likely to continue to increase in the coming years. Potential and ongoing instability in places like Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Chechnya, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan will consequently result in increased migration to the European Union.

To a certain degree, the pace of Central Asian communities’ integration into European societies is similar to their Middle Eastern and North African counterparts. Immigrants that came to Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union show how religious sentiments are reinforced among even the most moderate immigrants. Muslim immigrants from the former Soviet states also show how religion is not necessarily only a survival tool in a foreign environment. Religion can substitute ethnic identities, class relations or political views.