Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

The present thesis focuses on the Bigiev Readings. This is a contemporary conference that is named after the Jadidist Islamic Modernist Musa Jarullah Bigiev (1875–1949) and involves contributions from religious organizations, state officials, clerics and scholars from the Russian Federation and abroad. My research employs a qualitative text analysis that concentrates on themes and examines a corpus of 39 texts with materials on and of the conference. In doing so, it firstly aims to answer how the Bigiev Readings reflect the official Islamic discourse that is directed by the state and state-dependent religious organizations, which seek to construe an image of a typically Russian and “traditional” Islam and thereto propagate specific Muslim identities, interpretations and practices, while they discredit others. Secondly, this study addresses how the Bigiev Readings draw on the legacy of Musa Jarullah Bigiev and tap into the official Islamic discourse in doing so. I argue throughout my thesis that the conference texts’ reflections of the official discourse comprise a web of tightly interconnected themes. In addition, my research substantiates how many but far from all of the conference’s references to Bigiev mirror the official Islamic discourse, what evidences that the Bigiev Readings constitute a complex amalgamation of religious, ideological, political and scholarly components.