Islam in Mittel- und Osteuropa: Geschichte und Gegenwart: Polen, Litauen, Weißrussland, Lettland, Estland

In Central and Eastern Europe, Muslims have been living for over 600 years and they are not only integrated within the local communities, but they also speak the languages of the countries they live in and feel a part of them. This issue escapes many scholars and experts in Islam, including those doing research on Islam in Europe, and above all, journalists from Western Europe. The oldest group of indigenous Muslims in Central and Eastern Europe are Polish-Lithuanian Tatars, currently living in Poland, Lithuania and Belarus, whose ancestors originating from the state of the Golden Horde started to settle down in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in the 14th century. The presence of Tatar minorities is characteristic of the countries discussed, and although their presence in Latvia and Estonia has been much shorter, because their arrival was connected with the rule of Tsarist Russia, and then the USSR, they play a similar major role in local Islamic religious communities. In Central and Eastern Europe, after the fall of communism and the emergence of the religious freedom, absent for many decades, new regulations concerning the state-religion relations were introduced in the early 1990s, and although the solutions applied often differ in many points, some regularities can be noticed, including those regarding Islam. Due to the long tradition of presence, Muslims in Central and Eastern Europe have purpose-built mosques, prayer rooms and cemeteries, operate under officially registered organisations, etc. The article describes the history of the presence and ethnic composition of Muslims in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, Latvia and Estonia, as well as their legal status, organisation of their religious life and religious leadership.