The Crimean Tatars belong to a Turkish ethnic group whose original home is the present-day southern Ukraine peninsula, and they were subjected to forced displacement as of May 18, 1944, to central Russia, Siberia, and the Turkic-speaking Central Asian countries, which were under Soviet rule at the time.

During the period between 1944 and 1967 the Crimean Peninsula was empty of any presence of Tatars, including Crimean Tatar families who were serving in the Soviet army, and in 1954, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announced the annexation of Crimea to Soviet Ukraine, after the deportees were evacuated in trains and transport vehicles to Asia Central, and the tragedy of their displacement remained present in the minds of many generations, even those who returned after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In March 2014, Russia annexed the Crimea peninsula overlooking the Black Sea to its territory, following a referendum boycotted by the Crimean Tatars, whose roots in the region go back centuries before the Russians arrived.

The Crimean Peninsula was the center of the Crimean Khanate in the period from 1441 to 1783, and it was an ancient state that had its cultural and political connection with the Ottoman Empire.

The revival of traditional education

In her contribution to the book “Muslim Society, Politics and Islamic Education in the Former Russian Empire,” researcher Almira Muratova, Academy of the Crimean Federal University in Simferopol, devoted a chapter to the study of the centuries-old traditional Islamic education system on the peninsula.

Muratova said that traditional primary schools (kuttab) and higher institutions (traditional school) were common in Crimea before Soviet rule in the 1920s, but this system consisting of madrassas and traditional schools has ceased to exist since the massive displacement of Crimean residents at the time of World War II on charges Cooperation with the Nazis during their occupation of the peninsula from 1941-1944.

According to the researcher, most of the Crimean Tatars were not able to return to Crimea until the late 1980s and early 1990s, and thus the revival of the traditional education system in Crimea began, and this was accompanied by the establishment of local Islamic institutions, the building of mosques, the establishment of Islamic cemeteries and the care industry. Halal. "

It was also at that time that the study courses began the basics of Islam and the basics of Arab reading, according to the academic author of the book "Islam in Contemporary Crimea: Indicators and Problems of the Renaissance Process", (2008).

Later, the madrassas and traditional schools revived again in light of the great role of foreign teachers coming from Turkey and the Arab world, and their contributions were decisive in terms of organizing the educational process by purchasing buildings, developing educational programs, providing textbooks, etc.

Since the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, the Crimean Tatars began their activity in the field of Islamic revival after decades of atheism imposed by the state during the Soviet era, and they began building mosques and teaching in Islamic schools, which in 2012 numbered 74 schools operating on Sunday, according to the researcher.

The level of primary education appeared in the beginning in the post-Soviet Crimea since the early 1990s, as Islamic courses were available in the central mosque of the capital Simferopol (Big Jamie) and other mosques in the Crimea that provided traditional instruction on the basics of Islam, religious practices and reading the Qur’an.

It should be noted that due to the general growth of people's interest in religion at that time after the collapse of communism, the demand for such courses was great, and they included children, women and men of different age groups.

The training process in the initial phase was led by foreign Muslims who were representatives of the Religious Affairs Authority in Turkey and various Arab and Turkish institutions.

In the late 1990s and early 21st century, the activities of many Arab institutions shrank due to the conflict of their views with the religious traditions of the Crimean Tatars.

Some institutions were closed, and many teachers of Islam were forced to leave the area.

During the first decade of the 21st century, two organizations contributed significantly to traditional teaching and Islamic education, the first being the Spiritual Administration of the Crimean Muslims (DUMK) or the Crimean Fatwa Commission which supervised the Qur’anic schools affiliated with the mosques.

The trainers from those schools were mainly Turkish advocates, according to the researcher.

In addition, the researcher noted the role of the "pioneering" Social Organizations Union, which was founded by Arab students in Ukrainian universities since 1997, and the union organized many initiatives in the Crimea, including the establishment of Islamic Sunday schools and the care of charitable work, but that changed a lot after 2014. .

Then the occupation came again

Before 2014, Crimea had regular institutions for Islamic education, which consisted of two levels: the primary level (Qur’anic schools and leave in mosques) and secondary (religious schools and memorization schools).

This system generally met the needs of the Crimean Tatars in obtaining Islamic knowledge.

The purpose of the initial courses was to help Muslims support their identity, while higher-level institutions were built for the professional training of imams, and although there was no higher Islamic education to prepare formal religious scholars in the Crimea, religious school graduates who wanted to continue their education resorted to waqf The Turkish religion, or to foreign Islamic universities, according to the researcher.

In March 2014, a page was turned in the modern history of the Crimean Tatars in the peninsula, which after the referendum became part of the Russian Federation, although the international community still considers it part of Ukraine.

These events changed the political and legal status of Crimea and had a significant impact on many practices on the peninsula, including the situation of the Crimean Tatars, their culture and traditional educational institutions.

The researcher says that while Turkish and Arab teachers played an important role in reviving the traditional education system in Crimea, which had a great influence on the religious culture of the Tatars of the peninsula who lacked experience and financial resources, at the same time this influence limited the possibility of local educational initiatives of the Crimean Tatars.

In addition, issues were raised regarding the compatibility of the religious traditions of Muslims from abroad with the religious traditions of the Crimean Tatars.

Nevertheless, the researcher also criticizes the effect of the monopoly of the spiritual management of Islamic education on the peninsula, as she believes that it contributed to the elimination of other actors in this field, and she believes that the Russian state supported that "monopoly" later, especially by encouraging cooperation with the spiritual administration and religious institutions. And educational institutions in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan and the Islamic universities of Kazan.

On the other hand, the researcher praises the distinctive religious education of women who were largely represented in the traditional education system.

But the situation changed dramatically after the spring of 2014, due to the stricter Russian legislation in the field of religion compared to its Ukrainian counterpart, according to the researcher.

The government searches, the withdrawal of some religious literature and even the prosecution of some supporters of Islamic groups and associations such as "Al-Raed" that changed its name and switched to social activities, led to the curtailment of these educational and traditional activities, especially with the departure of many foreign teachers, which created a major crisis in the Islamic education system that almost To paralyze him.