IslamicFinance.de

As Russia's economy continues to stagnate, the country's 83 regions are being forced to compete with one another for outside investment. Four of Russia's Muslim republics, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chechnya and Dagestan, have set their sights on Muslim states in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. Despite their economic differences, Russia's Muslim republics have been uniformly hurt by the collapse in global oil prices. Though Islamic financing has been legally banned in Russia, the Muslim republics have simply ignored it outright, issuing transactions under Islamic banking guidelines or negotiating with foreign financial groups to start implementing them. Tatarstan and Chechnya discussed several construction projects, but the question now is whether Russia will allow Gulf state financing to continue. Most likely it will continue to put national security and Russian unity ahead of the needs of the Muslim population.