Actual Problems of Non-Ethnic Muslim Women in Regions with a Muslim Minority (on the example of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region)

The article presents the results of a socio-psychological study conducted in St. Petersburg and in the Leningrad Region. The main objectives of the research were: to understand the reasons of why women adopted Islam in regions with a Muslim minority, to identify the features of the adapting process itself in accordance with a new religious identity and to investigate the specifi cs and solutions of the problems they faced. We used the method of qualitative (in-depth) unstructured biographical interviews and a modifi cation of a “Who am I” test by Kuhn-McPartland. The article describes the study structure, reveals the regional features of its implementation and also names the socio-religious specifi cs of the groups under study. All the urgent problems of non-ethnic Muslim women can be classifi ed into the so-called general problems relating to adaptation to a new religious identity and specifi c ones relating to the features of the region. Specifi c problems are: the issues connected with employment and education, wearing hij ab, with religious practices outside home, children halal nutrition, acceptance of a woman’s religious choice by the closest people, and also the diffi culties connected with marriage, social insecurity and socializing in Muslim community. Based on the analysis of the above-mentioned problems the ways of solving them are outlined.