Russia’s large border Muslim populations made them a geopolitical liability in imperial rivalries.

Evidence

Their demographic weight, then, was another key variable that distinguished the experience of Russia’s Muslims from that of the Jews, who numbered just over five million at the turn of the century. The size and geographic distribution of Russia’s Muslims meant that they were of political interest not only for the tsarist government. In the context of inter-imperial rivalries, they loomed in the minds of the rivals of the tsarist empire, including the Ottomans, as a potential liability for the Russian state. The perception of a potential Muslim challenge to the borders of the empire was a perennial anxiety. Indeed, the southern frontier of the tsarist realm, stretching from the Black Sea to China, was populated by heterogeneous Muslim populations inhabiting both sides of the borders that Russia shared with Muslim powers. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 514

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the book’s core thesis contrasting Islamophobia and antisemitism — the demographic-geopolitical dimension of anti-Muslim sentiment versus the religious-cultural dimension of antisemitism.