SUMMARY:

The authors analyze the construction of their imagined communities of believers by the Russian Orthodox and Muslim priesthood of Tatarstan. The discussion is based on a series of interviews conducted with those priests and mullahs in Kazan who exercise authority among their parishioners, are actively engaged in communal work and education, and teach in the religious education establishments. They are characterized in the article as the “opinion leaders,” and their rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion is scrutinized in a comparative perspective. Khodzhaeva and Shumilova demonstrate that ethnic categories are integrated into the studied religious discourses and are used to symbolically broaden the communities of coreligionists. The language of priests and mullahs includes mundane ethnic stereotypes colored by a specific intolerance rooted not in religious but in current social-political discourses and practices. While interreligious dialogue is a steady feature of the Kazan religious environment, the dialogue and the convergence of opinions become most intense when it comes to the construction of common enemies exemplified by Western liberalism, globalization/cosmopolitanism, and cultural unification.