1917-Bolsheviks allying with Islam while slaughtering Christians “Your beliefs customs cultural institutions henceforth free and inviolable”

Many Muslims in the Russian Empire were attracted to the Bolsheviks’ anti-imperialist stance, due to the imperialism of Western powers over Muslim nations.[30] The Muslim Socialist Committee of Kazan (MSK; Russian: Мусульманский социалистический комитет) was established following the February Revolution.

Despite their hard anti-religious stance, the Bolsheviks in the years following the revolution and during the civil war, were in a very poor position to fight against Islam in Central Asia. Therefore, the Bolsheviks appealed to them as allies and promised them political independence and religious freedom.[30] Lenin even voiced admiration of Muslims who had fought against imperialism and saw Muslim folk heroes as emblems of the struggle against imperialism.[30]

In 1917 the Bolsheviks made this pronouncement to Muslims in Russia:

To all toiling Moslems of Russia and the East, whose mosques and prayer-houses have been destroyed, whose beliefs have been trampled on by the czars and the oppressors of Russia. Your beliefs and customs, your national and cultural institutions are declared henceforth free and inviolable. Organize your national life freely and without hindrance. This is your right. Know that your rights … are protected by the entire might of the revolution and its organs…. Support this revolution and its government![30]

Many Muslims embraced this call and saw this revolution as a means of empowering Islam. An influential group of Central Asian Marxists led by Sultan Galiev then took the initiative to try to reform Islam for the modern era and they were accepted by the state as a buffer between itself and the native population of the central Asian republics.[30]