ASTANA -- Kazakhstan is reaching out with an educational initiative to reach the substantial minority of Muslims who speak better Russian than Kazakh, e-islam.kz reported Tuesday (March 7), quoting Nauryzbai Taganguly, the chief imam of the Nur Astana mosque in Astana.
Several mosques nationwide, on the request of the worshippers, will be conducting sermons in Russian, said Taganguly, adding that several seminaries and the Nur Mubarak University in Almaty have begun teaching several groups of future Islamic specialists in Russian.
Most Muslims speak Kazakh, but some do speak or prefer Russian, he said.
The initiative is meant to prevent "non-Kazakh-speaking Muslims from receiving information from dubious sources", he said.
About a fifth of Kazakhstan's population uses Russian primarily, according to government data.
