Turk-Islam Föreningen i Sverige
Turk-Islam Föreningen i Sverige för Religion och Kultur (the Swedish Turkish-Islamic Religious and Cultural Association) was Sweden's first Muslim organisation, founded on 22 October 1949. It was established by refugees of Tatar and Turkish origin — and a notable share of the founders were historical Estonian Tatars.
The founding
The association was founded in Stockholm on 22 October 1949 and was Sweden's first Muslim organisation. The initiative came from a small Mišär Tatar community (fewer than a hundred people). Already in 1946, Ebrahim Umerkajeff, a Tatar who had earlier settled in Sweden, had convened the first discussions about forming a “Mohammedan Faith Community”. The interim board was appointed as Räfat Salah, Ibrahim Zarip, Ali Zakerov, Ahmed Haerdinov and Veliulla Fetkullin. At the meeting of 19 November 1949, Veliulla Fetkullin was elected chairman, Räfat Salah secretary and Ali Zakerov treasurer, with Ibrahim Zarip and Ahmed Haerdinov as deputy members. Zakerov later became the association's permanent chairman.
Estonian Tatars among the founders
Of the five interim-board members, four were Estonian Tatars:
Ali Zakerov — from Tallinn, of a well-to-do Tatar family; he fled to Finland and on to Sweden. A trained furrier, he became the association's treasurer and later permanent chairman. He arrived among the first Tatars in Sweden with his family (wife Zeinab, daughter Didar).
Ibrahim Zarip — an Estonian citizen recorded as of “Turkish descent”; in Sweden he worked as a farmhand and at odd jobs; a deputy board member. He later emigrated to the United States. A soomepoiss and a board member of the ESPVK — the exile party of Estonia's social democrats and forerunner of today's Social Democrats — which fought against the Soviet occupation.
Ahmed Haerdinov — from Narva; a deputy board member. A soomepoiss.
Veliulla Fetkullin — a Narva Tatar, founder of the Narva Tatar Cultural Society (1928); elected the association's first chairman on 19 November 1949.
Most of the Tatars who reached Sweden were Mišär Tatars whose roots lay in the villages of Nizhny Novgorod and who had earlier migrated to Estonia and Finland.
Background: from Estonia to Sweden
After the Second World War the Soviet Union demanded, under the peace treaty, the return of “Soviet citizens” who had reached Finland. Fearing deportation, many Estonian Tatars who had fled to Finland continued on to Sweden, above all to the Greater Stockholm area. Before them, only a single Tatar had lived in Sweden — the tanner Ebrahim Umerkajeff.
Institutional Islam reached Sweden partly through them — the Finnish Boys of Estonian Mišär Tatar descent.
See also
Sources: “Establishing Islam in Sweden: The First Tatar Community and Muslim Congregation and Their Sources” (Studia Orientalia Electronica, 2020); For Estonia.