Veliulla Fetkullin

Veliulla Fetkullin (in Swedish records also Väliulla Fetkullen) was a Narva Tatar who fled to Sweden in 1944 and on 19 November 1949 was elected the first chairman of Sweden's first Muslim organisation — the Turk-Islamic Association. He is one of the Estonian Mišärs who carried institutional Islam to Sweden. By the community's account he was also the founder of the Narva Tatar Cultural Society (1928).

Origin

The Fetkullins were a family of the Narva Tatar community. Like almost all Estonian Mišär families, their roots lay in the villages of the Sergach country in the Nizhny Novgorod province — indeed the dossier of the Swedish State Aliens Commission (SUK) records Veliulla's origin as Nizhny Novgorod, which in the documents of the time meant the family's ancestral region (see the Nizhny Novgorod migration and Tatar life in Narva). His years of birth and death are not recorded in the known sources.

Flight to Sweden (1944)

In 1944, fleeing the new Soviet occupation, Fetkullin reached Sweden — the same year as Ibrahim Zarip. He first worked in refugee camps in Gävle and Ockelbo, then received work as a furrier in Stockholm — the fur trade being the old craft of the Estonian Tatar merchants (see Tatar life in Tallinn). His father, Husein Fetkullin, was in Sweden with him. Many Tatar refugees declared themselves of “Turkish descent” to the Swedish authorities — the word “Tatar” resembled the Swedish pejorative tattare, and a Turkish identity protected against extradition to the USSR.

First chairman of the Turk-Islamic Association

On 22 October 1949 the Turk-Islamic Association (Turk-Islam Föreningen i Sverige) was founded in Stockholm — Sweden's first Muslim organisation. To its interim board were appointed Räfat Salah, Ibrahim Zarip, Ali Zakerov, Ahmed Haerdinov (also from Narva) and Veliulla Fetkullin. At the meeting of 19 November 1949 Fetkullin was elected chairman — and so a Narva Tatar became the first elected chairman of Sweden's first Muslim organisation. Räfat Salah became secretary, Ali Zakerov treasurer; among the auditors was Veliulla's father Husein Fetkullin. Later Ali Zakerov became the association's permanent chairman.

Besides the aliens-commission dossier, the Swedish National Archives also hold a government file on Fetkullin from 1952. His later life still awaits research — like much of the story of the Swedish Tatar community, whose sources remain in the archives.

Sources

This article draws on Simon Sorgenfrei's study “Establishing Islam in Sweden: The First Tatar Community and Muslim Congregation and Their Sources” (Studia Orientalia Electronica 8(2), 2020), itself based on the SUK dossiers in the Swedish National Archives, and on community knowledge. See also this knowledge base's pages: the Turk-Islamic Association in Sweden, Ibrahim Zarip and Tatar life in Narva.