Authors

Discussion

Tablighi Jamaat is an international Muslim revivalist movement which is prohibited in Russia as a dangerous organisation. Muslims suspected of being members of Tablighi Jamaat are prosecuted for extremism. This paper analyses the case of a trial on Muslims accused of being Tablighi Jamaat members, focusing on experts’ opinion. Indeed, the prosecution and the defence invited their own experts to give different opinions on this matter. While the prosecution case was upheld, we argue that the expert opinion of defence played its role in the mitigation of the verdict. Based on the documents from the trial, interviews with experts and the author’s previous research, this paper explores the process of providing expert opinion as a genre with its own frame as well as a practice performed by experts on religion. The paper then analyses the personalities of experts and their background in relation to the question of their autonomy. Finally, we will interpret this case through the general context of religious politics and the construction of knowledge on religion in contemporary Russia.