At an academic session devoted to the centenary of the first all-Russian Muslim conference and a forum in which some of the country's leading Muslims took part, the Islamic community of the Russian Federation committed itself to building on the unity it had prior to the Soviet period and to acquiring greater influence on the Russian state.

But the meetings did not meet either the expectations of the Kremlin that had wanted the meeting to choose a single Muslim leader equivalent in status to the Orthodox Patriarch or the desires of those Muslims who had looked toward the formation of autonomous Muslim institutions and even a concordat with the Kremlin.

Instead, the gatherings, to which many of the most senior leaders had earlier committed themselves to attend, consisted of their deputies or other lower-ranking officials, and its result was a resolution committed the Muslim community of the Russian Federation to a series of steps unlikely to satisfy either the Kremlin or many Muslims.

Some of those who stayed away -- including Mufti Ravil Gainutdin, the head of the Union of Muftis of Russia, and Aslakhan Aslakhanov, who serves as an aide to President Vladimir Putin -- may have done so at the insistence of the Kremlin that did not want this session to detract from the simultaneous celebration of the National Unity Day.

Nonetheless, the All-Russian Forum of "Muslims of Russia on the Threshold of the Third Millennium," did take several steps. It called for the creation of a country-wide Council of the Learned (Ulema), like the one that existed in Russia up until the 1920s.

It also called for an expansion in scholarly attention to the history of the Muslim social movement of Russia a century ago and an agreement on Muslim education in the Russian Federation today. And it called for the convention of conferences in Nizhniy Novgorod and Kazan to deal with these questions.

In many ways, the earlier expectations of both the Kremlin and the more independent-minded Muslim leaders for the Nizhniy Novgorod meetings were unrealistic. On the one hand, neither the academic conference nor the forum consisted of Muslim leaders who could make the decisions either side wanted.

On the other, Russia's Muslims remain deeply divided on both, a reality highlighted last week when Chechen Mufti Sultan Mirzayev appealed for the restoration of a single Muslim Spiritual Directorate and a single mufti across that region alone, Islam.ru reported last Thursday.

But while neither the Kremlin nor the more independent-minded Muslims got their way, it would be a mistake to see these sessions as simply a standoff of the two sides. Instead, these meetings, both the academic and political, highlighted the growing sense of unity among the Muslims of the Russian Federation.

The creation of the country-wide Council of the Ulema called for by the meeting will only accelerate this process, something that is likely to put those in Moscow who continue to seek to block the rise of Islam within the Russian Federation in an ever more difficult position.

And because an increasing number of Muslims in that country understand that political dynamic, they appear convinced that what the Islamic community was not able to push through now, the Muslims of Russia will likely be able to achieve at some point in the not too distant future, regardless of what Moscow may do.

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