With the arrival of migrants and refugees to Europe from the Global South in the mid 2010s and early 2020s, many Europeans chose to respond with racism and Islamophobia. One location of this response has been Poland, where far-right nationalists have found support from the Polish state under the rule of the Law and Justice (PiS) party of President Andrzej Duda. In the Polish context, the narrative of Islamophobia has focused on differentiating “good Muslims” from “bad Muslims” (an echo of “culture talk” as critiqued by Mahmood Mamdani). In recent years, this narrative has highlighted the case of the Lipka Tatars, an indigenous Muslim minority who have called Poland home for over 600 years and have become thoroughly assimilated into Polish society.

Polish media portrayals of the Lipka Tatars frequently reflect the idea of “good Muslims”. One example is a 2011 Rzeczpospolita interview with professor and former imam of Gdańsk Selim Chazbijewicz on the topics of the Tatars, Islam, and migrants. Directly following the interview is a short summary from the newspaper editors on the Lipka Tatars. It states that the Lipka Tatars are represented by the “Muslim Religious Association in the Republic of Poland” (MZR for short), which is led by the Mufti of Poland Tomasz Miśkiewicz (a Tatar himself). The summary highlights that the Lipka Tatars are Sunnis and follow the Hanafi school of jurisprudence, which the editors claim “is characterized by tolerance towards other religions”. It then notes two specific facts about the Lipka Tatars: firstly, they “have never practiced polygamy”, and secondly, “the (Tatar) women did not cover their faces”.

A more recent example is a 2021 TVP Tygodnik interview with Islam scholar Aldona Piwko on the subject of the Tatars in Poland. Under the eye-catching headline “They fought for Poland’s independence. To tell a Tatar that he is not a Pole is the greatest insult”, the opening lines preceding the interview highlight that the Tatars are Sunnis of the Hanafi school, but adds that “it is the most liberal school of interpreting Islam”. Immediately following this, the Tatar custom of women not wearing headscarves is mentioned; it is acknowledged that nowadays young Tatar women may wear headscarves “occasionally”, but the passage quickly emphasises that “it is their choice, no one imposes it on them”.

A third example, this time directed at a foreign audience, is a 2014 Culture.pl article in English titled “In the Footsteps of the Tatars: Poland’s Only Muslim Minority”. According to the article, a core attribute of the Lipka Tatars is that they, despite being Muslim, view themselves as Polish. The Tartars speak Polish. They identify with Polish history and the Polish military. In short, they belong to Poland; they are as intrinsically Polish as pierogi or the Winged Hussars. Linked to this aspect is the Lipka Tatars’ approach to Islam; the author gushes over how the Islamic practices of the Lipka Tatars differ from “Middle Eastern Muslims”. A number of features are used to highlight this difference: the Lipka Tatars buy Christmas trees for Christmas, rarely make the pilgrimage to Mecca, and hardly speak Arabic. For the author, these are all positive differences because they are shifts away from “Middle Eastern Islam” that the author chalks up (rather triumphantly, it seems) to Catholic influence on the Tatars.

The three previous examples demonstrate the form in which the Lipka Tatars are constructed as Poland’s “good Muslims”, a narrative that is jointly palatable to Poland’s competing nationalist and neoliberal currents. This line of thinking has even penetrated foreign media: a 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty article asks whether the Lipka Tatars might be “a model for Muslims in Europe”, while a 2018 Al Jazeera article describes the Tatars as “patriots practising a ‘light version of Islam’”. But what makes this narrative about “good Polish Muslims” so interesting is not what it puts in, but what it leaves out.

Firstly, it must be noted that the claim that the Lipka Tatars are “Poland’s only Muslim minority” is an utter myth. The estimated total number of Muslims in Poland is as high as 25,000; in contrast, official numbers put the Tatar population of Poland at about 2,000 (although some estimates place this number to more than 5,000). This numerical discrepancy stems from non-Tatar Muslims, who have been migrating to Poland ever since the 1970s and 1980s. Today, Polish Muslims have diverse backgrounds ranging from North Africa to South Asia, and consequently their ideas about Islam do not always align to those of the Lipka Tatars. These differences have come to be reflected in representation: the MZR primarily represents the Lipka Tatars, while non-Tatar Muslims instead find representation in the “Muslim League in the Republic of Poland” (an organisation that has been tarred with allegations of connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist groups on account of its foreign membership).

Another point to consider is the much-touted assimilation of the Lipka Tatars into Polish society. Discussions on the Lipka Tatars often take this assimilation for granted, ignoring the historical context of the arrival of the Tatars to Poland. When they first arrived in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 14th century, the Tatars were given land by its Grand Dukes in exchange for military service;  this arrangement set the precedent for the still strong link between the Tatar minority and the Polish government. While the Tatars were granted limited religious freedom in the Commonwealth (but no political rights until 1791), they (and other minorities in the Commonwealth) gradually succumbed to cultural and linguistic Polonisation from the 15th century onwards. It is in this context that the Lipka Tatars became primarily Polish-speaking and linked to Polish culture; it was not an internal development from the Tatars themselves but rather an external demand by the Polish state.

Over time, extensive state-driven Polonisation resulted in a form of Gramscian “cultural hegemony” where the Lipka Tatars internalised a belief in their own fate being naturally linked to Poland; subsequently, the Lipka Tatars themselves became invested in promoting the narrative of “good Muslims”. This can be clearly seen in the Tartar reaction to the arrival of non-Tatar Muslims to Poland, including most recently as refugees. Take, for instance, Chazbijewicz; himself a Tatar Muslim, he has been a vocal opponent of Poland welcoming refugees, arguing that their culture is not compatible with Europe and that they are a threat to the Tatar minority in Poland. Chazbijewicz is not alone; his views are shared by many Lipka Tatars who support the Polish state’s anti-refugee policies. In 2015, the MZR actually took an official position that it did not support admitting refugees to Poland! This position would shift during the 2021 refugee crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border, but only slightly: while the Lipka Tatars worked to support the refugees and even organised Islamic burials, they nevertheless did not withdraw their support for the Polish military patrolling the border. The outlook of the Lipka Tatars was perhaps best summarised by Mufti Miśkiewicz himself, who stated in a radio interview that the Tatars were “generally open to refugees and their tragedy, regardless of religion – as long as they are a refugee (emphasis mine)”. So suspicions towards refugees clearly remain.

The relationship between the Lipka Tatars and the Polish state endures because of its benefits to both parties, especially the elites. On one side, Tatar leaders can enjoy various government perks, including state awards and government jobs; a good example of the latter is Chazbijewicz, who is currently serving as the Polish ambassador to Kazakhstan. Meanwhile, a focus on the Tatars provides a useful distraction to the Polish state from Islamophobic attacks committed in Poland against Muslims of Arab or Chechen backgrounds. However, by far the biggest benefit to the Polish state from this relationship is the Lipka Tatars’ casting as Poland’s “good Muslims” against non-Tatar “bad Muslims”. It is here that the attributes ascribed to the Lipka Tatars take on strategic significance in the context of a racist and Islamophobic discourse in Poland. Within this discourse, highlighting the Tatars as liberal and tolerant or mentioning that Tatar women do not cover their faces or that Tatars do not practice polygamy implies the inverse of all of these things among other Muslims. In this way, the Lipka Tatars become constructed as “our Muslims” who solve the pesky problem of “fundamentalist Islam” while posing no threat to either a nationalist or neoliberal Polish mentality.

The narrative of the Lipka Tatars as “good Polish Muslims” is firstly perpetuated by actors in the Polish state and media, but it is also supported by those Tatars who benefit from a partnership with the Polish establishment. It seems that some Tatar elites are willing to ignore the Polish state’s history of racism and Islamophobia in order to gain short-term benefit in the moment. Yet by providing the impetus for the “good Muslims” narrative, the Lipka Tatars become complicit in a process of Otherisation that marginalises non-Tatar Muslims in Poland. Each manufactured dichotomy feeds into preconceived prejudices in Poland about Islam and Muslims and helps to promote a narrative of “us vs. them”. I believe that the disconcerting way in which some Tartars seem entirely content to disassociate themselves from their spiritual sisters and brothers is largely the result of Tatar assimilation in Poland, the path to which is the direct result of a complex web of cumulative factors set in a particular socio-historical context. A deeper critique of these factors must unfortunately be left for another piece.

Image Sources

Kruszyniany Mosque (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland/flickr)

Interior of Bohoniki Mosque (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland/flickr)

Monument of a Tatar on a horse in Orunia Park, Gdańsk, in honour of Tatars who fought for Poland (petrOlly/flickr)