Page | 52in Mongolia in the 1920s were Buddhist monks, living both within and outside the
monasteries. However, during the late 1930s, Mongolia’s communist leadership purged
the Buddhist clergy, killing as many as 100,000 monks and destroying nearly all of the
country’s monasteries.275,^276 Thereafter, three generations of Mongolians had little or no
exposure to Buddhist teachings, thus greatly weakening the religion’s hold on the
national culture.^277
Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Tibetan Buddhism has begun a
slow revival in Mongolia. Gandantegchinlen Monastery (or simply Gandan Monastery)
in Ulaanbaatar, one of the few Tibetan Buddhist sites that survived the destruction of the
1930s, serves as the country’s religious center, with more than 400 monks in residence.
(^278)
By the end of 2010, the re-emergence of the religion was represented by more than 250
Buddhist temples and monasteries throughout the country—roughly half of the total
religious places of worship within Mongolia.^279
Other Religions
The Kazakh minority in western Mongolia
practices Sunni Islam. Like their Buddhist
counterparts, Mongolia’s Muslims were
persecuted during the 1930s under Soviet rule.
Few mosques were destroyed, however, because
of the informal nature of Kazakh Islam and the
corresponding lack of religious infrastructure.^280
Since 1990, more than 40 mosques and seven
Islamic centers have opened in Mongolia. By one
estimate there are now roughly 150,000 Muslim
adherents, equivalent to about 5% of the population.^281
(^275) New York Times, “Mass Buddhist Grave Reported in Mongolia,” 23 October 1981,
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/10/23/world/mass-buddhist-grave-reported-in-mongolia.html
(^276) Michael Koln, “The Culture: Religion: Buddhism,” in Mongolia, 5th ed. (Footscray, Victoria, Australia:
Lonely Planet Publications, 2008), 36.
(^277) Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition, “Revival of the Great Buddhist Culture of
Mongolia,” 11 January 2011, http://www.fpmt.org/projects/other/mongolia/history.html
(^278) Mongoluls.net, “Gandan Monastery,” 2007, http://mongoluls.net/khiid/gandan.shtml
(^279) Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State, “Mongolia,” in
International Religious Freedom Report 2010, 17 November 2010,
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2010/148885.htm
(^280) Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, “Islam-Mongolia,” BookRags.com (New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 2002–2007), http://www.bookrags.com/research/islammongolia-ema-03/
(^281) Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State, “Mongolia,” in
International Religious Freedom Report 2010, 17 November 2010,
http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2010/148885.htm