MOSCOW, September 15. /TASS/. More than 8,000 mosques and madrasa Islamic schools have been built in Russia over the past 20 years, a deputy head of the Russian Mufti Council said on Tuesday.

"Russia had over 15,000 mosques, madrasas and prayer spaces before [the] 1917 [Bolshevik Revolution]. In 1991, only 100 were left," Rushan Abbyasov said.

"In just 20 years we managed to build and reconstruct more than 8,000 facilities," he added.

The Mufti Council says some 20 million Muslims live within Russia's 146 million population.