Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 17 – An international
conference on “Muslims and National Culture in a Civil Society” that took place
in Nalchik on Thursday was unanimous in insisting that Islam does not undermine
the traditions and cultures of nations and ethnic groups except in those cases
where these contradict the shariat.
In Soviet times, communist officials
sought to play national identities against Islam in order to weaken attachments
to that faith. But since the fall of the USSR, many Islamist activists have
insisted that a commitment to Islam requires that members of this or that
ethnic community subordinate their values to religion alone.
But over the last several years, an
increasing number of Muslims, from moderate to Islamist, in the North Caucasus
have re-affirmed the declaration of the Koran that ethnicity is something God
created; and ever more North Caucasians have accepted the idea that a greater
attachment to Islam supports rather than undermines their national identities.
That creates new problems for those
seeking to counter such combined religious and ethnic identifications, but it
is a welcome development, the participants in the Nalchik conference said,
adding that it should be promoted by more such meetings across the North
Caucasus (www.islamnews.ru/news-137159.html).
The Muslim leaders from the region
and abroad said that finding points of contact between “religion and
ethno-cultures” is critically important so that the two do not come into
conflict either by accident or through the work of those who wish one or the other
of these two value systems ill.
Among those insisting on that point
were Issa Khamkhoyev, the head of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of
Ingushetia, Khazhimurat Gatsalov, the head of the MSD of North Osetia-Alania,
Zulfagar Farzaliyev, the chief editor of the Azerbaijani paper “Svet istini,”
and Kennan Kosak, the official representative of the Turkish ministry for
religious affairs.
They and their colleagues said that “Islam
for the peoples of Kabardio-Balkarai had become a culture-forming factor and
never was the cause” of divisions and conflict. “But with the change of the
state formation, the situation changed, and ideas promoting the radicalization
of particular groups began to penetrate.”
In contrast to what those bearing
these ideas said, the participants pointed out, “Islam has never denied
self-identification on the basis of nationality. In the Koran it is stated that
the All High created man from one man and one woman but made us peoples and
nations so that we should recognize one another.”
From that ayat alone, the
participants suggested, “it is obvious that ethnic identification in Islam is
not denied.”
Often views on this question follow
generational lines, Mufti Gatsalov said, nothing that “the roots of the
conflict between generations lies in distinctions between the worldview of
young people and their parents. We grew up under conditions of Soviet atheism,
but the present young were raised knowing the fundamentals of Islam.”
Nonetheless, he said, the two have more in common more than many believe.
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