Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 12 – Sergey
Shoygu, the new Russian defense minister, yesterday said that the Russian army
was committed to the success of establishing a multi-religious chaplaincy,
despite the fact that up to now, the army has hired only 30 Orthodox priests
and two Muslim mullahs for the slots allocated to that corpse last year.
Neither the hierarchs
of the Russian Orthodox Church not the leaders of Muslims, Buddhists and Jews
have been happy with the slow pace of recruitment, but the defense ministry has
proceeded slowly is that some fear “supporters of radical Islam” will penetrate
the military “under the guise” of Islamic chaplains (www.newizv.ru/society/2012-12-12/174463-svjashennyj-dolg.html).
In July 2011, the Russian defense
ministry said that it had created 240 slots for chaplains in the military but
over the last eighteen months, it has been able to screen and hire only 30
priests, two mullahs, and none from the other “traditional” faiths, including
Buddhism and Judaism, despite the presence in Russian ranks of followers of
those and other denominations.
Given the absence of an official
state ideology, Aleksey Grishin, the president of the Religion and Soociety
Information and Analysis Center in Moscow, says, many commanders are interested
in having chaplains on their staffs in order to “create the motivation for
self-sacrifice” that the military requires.
The Moscow Patriarchate has long had
its own department for work with military personnel, and it is handling the selections
of the Russian Orthodox chaplains. The church even hopes to have one of its
hierarchs occupy the new deputy minister’s position that Shoygu said will
oversee the chaplaincy corps.
But other faiths for various reasons
have not articulated such organizations.
The Buddhists have none at all, even though Buddhists now make up 18
percent of Russian forces in the Trans-Baikal. And the Jews have only the
department for cooperatioin with the Armed Forces, Emergency Services and Law
Enforcement Institutions of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia
(FEOR).
The biggest problem concerns the
Muslims. They are the second largest group of believers among uniformed
personnel, but there is no central Muslim hierarchy and widespread distrust of
the regional Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) that some Islamic leaders
have proposed as interlocutors.
Aleksey Grishin told “Nezavisimaya
gazeta” that he was very concerned about the role of such groups. “For ten years,” he observed, he had been
responsible for cooperation between the Presidential Administration and Muslim
organnizations, and “I will say that Russian Islam is not united.” As a result,
“religious extremists could easily penetrate the military.”
“Today,” the Moscow expert
continued, “the law on freedom of conscience makes it easy for anyone to
register muftis. One need only assemble
ten people, present their passports and create a local religious organization.
Then with three such organizations coming together, it is possible to elect one’s
own mufti.”
Given that, he argued, “there is no
guarantee that the religious leader chosen in such a way will not profess
radical Islam.” He suggested that there
were only two Muslim groups not infected by extremism: the Central MSD in Ufa
and the Coordinatioin Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus.
That would exclude two of the
largest Muslim administrations from participation in this process, and it is
certain that their leaderships will object to being excluded. But choosing
mullahs and imams for the chaplaincy corps may ultimately prove to be the least
of Moscow’s problems with regard to Islam and the military.
Rais Izmaylov, pro-rector of the
Moscow Islamic University, told “Moskovskiye novosti” today that commanders
have often turned to him and his staff for help with problems between Russian
officers and Muslim troops, problems for which they have not received
sufficient training to handle on their own (www.mn.ru/society_faith/20121212/332896464.html).
“It is no secret,” he said, that “there
have been conflicts between Muslim troops and commanders and that they have
arisen as a rule on the basis of a lack of understanding about and knowledge of
Islamic traditions.” Muslims are committed to obeying their officers, but they
often object to commands to perform what they see as menial work beneath their
dignity.
Sometimes, Izaylov said, Muslim
soldiers refuse to obey orders to do things like clean te floors, saying that “’in
the Koran it is written that a man must not clean the floors as that is not men’s
work.’” If commanders knew that “in fact the Koran does not say anything like
that,” then they could easily resolve the situation. Islamic chaplains may thus
be able to help.
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