Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 4 – To cope with new
challenges, an influential Islamic leader in Russia says, Muslims in the
Russian Federation need both the renewal of existing regional Muslim Spiritual
Directorates (MSDs) and the creation of a single all-Russian muftiate to
coordinate their activities and deal with the state and other faiths.
While many Muslims now say that the
MSDs, as created by the tsars and restored by the Soviets to control of the
Islamic community, should be scrapped, Damir Khazrat Mukhetdinov, the deputy
chairman of the MSD of European Russia, argues that properly conceived, they
still have much to offer as defenders of what he calls the specifically Russian
Islamic tradition.
In the third of his recent
commentaries on the problems of Islam in Russia – the first was devoted to the
integration of Muslims across the CIS and the second to the adaptation of
Muslim immigrants in Russia – Mukhetdinov offers perhaps the most nuanced
argument on this subject to date (damir-hazrat.livejournal.com/93017.html).
And
because of his relative youth and his enormous authority among the mullahs and
imams of the Russian Federation, Mukhetdinov is likely to influence the course
of the debate on the MSDs by calling for a renewal of their membership and for
the establishment of a single all-Russian muftiate over them, albeit both
slowly and voluntarily rather than by fiat from above.
The
very existence of the MSDs is controversial, the mufti says, because of their
original intention—state control of the faithful – because they have grown so
rapidly in number – there are now more than 80 such structures in the Russian
Federation – and because they often are filled with people more notable for
their ambitions than for their skills or faith.
Moreover,
lacking any theological justification since Islam has no clergy and thus no clerical
hierarchy, the MSDs are something many young Muslims would like to do away
with. But Mukhetdinov insists that the new tasks that Russia’s Muslims have
before them may indeed make a renewed system of MSDs even more valuable.
The
large number of MSDs currently, he suggests, represents an effort to have one
MSD in each Russian region and is thus a balance of “tradition and contemporary
needs.” They certainly helped Islam recover from the Soviet past, but now they
must deal with “entirely other issues and other challenges.”
Now,
the chief tasks of the Muslim umma in Russia are to “preserve our tradition,
the Hanafi rite, maintain tolerant relations between Muslim and non-Muslim
peoples, and develop the entire spectrum of Russian Muslim culture which ties
us together.”
Mukhetdinov
uses the term “Russian Muslim culture” in preference to “traditional Islam” to
highlight the fact that it is the product of history, allows Muslims of all
ethnic backgrounds to come together, and permits them to insist entirely
reasonably that “Russia is also a Muslim country with its own Muslim past,
present and of course future.”
“One
of the components of this Russian Muslim culture is the institution of the
Muslim Spiritual Directorates, the MSDs.”
That does not mean these institutions are perfect. They suffer from many defects including bureaucracy, generational conflicts, a lack of training, and an unwillingness and inability to work with young people. “Let us be open: the majority of the regional MSDs are not in a position to resolve these problems.”
Overcoming this generational
divide is especially important, the mufti says, because the Soviet period which
lasted over 70 years “led to a situation in which contemporary Muslim young
people are more prepared to believe members of their age cohort and the
Internet than they are the older generation.”
Many of the older generation of
Muslim imams, mullahs and muftis lack the education to be able to be convincing
to young people, especially to those who have studied abroad or learned Islam
via the web, and Russia does not have enough high quality medressahs and Muslim
universities to quickly prepare a new take over generation.
Consequently, Mukhetdinov says,
there are a number of steps Russia’s Muslims need to take to overcome the
current stagnation and make the MSDs full participants in the process of
promoting the development of the growing Muslim community – and these steps do
not include dismantling these institutions.
First of all, the Muslims of Russia
must come together are create “a strong all-Russian muftiate which can actively
help the regional MSDs” while addressing all-Russian concerns. It must take the
lead particularly in promoting a new flowering of Muslim educational
institutions so that Russia can grow its own Muslim leaders rather than relying
on outsiders.
Second, Muslims must make very clear
that the MSDs are “not a government institution” and thus need not follow any
particular structure. What will work in one region may not work in another, and
Muslims rather than the government have to make that determination. Experimentation
is fine.
And third, it obviously is best if
there is only one MSD per region rather than two or more competing
institutions. But where there are several, they must come together on a
voluntary basis even if that means that they will co-exist for a long time to
come. Using force or involving the state to bring pressure on them will be
counterproductive.
Russia’s Muslims need to understand,
Mukhetdinov says, that “the most important function of the MSDs is developing
the faith, something that will be possible by giving the old form new content
rather than destroying the form in the name of something new.
Mukhetdinov’s proposals may seem
utopian, but in contrast to the ideas others have advanced, they offer as good
political programs often do something for almost everyone and therefore have a
greater chance to win support. At the very least, the reaction to his proposals
will be worth watching as an indication of where the 20 million Muslims of
Russia are heading.
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