Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 7 – A week before
Muslims in Russia and around the world will mark Kurban-bayram, a Moscow newspaper
argues that the interests of Russia are in direct contradiction to those of the
majority of Muslims of the world and that the rise of informal Muslim leaders
inside Russia itself is making the situation there potentially explosive.
In a lead article today, the editors
of “Nezavisimaya gazeta” argue “it is not excluded that the restoration of
harmony in the relations of the state and Muslims is already impossible. The
radical views of the Islamic masses now obviously contradict the constitutional
bases of Russia” whatever the increasingly useless official muftis say (ng.ru/editorial/2013-10-07/2_red.html).
Unregistered
and therefore unofficial mullahs and activists are increasingly attracting the
attention of and winning support from Russia’s Muslims. The recent court ban on
a translation of the Koran has led some of these people to claim that “today, Russia
is conducting a struggle against Islam and Muslims.”
And
with the approach of the Muslim holiday, there is evidence that such extremism
ideas may be taking a concrete form: Last week, outside the Historical Mosque
of Moscow a Muslim preacher from Kyrgyzstan as arrested when he sought to
recruit Muslims in the Russian capital to the banned Hizb ut-Tahrir
organization.
The
mosques where such things have taken place, the editors say, “belong to various
Islamic organizations,” whose leaders at least “struggle among themselves for
the right to be considered the most loyal to the state.” The state in turn mistakenly focuses on such
declarations rather than on what is going on among their parishioners.
Moscow’s policies of supporting Iran and
the Asad regime in Syria, the paper continues, clash with the views of the
Sunni majority. As a result and especially at home, the Russian government has
deprived itself of the possibility of taking into consideration the growing radicalization
and uncompromising attitudes of the Islamic masses.”
As it has often done, the Russian
government continues to rely on structures set up by Catherine the Great and to
assume that if it controls the Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs), it
controls the Muslim “religious minority.”
That is the worse form of self-deception as the recent case involving
the ban of the Koran has demonstrated.
“The official muftis” Moscow has
installed “have very little authority among the millions of believers” in
Russia, as any perusal of online discussions shows. Muslims are angered when the muftis who are
their supposed leaders “recognize the supremacy of the Orthodox Patriarch and
approve without question the foreign policy of the state.”
“Voices are now being heard that the
institution of the muftiates has discredited itself,” the paper continues, voices
that point to the de-institutionalization of Islam and the opening of Muslims
in Russia to influence from Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Indeed, it may now be the case that “the only
project of the Russian authorities that is succeeding in the area of Islamic
policy is its backing of [Chechnya’s] Ramzan Kadyrov.” But that support has other consequences,
including undercutting the possibility of democracy there and elsewhere.
The editors conclude that it may no
longer be possible to “restore harmony” between the Russian state and the
Muslims of the Russian Federation, but that any steps in that direction will
certainly require Moscow to look past the increasingly “useless” muftis who
head the equally useless MSDs.
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