Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 23 – Vladimir
Putin and other dignitaries attended the re-opening of the Cathedral Mosque in
Moscow today. Russian media celebrated this as the largest mosque in Europe;
they mostly did focus on the fact that Moscow’s Muslim community is the largest
in any European capital or that the Russian city has only three other
officially registered mosques.
The mosque, first built in 1904 and
in the process of being remodeled over the last decade, is now 20 times larger
than it was, with space for 10,000 of the faithful, an expansion that both
Muslim and secular officials in Moscow have been emphasizing makes it the
largest mosque in Europe. Its new minaret rises 78 meters and is visible in
many parts of Moscow.
Among those attending the reopening
yesterday were Putin and the presidents of Turkey and Palestine and also the
heads of Chechnya, Daghestan, Ingushetiya and Tatarstan as well as the leaders
of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of European Russia, but not those of the rival
Central MSD in Ufa (vestikavkaza.ru/news/V-Moskve-otkryvaetsya-Sobornaya-mechet.html).
In his address at the ceremony,
Ravil Gainutdin, head of the MSD of European Russia and also of the Union of
Muftis of Russia, stressed that “more than ten years ago, our national leader
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin became the first of the leaders of our state in
its entire history to call Russia a Muslim country.”
“Neither the tsars no the emperors
nor the general secretaries of the CPSU Central Committee ever did this.” Moreover, Gainutdin continued, Putin “also
stressed that Islam always was one of the foundations of Russian statehood” and
that he viewed Russia “as the truest, most consistent and most reliable of the
Islamic religion and the Islamic world.”
In his speech today, Putin said the
re-opening of the mosque was “a big event for russia’s Muslims” because “one of
the oldest mosques of Moscow has been reconstructed in his historic place. It
has become the largest in Europe and acquired a new contemporary aspect, worth
of the capital of single multi-national and multi-confessional country and
worthy of Russia in which Islam by law is one of the traditional Russian
religions.”
“Russia was established via the
mutual enrichment of different traditions, cultures, and religions, and it is
in this that the strength of our motherland consists,” the Russian president
said. “The Muslim community of Moscow was established already in medieval
times, as shown by the Tatar roots of its street names.”
“Today,”
the Kremlin leader continued, “traditional Islam is an inalienable part of the
spiritual life of the country. Its humanist values teach people mercy, justice,
and concern about those near to them. We value all of this very highly. Over
the course of the last 20 years, the number of Islamic cult institutions has
grown several orders of magnitude.”
Many
striking new mosques have appeared “in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chechnya and
other regions of Russia,” Putin said. And that in turn means there have been established
more medrassahs and schools attached to mosques, an important means of blocking
the influence of those who attempt to exploit Islam for un-Islamic political
goals.
“Today,”
Putin said, “efforts are being made to cynically exploit religious feelings for
political goals. We see this happening in the Near East where terrorists of the
Islamic State by compromising a great world religion are sowing hatred, killing
people, and barbarously destroying monuments of world culture.”
“They
pervert Islam,” the Russian president says, “and they are trying to recruit
people” in Russia as well.
In
advance of the ceremony, “Moskovsky komsomolets” decided to investigate “how
Islamicized” the area around the restored Cathedral Mosque had become and
whether one could speak yet of a Muslim “quarter” in Russia’s capital (mk.ru/moscow/2015/09/21/v-moskve-mozhet-poyavitsya-musulmanskiy-kvartal.html).
The paper reported
that approximately 3,000 Muslims have been praying at the construction site
every evening, that their participation in religious life has led to the emergence
of cafes and restaurants where they can cleanse themselves before prayer, and
that the restored mosque is already “a mini-city” with schools, stores, a
hotel, and other facilities.
At the same time, “Moskovsky
komsomolets” continued, most people in the region speak Russian rather than
other languages and most of the stores are “’secular’” rather than
Muslim-oriented. That means, Roman
Silantyev, a specialist on Islam notorious for his anti-MSD positions, that it
is “premature” to speak about the formation of Muslim “quarters” in Moscow.
But he conceded that “it is
difficult to predict what will take place in Moscow in this sense in the
future.”
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