Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 9 – Moscow has
only very rarely focused on the Sunni-Shiia divide within the Muslim community
inside the Russian Federation, an attitude perhaps understandable given that 90
percent of the Russian umma is Sunni; but now the Kremlin’s backing of the
Shiite regime of Bashar Asad in Syria and its increasing ties with Shiite Iran
are raising the issue.
As often is the case with matters of
such sensitivity, most of the evidence for that conclusion is indirect. Yesterday, Taufik Ibragim, the head of the Russian
Society of Islam Specialists, said that Russia’s “Sunnites and Shiites” must “act
as a united front” and denounce ISIS (tass.ru/obschestvo/2329754).
Other experts with whom TASS spoke
echoed Ibragim. Alikber Alikberov, a
specialist at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, called on Russia’s muftis
and imams to speak as one against ISIS terrorism. And Rushan Abbyasov, deputy
head of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Russia, warned that unless
they do, ISIS will “threaten not only Russia but others.”
This is an extremely rare mention of
the two chief trends within Islam by Russian commentators and religious leaders,
one that beyond doubt reflects concerns about tensions between Sunnis and
Shiites given that Moscow has now come down on the side of the Shiites and
against the Sunni-dominated Islamic State.
Neither the Russian government nor
the leaders of Islam in Russia have devoted much attention to the Shiites in
that country, a reflection of the fact that in Soviet times, the MSD in Baku
supervised all Shiites in the USSR and that until the influx of gastarbeiters
from Azerbaijan, there were relatively few Shiites there.
Moreover, because of Soviet anti-religious efforts, many Muslims in Russia as in the other post-Soviet states at least initially knew little about the distinctions between these two trends in Islam. In Azerbaijan, for example, people spoke and still speak of "Iranian" as opposed to "Turkish" mosques reflecting who paid for them rather than the Shiia and Sunni trends they reflect.
But now there are more than two
million Shiites in the Russian Federation, and they are concentrated in Moscow
and St. Petersburg. Consequently, if tensions arise between the two trends in
Islam over what is happening in Syria, they are likely to occupy center stage
in Russian political life. And none of
Russia’s MSDs focuses on the Shiites.
That means that Moscow does not have
the usual bureaucratic allies within the Muslim community to control the
situation and that there may be some pressure to create a new MSD that would handle
Shiite affairs, one that would be likely to press for greater official
recognition and support of Shiites within Russia.
"The works of Shiite authors are
in practice not translated and very little published," he
continued, even though Muslims and Russian officials must certainly know
that "precisely Shiite Islam can be a most effective factor
in blocking the activity of various kinds of reactionaries
who speak out in the name of Islam."
As a first step toward rectifying this
situation, Cherniyenko said, "the main task of Russia Shiites today
[must be] the formation of a single spiritual movement
and the establishment of [their own separate] religious
organization." Over the past five years, little has been done in these
directions. Now, the Shiites time in Russia may be coming.
(For a discussion of that
conference and background on the Shiites of Russia, see Paul Goble, “Who Will
Manage the 2 Million Shiites of Russia?” Moscow
Times, February 10, 2010, at themoscowtimes.com/sitemap/free/2010/2/article/who-will-manage-the-2-million-shiites-of-russia/499568.html).
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