Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 26 – In many federal
subjects of the Russian Federation, there are now multiple Muslim Spiritual
Directorates each headed by a more or less independent mufti who has the authority
to issue fetwas, the Arabic term for “legal
opinions,” that are intended to guide the lives of Muslims.
But as Islam has become more
important in the lives of the Muslims of Russia, that has created a problem for
them as well as one for the Russian state. Muslims have the option to choose
among the fetwas on offer, many of
which contradict each other, and the Russian state is faced with uncertainty
about just what advice even Russian-based muftis are giving.
That is not a new problem or
exclusively a Russian one. Within Islam, believers are remarkably free to choose
which fetwas they consider
authoritative; and in Russia, there have long been complaints about the absence
of any one single Muslim “patriarch” or “pope” who alone can speak with legal
authority.
However, this problem has been
compounded in Russia by three factors: the remarkable and largely uncontrolled
growth in the number of MSDs which has meant that in most federal subjects
there is more than one, the impact of foreign missionaries and scholars on the
Muslims of Russia, and the low – thanks to Soviet oppression – level of religious
knowledge among them.
In a comment for Radio Liberty,
journalist Lyubov Merenkova describes the problem this way: Within Islam, “there
is no clear structure in which one body is subordinate to another and fulfills
the directives of the one above it. No one has the right to issue fetwas which operate on the entire
territory of the country. And while there is a supreme mufti, he is no more ‘supreme’
than the leaders of other major Muslim organizations of Russia” (kavkazr.com/a/podelili-musulman/28557132.html).
Further complicating this situation,
she continues, is the fact that it is enshrined in state law which allows
believers to form a primary organization and then any three of these have the
right to form a superordinate one on their own.
At present, according to the MSD of
the Russian Federation which is within the Council of Muftis of Russia (SMR),
there are 136 superordinate Muslim organizations or MSDs of various titles (dumrf.ru/common/org). But that list is clearly incomplete. It doesn’t
include, for example, the Spiritual Assembly of Muslims of Russia which was set
up in November 2016.
Four institutions,
what some call the super-MSDs because they include other MSDs as members, are
recognized as especially authoritative: the SMR, the Central MSD, the
Coordination Center for Muslims of the North Caucasus and the Spiritual
Assembly of Muslims of Russia – although one commentator says there are now really
seven that deserve that ranking (ng.ru/ng_religii/2017-06-21/13_422_raiting.html).
“From a legal point of view,”
Merenkova continues, “all these structures are parallel and their leaders have
equal rights.” But in reality, they don’t even control the actions of their
subordinate MSDs and muftis in many cases. (The head of the Central MSD calls
himself and is called by others “the supreme mufti” only because his body is the
heir to the original MSD created in tsarist times.)
That is creating legal chaos within
the Muslim community. In some small places, there may be several MSDs represented
and their muftis may have issued fetwas
which contradict one another. In one village, the journalist there, there often
are “three organizations” and so Muslims are free to choose which fetwa they will be guided by.
And there is no clear way out,
Marenkova says. Not only are Muslim parishes free to exit existing MSDs and
create new ones, but existing MSDs are free to ignore the super-MSDs of which
they are a part or even shift from one of these to another at their complete
discretion. There is little those above can do to stop that.
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