Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 12 – Conflicts
between Russians and Muslims on the streets and in the Russian military have a
long history, but now they are spreading to an important part of daily life -- in
higher educational institutions where some administrators now calling for the
students to be separated by ethnicity and religion to prevent more clashes.
This phenomenon came to broad public
attention this week when a video clip showing a Russian student being forced to
publicly apologize for his comments about Caucasian women that Muslim students
found offensive and denigrating attracted more than a million views online (ura.news/articles/1036273236).
“This is not the first such incident”
even in elite higher educational institutions like the Russian Academy of
Economics and State Service, Stanislav Zakharkin says in his report for the URA
news agency. Earlier, a Russian joke
about the Koran led to a situation in which one foreign student was forced to
leave her Russian university and ultimately the country itself.
Aleksandr Safonov, the pro-rector of the Academy, says
that no one knows how many such clashes there have been because no one is
keeping a record of the statistics. But
he says that it is his impression that the numbers may be growing and
increasingly reflect religious and ethnic differences rather than between urban
and rural groups as was true in Soviet times.
The
pro-rector suggests that the higher educational institutions can and should
address this issue, possibly by “dividing” the students and explaining to each
group how the other perceives it and what is the best way to overcome such
differences.
Maksim
Shevchenko, a Muslim commentator who is a member of the Presidential Human
Rights council, plays down the importance of these clashes, “Conflict,” he
says, “is the essence of human nature” and a way to learn; and he dismisses the
idea that such clashes are about nationality.
“One
must not speak about Russians and Caucasians in general,” he continues. There are sad cases in all nations, and what
is important is to learn when ethnic and religious differences matter, when
they don’t, and how to address these differences in a civilized war.
Others
are pushing for a tougher set of reactions. Arslan Khasavov, a writer who is a
member of the Russian Council on the North Caucasus, says universities and
especially elite ones must impose administrative punishments on those who get
out of hand. And if things go even further, they should refer matters to the
police for criminal prosecution.
The
URA news agency reports that the Russian magistracy has begun an investigation
into the case shown on the video clip and that the head of the Union of Chechen
Youth in the Russian capital says that he will meet with and try to educate
those Muslims who did the attacking in this case.
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