Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 21 – The Muslim
Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Tatarstan has a new mission, Mufti Kamil
Samigullin says, the preservation of the Tatar language and the national
identity of Tatars,” highlighting the fusion of religion and ethnicity in the
fight over languages Vladimir Putin ignited by moving to end obligatory
instruction in all languages except Russian.
Especially in the Soviet period and
to a lesser extent in post-Soviet Russia, Moscow has done what it could to make
sure that religion and ethnicity are cross-cutting rather that mutually
re-enforcing factors. That is because any
such combination can be far harder to control than one in which the two can be
played against one another.
At a press conference yesterday, the
mufti of Tatarstan gave the clearest indication yet that the two factors are
now coming together there. Samifullin said his main tasks now are “the rebirth
of the spiritual heritage of the Tatars and the training of a national
intelligentsia” (nazaccent.ru/content/26646-duhovnoe-upravlenie-musulman-tatarstana-nazvalo-svoej.html).
The MSD of Tatarstan, he said, “cannot
carry out its activity while ignoring these fundamental tasks.” And he pointed
out that after Putin banned the required study of Tatar in the schools of the
republic, his religious organization launched “free courses for the study of
Tatar for all who wanted to study it.”
On the one hand, Tatarstan is a
special case. Mullahs from that nation filled most of the leadership positions
in mosques across the Russian Federation before 1991. In fact, the mosques in
Moscow were often referred to as “Tatar mosques” and conducted services in many
cases in Tatar.
But on the other hand, the mufti’s
declaration is significant both for Tatars and for Moscow. For Tatars, it is an
indication that Muslims are now going to support their fight for their national
language; and for Moscow, it is a sign that Islam and nationality can come
together even in the Middle Volga if the central government makes the kind of
missteps Putin has.
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