‘My Mosque is My Computer Screen,’ Khakimov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 6 – Now that the Marjani Institute of History in Kazan has retained its independence, a victory its director Rafael Khakimov says is the result of the pressure society brought to bear on the powers that be, he is turning his attention to three issues that have long animated him.

            In a 7,000-word interview with Kazan’s Business-Gazeta in which he discusses the politics surrounding his institute’s survival, Khakimov says he now wants to devote himself first and foremost to the study of his nation’s history and the training of a new generation of Tatar historians who will follow in his wake (business-gazeta.ru/article/471167).

            Second, he continues, he is ready to help draft a national strategy document for the republic. He drafted one confidentially in the 1990s when he served as Mintimir Shaymiyev’s political advisor and believes he could make a useful contribution to the elaboration of a new one that beyond doubt would have to be brief and focus on economics.

            Brief, he says, because senior officials aren’t going to read and absorb any document more than a few pages long; and any document they don’t absorb will be stillborn however much effort goes into it; and focused on the economy because that is the basis for the republic’s survival – and Tatars without Tatarstan won’t have a future.

            And third, in response to questions, he says he remains committed to the ideas of Euro-Islam that he became both famous and infamous for 20 years ago.  “Euro-Islam,” he says, “is the jadidism of today. Because Islam was born in Europe, I introduced this term so that it would be better understood in Europe.”

            Unfortunately, many mullahs and imams from Tatarstan and elsewhere go to Saudi Arabia to study, although one has to ask what they can learn there and whether they can learn at all. “Half of the imams don’t have even a secondary education: they couldn’t finish it,” but yet “they want to teach me what Islam is.”

            Tatars passed through the debates about Islam, its past and future, a century ago when the most advanced promoted modernism which came to be known as jadidism and the conservatives pushed kadimism in response.  In the decades since, Tatars, including himself, Khakimov says, have followed the jadids.

            Asked whether he performs Muslim rituals, the historian responds: “my mosque is this” and points to his computer screen.  That is entirely consistent with Islam because the Prophet Muhammed said that “if you read books or read them, this is more than all prayers. Consequently, this is my mosque.”

            Those words show that Khakimov has no plans to shy away from controversy even though he will soon be retiring as the director of the Kazan institute. In other remarks, for example, he sharply criticizes Bashkirs for suggesting that Tatar is a dialect of the Bashkir language, thus inserting himself into that currently lively debate.