Wednesday, May 6, 2020

If Russian-Speaking Tatars Become Russian Muslims or Just Muslims, That Could Create Serious Problems for Moscow


Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 5 – When Tatars shift from speaking Tatar to speaking Russian, there are more possibilities than many typically assume. They may be on their way to assimilation as many Tatars fear and some Russians want. But they may also become Russian-speaking Tatars, “Russian Muslims,” or Muslims who reject an ethnic identity, Harun Sidorov says.

            That range of possibilities means, the ethnic Russian convert to Islam says, that such a linguistic shift may or may not be to the liking of either Tatars or Russians because it could transform the meaning of the latter and pose serious and unexpected challenges to the latter (idelreal.org/a/30591444.html).

            Sidorov, who lives in Prague, says that Tatars typically consider only two possibilities – that those who lose Tatar as a language nonetheless become Russian-speaking Tatars or that those who do so have already passed beyond the normal boundaries of that ethnic identity and are on the way to becoming Russians  -- a dichotomous visions Russians tend to share.

            But there are at least two other possibilities given that most Tatars are also committed Muslims. These include becoming part of “the Russian Muslims,” a community made up of ethnic Russians who have accepted Islam, like Sidorov himself, or giving up their ethnic identity altogether, given the view of many Muslims that religion should trump nationality.

            Ethnic Russian Muslims, the analyst says, “up to now do not form a stable ethno-confessional community even in comparison with the Kryashens [who are Tatar in origin but Christian in faith], whose identity and community has been reproduced already over many generations.”

            But they are a community that could grow as a result of the Russification of Tatars and other historically Muslim nations and thus become “a new community” altogether, one that might prove more of a threat in the eyes of ethnic Russians to the Russian nation than even to the Tatar-speaking Tatars.

            “There are no objective reasons standing on the way for such cooptation” of Tatars who come to speak Russian, Sidorov continues. Such individuals would be Russian-speaking and European in culture and find many people like themselves who are emerged from other Tatar communities.

            “However,” he notes, “as the experience of our community shows, subjective and more precisely psychological obstacles arise among a not small portion of these people.” That is because Russian Muslims are still “a community at the beginning stage of establishment who lack any lengthy history and have been formed” by conversion.

            This gives rise to conflicts between those who bring their national traditions with them to some degree and those who decide as many neophytes do to become more Muslim than Mohammed.  The latter often do not really want to have anything in common with those who have similar ethnic and cultural characteristics.

            As an ethnic Russian Muslim himself, Sidorov would like Russianized Tatars to join his community but only after they have fully recognized the difficulties involved.  But the point he raises is more important than he may think because it touches on what it means to be a Tatar and perhaps even more on what it means to be a Russian.

            Non-Russians who lose their native language may be lost to their nationality, but they may also become key players in its future, just as the Irish did not become nationalists until they gave up speaking Gaelic and adopted the language of the empire.  (Now, of course, many of them want to restore their traditional tongue.)

            This is a problem for the Tatar nation. But the problems of Russianized Tatars who become Russian Muslims or anational Muslims are more serious for the Russian nation, despite the advocacy for assimilation by linguistic change that many Russians especially now are engaged in.

            On the one hand, those who retain their religious identity even if they lose their linguistic and national ones are a clear reminder that the assumption that a change in language is everything are wrong. Russian-speaking Tatars are a possibility and possibly a welcome one from the perspective of Russians.

            But on the other hand, the possibility that promoting Russian language among Tatars may lead not to their assimilation but rather to their becoming members of the Russian Muslim community or even more adopting a non-national religious identity is not something that most Russians would like – and that many would view as a threat to Russian identity as such.

            Those who became Russian Muslims in this way could in principle become like the Kryashens within the Tatar nation, a potentially divisive group others might exploit, and those who having taken to speaking Russian became Muslims tout court could mean that Russia would face a more radical Islamic threat than it does now.

            Whether Sidorov intended it or not, his words should serve as a warning to Moscow that its Russianizing policies may not work as planned and could even lead to a situation more unfavorable to its interests than continuing to provide support for the non-Russian languages, a possibility few Russians appear to have considered. 

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