Window on Eurasia

Russia’s Muslims Recapitulate Pre-1917 Developments

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, August 25, 2006 – The Muslim community (“umma”) of the Russian Federation is recapitulating many of the developments –
organizational, ideological, and political -- of its predecessor at the
end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, according to a
leading Russian specialist on the recent history of Islam in Eurasia.

And consequently, Damir Khayretdinov, argues in an interview posted
online yesterday, its members have much to learn from that earlier
experience which was tragically cut short by Bolshevik revolution in
1917 and “a new period of tyranny”
[http://www.islam.ru/pressclub/gost/hairetdinov/?print_page].

But at the same time, he suggests, there are both significant
differences between the two periods, especially with regard to
developments in the broader world of Islam, and many shortcomings in
the understanding of Russia’s Muslims today about what their predecessors
thought and did.

At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries,
Khayretdinov, a widely published ethnographer who currently serves as
deputy head of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Nizhniy
Novgorod, notes, “Russian totalitarian pretensions were experiencing
a crisis which the Muslims were not slow to take advantage of.”

Almost overnight, he writes, they “increased the number of mosques
and medressahs many times over, they organized the publication of
literature and periodicals, and they completely reexamined the goals and methods of the umma,” a search that some now identify solely with jadidism.

That brilliant flowering of Islam in Russia, ended by the Bolsheviks,
naturally has attracted the attention of many Muslims there who hope to
recover much of that impulse as they rebuild their community in the
wake of the collapse of the communist Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, Khayretdinov continues, “today many investigators (and
even more publicists and politicians) are inclined to making rather
extreme claims in their assessment of that period.” Many in
Tatarstan, for example, say that “we need jadidism and we are building
Euro-Islam on the basis of the ideas of the jadids.”

“In fact,” however, what the Russian umma needs today “is not
jadidism as such but rather an understanding of the causes that
produced that phenomenon and an understanding of how to apply it to our own
situation not only its conceptions but those of kademism [its nominally
conservative opposition] for the good of the umma.”

Any “abstraction” of one or the other is a mistake, Khayretdinov
says, noting that today there are three major differences in the
situation of the umma than there were a century ago.

First, the role of Islam in keeping the ethnic identity alive of
various peoples under Soviet conditions in the past means not only that it now
includes within itself many popular elements but also that Islam must
play a major role in overcoming the USSR’s efforts to produce a
“faceless” Soviet people.

Second, Russia’s Muslims have much closer ties to the Islamic world
abroad and are developing as an integral part of that community rather
than in isolation. As a result, they are much more affected by a
variety of developments in that world than were their forefathers.

And third, even if the Russian umma today lacks the pleiad of genial
leaders who dominated the scene a century ago, its members are on
average far better educated than were the masses in 1900. Therefore,
the leaders of the community must be far more literate in all senses than
many of their predecessors were.

Several comments Khayretdinov makes in his interview are controversial.
And anticipating that, he devotes most of his remarks to parrying what
his opponents will certainly argue in response.

As an ethnographer – his doctorate is from the Moscow Institute of
Ethnology -- he praises the diversity within Islam springing from its
popular root and sharply criticizes those within the umma who want to
end the variety that he suggests has played a vital role not only in
the Russian umma but in the Islamic world more generally.

As a historian – he has written several well-regarded studies of
Russia’s Muslims, he calls for a nuanced approach to the complexities
of the past. And as a MSD administrator, he urges that Muslims should
view these institutions as a useful support element for the community.

Khayretdinov also discusses two other problems that are the product of
the rapid growth of the Russian umma since 1990: its lack of a strong
economic foundation and the appearance of new converts whose often
dogmatic views frighten many other Muslims with more experience.

He notes that the MSD with which he is associated has succeeded in
building a strong financial base and urges other Muslims to copy what
is being done in Nizhniy Novgorod. And he argues that older Muslims must
restrain new converts lest the latter undermine the community.

But Khayretdinov uses this interview as well to press for something he
has been advocating for some time: the creation of a Council of the
Ulema [learned] for the Russian umma as a whole. Such a body would
supplement rather than replace the MSDs and would provide a check on
muftis overly inclined to issue poorly thought out fetwas.

There was such a council before 1917, Khayretdinov notes, and it played
a major role in organizing the intellectual and political life of the
Russian umma of that time. Asked whether the umma today has
“matured” to the point that it could recreate such a body, he said
that the fact this question was being asked showed that the umma had.

 

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