Window on Eurasia

Why ‘Islamism’ Remains a Taboo Term for Russian Elites

Paul Goble

Vienna, August 2, 2006 – Most of the leaders of Russia’s Muslim community and a significant share of that country’s political elite are reluctant to use the term “Islamism,” lest they be misunderstood by domestic and international audiences, according to a Russian political commentator.

Indeed, Mikhail Sitnikov writes in an essay posted online yesterday, it
is not too extreme to say that the term “Islamism” is taboo both
among Muslim and other religious leaders in the Russian Federation and
those in the political elite intent on turning back the clock there
[http://babr.ru/index.php?pt=news&event=v1&IDE=31689].

The reasons for the reluctance of both groups to use a term that has
gained wide currency internationally and even among some in the
scholarly community in Russia itself are not far to seek, Sitnikov say,
rooted as they are in the experience of the population in Soviet times.

Those in the Russian political elite who hope to restore an
authoritarian system recognize that “the open recognition of the
ideology of Islamism as a phenomenon which in essence is analogous to
German fascism or Soviet Bolshevism would mark the discrediting of the
true strategy of Russian revaunchists of neo-totalitarianism.”

That is all the more likely, Sitnikov says, because Islamism is “no
less dangerous” to the rest of the world in the 21st century than
those two totalitarian ideologies and systems were to the 20th.
Advertising that fact, naturally, is not in the interest of those who
would like to promote their own version of authoritarianism.

And those in the religious elite of the Russian Federation – and
especially the top leaders of the Muslim community – have their own
reasons for avoiding this term, Sitnikov argues, reasons that reflect
the peculiar national experience of the peoples of the Russian
Federation under Soviet rule.

In countries that have had a normal course of political and social
development, “the pseudo-religiosity of Islamism” is more or less
instantly recognizeable. “But in Russia, where all such traditions
were forcibly disrupted, public opinion is not in a position to feel
the difference between religion and ideology.”

“As a result,” he continues, “for causes enumerated [by the more
perceptive of Russia’s Muslim leaders], the illiterate believers take
the principles of Islamist ideology as [genuine] Islam] with exactly
the same success that some Orthodox belivers accept the manifestation of
religious chauvinism as equivalent to the Orthodox faith.”

If the “scurpulousness” of Russia’s Muslim elite in avoiding a
term that could create real problems for themselves at home is
understandable if not particularly noble, Sitnikov writes, those in the
political elite who avoid using it are almost certainly making a
mistake.

On the one hand, Western elites already understand and have proclaimed
as many Muslims insist that Islamism, however much it seeks to cover
itself with Islamic terminology, is in fact the enemy of Islam and may
even prove to be its gravedigger if nothing is done.

Consequently, the failure of Russian political elites to use this term
– especially since Russian academic experts are doing so – raises
more questions than anything else and leads at least some in the West
to focus even more closely on just what those who have placed a taboo on
this term are about.

And on the other hand, the failure of Moscow’s political elite to use
this term simultaneously guarantees that its members do not understand
the threat that they face within Islam, thus allowing that threat to
fester and grow, and that its members are likely to take increasingly
counterproductive actions in a doomed attempt to stop it.

Only by facing up to what Islamism is –- and for a start by using the
word itself -- can Russian elites, religious and political, hope to
counter it, but that will require that both of them face up to what the
Soviet system did to their own society, something that at least at
present Sitnikov suggests neither group is prepared to do.

Latest Window on Eurasia stories | Religion Archive | Islam in Russia and CIS Archive | Orthodox Church in Russia and CIS Archive | All Window on Eurasia Stories Archive |