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RUSSIA
The long march
of Islam in Russia
Religions in Russia are waking up from their
Soviet torpor. Islam is stirring too, having to deal
with racist gangs and young skinheads, and is
planning how to cohabit with the Orthodox
giant, while nurturing the hope of resolving the
internal conflict in the Muslim world.
I
n Russia, it seems, 2013 did not get off to a
very good start, at least as far as spiritual
matters are concerned. Religious conflicts
are verging on open warfare in the North Caucasus, where two opposing ideas of Islam are
at loggerheads. Tensions are also mounting in
other regions where Muslims are the majority
or at least a significant part of the population,
such as the large industrial areas between the
Volga and the Urals, Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. Not to mention large cities all over the
country, from Moscow to Novosibirsk, where
the arrival of immigrant workers from Central
Asia and the Caucasus has led to a marked increase in the number of Muslims and a corresponding demand for the construction of new
places of worship, often triggering the hostility
of the non-Islamic population. The overall
level of tension is so high that, commenting on
the new law punishing offences against religion (a law clearly designed to benefit Orthodox Christianity alone, in the wake of the
Pussy Riot scandal), even the Orthodox Patriarch Kirill felt the need to appeal for its “mod-
FAUSTO GIACCONE/ANZENBERGER/CONTRASTO
by Astrit Dakli
DOSSIER
number 46 march/april 2013
97
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DOSSIER ARAB WINTER
eration” so that the law might not damage the
rights of all citizens (meaning: not stir up any
more conflict with Islam).
Given this troubling overall picture, the
most serious concerns regard the Russian republics of the North Caucasus, where guerrilla
warfare is endemic; after 20 years it has developed into a gruelling war of religion. Indeed, this is now an internal conflict within
the Muslim world, pitting the Salafi sects
which have imported hardline fundamentalist
precepts from Saudia Arabia including the introduction of sharia law (based on the Koran)
and the theocratic dream of setting up a
caliphate against the more traditional and
moderate forms of Sufi Islam, linked to state
authorities, which in several republics have
become the religious leaders’ operating arm
(and an armed one, at that). In Chechnya, for
example, the construction of a giant new
mosque was launched last November to great
fanfare; with praying room for 10,000 faithful,
it will be named after the local leader Ramzan
Kadyrov, who spearheaded the project. Another mosque of comparable size has recently
RELIGIONS:
100
max
risk
82
55
38.7 years
Russian Orthodox 15-20%,
Muslim 10-15%, other Christian 2%
50
FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Federal Presidential Republic
SUFFRAGE:
Universal (18 years)
CHIEF OF STATE:
Vladimir PUTIN (May 2012)
min
risk
0
HEAD OF GOVERNMENT: Dmitriy Anatolyevich MEDVEDEV
(May 2012)
GDP:
$ 2,113 bn (nominal, estimates 2013)
INFLATION:
6.5% (estimates 2013)
Political stability
MEDIAN AGE:
Political Risk & Country Analysis - UniCredit
54
Security
AREA: 17,098,242 Km2
POPULATION: 142,517,670
Political indicators
Government effectiveness
Russia
THOMAS DWORZAK/MAGNUM PHOTOS
u Inauguration of the
mosque at Kazan,
capital of the
Tatarstan Republic.
The construction of
new places of worship
often engenders
hostility among the non
Islamic population.
Corruption
Judicial
independence
133
122
out of 176 countries
out of 144 countries
Putin’s return to Presidency ensures
political stability but the emerging
of a “non-systemic” opposition
in the medium-long term could
boost the gradual transformation
of the political system into a more
democratic one.
Reference values:
first country Norway, last country Somalia
Quality
of bureaucracy
min
risk
3
max
risk
EIU, ONU, WB,WEF, Heritage Foundation, Transparency International, Global Peace Index
98
east european crossroads
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RUSSIA
\ Friday prayer in
Dagestan, one of the
Russian republics
where conflicts
among the various
Islamic factions are
fiercest.
been completed in Grozny and named after
Kadyrov’s father. In actual fact in Chechnya,
with the Kremlin’s tacit consent, the rules governing the administration of justice – that is to
say, the federal laws – have been de facto replaced by a “personalised” version of the
sharia drawn up by Kadyrov himself, in an attempt to prevent radical sects from spreading.
But although Kadyrov is going all out to
earn his stripes as the ‘Great Protector of Islam’
in Chechnya, in the nearby autonomous republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Karbardino-Balkaria – but also in the Christian
North Ossetia – the clash between different
Islamic factions has degenerated into an endless stream of bloody attacks and reprisals.
Those in the firing line include imams, muftis
number 46 march/april 2013
DOSSIER
and mere priests active in cities and remote
villages alike, often killed along with their relatives and closest followers. The struggle conceals a bid for power: the moderates support
the civil authorities and rely on the weapons
of the local police, often backed up by federal
forces, while the Salafists, bent on achieving
their ideal of a caliphate, increasingly throw
in their lot with what’s left of the separatist
guerrillas, who have unflaggingly pursued the
creation of an independent state in the Caucasus for many years now.
This religious war is unlikely to end any
time soon, nor confine itself to the Caucasus
borders. Religious extremism is making inroads in the central regions of Russia as well:
in the industrial, oil-producing area between
the Volga and the Urals that boasts large Muslim communities (the majority of them Tatars
and Bashkirs, the heirs of the erstwhile
khanates that dominated Russia for centuries).
This is borne out by the increasingly frequent
illegal demonstrations – very contemporary
flash mobs – organised against the advice of
the muftis of Tatarstan. Further proof is provided by last year’s terrorist attacks aimed at a
number of high-profile moderate Islamist leaders. The most sensational took place in July,
when the chief mufti of Tatarstan, Ildus Fayzov
(one of the most respected figures at the head
of the Russian Federation’s Muslim community) survived a dynamite attack by pure
chance, while his deputy was gunned down
in his own home on the same day.
Barely perceptible and symbolic, for the
time being, a conflict is also emerging in Russia between Islam as a whole and the orthodox
Christian majority represented by the Patriarchate of Moscow with an increasing involvement of the federal government, secular in theory, but in practice more and more hamstrung
by its alliance with the Russian Orthodox
Church. This conflict not only threatens to put
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DOSSIER ARAB WINTER
paid to the traditional state atheism
but could also jeopardise efforts to
maintain the neutrality and impartiality of government institutions
when dealing with the different
faiths that coexist in Russia. It
should be remembered that alongside the country’s dominant Orthodox Christian church, a burgeoning
Islam is officially recognised and
protected, while Judaism is alive
and well - despite the massive emigration to the USA and Israel - and
Buddhism can call the eastern
reaches of Siberia one of the chief
cradles of its faith, worldwide. And
that’s not counting a myriad of other
faiths and “minor” creeds, some of
which are recent imports, like the
various Protestant sects or Catholicism itself, while the origins of many
are shrouded in the mists of time,
like shamanism or the animism
practiced by the indigenous peoples
in the north and in Siberia.
However, although all religions
experienced a revival in the wake of
the USSR’s collapse and set out to
proselytise and expand, the Orthodox Church has got the most mileage
out of the transition. Under both
Boris Yeltsin and his successor
Vladimir Putin, the Patriarchs of
Moscow (Alexis II followed by Kirill) have greatly increased their influence on Russian public life particularly within its legislative and
judicial spheres, even managing to
drag along with it the Islamic Russian Council of Muftis in an undeclared allegiance of common aims.
At the symbolic level, one of the
most telling events to occur recently
100
was the trial of three members of the
feminist punk rock group Pussy Riot.
In a very public, provocative performance at the Cathedral of Christ
the Saviour in Moscow, the group
had decried the collusion between
the political forces and the religious
authorities, only to be subjected to
a “witchcraft” trial explicitly called
for by the Patriarchate. On that occasion, Russia’s Muslim hierarchies
openly sided with the Patriarchate;
yet this “sacred alliance” between
the government and the two main
Russian religions is actually not as
solid as it looks.
Last autumn, a few weeks after
the Pussy Riot trial, other young
women once again created a serious
problem for the government, and indirectly for the Orthodox Patriarchate. The girls in a school in KaraTyube, a remote southern village
with a population for the most part
Muslim, demanded the right to wear
veils in the classroom, in defiance
of a ban imposed by the school authorities. The story went viral after
the federal minister of education,
Dmitry Livanov, came to the girls’
defence (saying, “I don’t see that
they have committed a crime”), only
to be instantly contradicted by a parliamentary committee, which
sought to reinstate a mandatory
school uniform (with no veils of any
kind, obviously) for all male and female students, harking back to the
bad old Soviet days. Vladimir Putin
himself stepped in with his own disclaimer to defend the secular nature
of the state, a principle he could
hardly support with any consis-
tency, given the way it is systematically violated where the Orthodox
Church is concerned. As a result,
the alliance between the heads of
the leading faiths, which over the
past two or three years had shown
signs of wear, has become even
more strained.
The problems had started to become apparent when the Muslims
of Moscow and St. Petersburg,
whose ranks had swelled with the
massive immigration of workers
from the former Soviet republics of
Central Asia and the Caucasus,
asked for the green light to build
new mosques so that the immigrants
could also practice their faith in
places designed for this purpose.
This entirely justified and legitimate
request – there are in fact only four
“official” mosques in Moscow, for a
Muslim population now estimated
at nearly two million people – was
initially supported by the local government, and the relative projects
were approved. Then, however,
popular opposition - fomented by
ad-hoc committees that sprang up
overnight, headed by orthodox
priests as well as right-wing activists
- effectively killed off every budding
initiative that had been passed. Nor
do the problems end here, considering that in Russia’s major cities
Muslim immigrants have been targeted by racist gangs of young skinheads who have been responsible
for dozens of murders. More recently, immigrants (above all from
the Caucasus) have formed their
own gangs to retaliate against the
attacks, and violently so, despite the
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RUSSIA
THOMAS DWORZAK/MAGNUM PHOTOS
appeals for calm and restraint coming from the imams and the Council
of Muftis.
For its part, the Patriarchate is
finding it harder and harder to reconcile its traditional alliance with
the Muslim hierarchies – most convenient, up to now, as a way of
eroding a number of secular cornerstones of the government’s legislation and policy, starting with
the issue of abortion or civil liberties and extending as far as school
curriculums – with its fears fanned
by the demographics and proselytism of Islam, which suggest that
by mid-century the Muslim population will outnumber the Orthodox Slavs. Indeed, at this point the
Patriarchate’s positions are clearly,
if not openly attuned to those of
the fascist and racist right, and this
line then tends to influence even
the tangible actions of the federal
government.
1 st
Sw
itz
1 st
Rw
an
d
a
er
la
nd
Business Environment
1 st
Ice
la
nd
la
nd
1 st
Fin
1 st
No
r
wa
y
Social indicators
Social unrest
min
risk
112
max
risk
2
Street protests continue to take place advocating
for a democratic opening of the current political system.
59
66
N. of jailed population
98
DOSSIER
111
very
low
very
high
3.5
Ease of doing
business
\ Students at a
Medressa religious
school pray before
their meal.
out of 185 countries
(1st Singapore, 185th Central African Republic)
Main obstacles:
dealing with construction
permits,
getting electricity,
trading across borders.
(every 100,000 people)
142
135th Yemen
144th Algeria
Wealth
distribution
Literacy
rate
(Gini index)
100%
th
187th Congo
179 Eritrea
Human Development
190th Qatar,
Saudi Arabia,
Vanatu
% of seats held by women
42.3
1st Seyshelles (19)
last Comoros (64.3)
Gender Gap
Brain Drain
number 46 march/april 2013
Global
Competitiveness
out of 144 countries
(1st Switzerland, 144th Burundi )
Mobile phone
subscriptions
179 (every 100 people)
in National Parliaments
Press freedom
67
139
Net Migration
Internet users
1,135,737
49.3 (every 100 people)
Economic
Freedom
out of 179 countries
(1st Hong Kong, 179th North Korea)
101