Author:
Publication: Zenit.org
Date: March 6, 2001
Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov attended a service
Monday at the city's main mosque to mark Eid al-Adha, the Muslim feast
of sacrifice, and promised to help provide more facilities for Moscow's
million-strong Muslims, the BBC reported.
He urged Muscovites to embrace religious
tolerance, a theme taken up in a message to Muslims by President Vladimir
Putin, who spoke of "respect among all the peoples of multinational Russia,"
according to the British news organization.
This is only the second year that
Russian leaders have taken the trouble to greet the Muslim community on
their feast day, and some observers see the gesture as being an attempt
to win support for the war against the Muslim Chechens, BBC said.
The leadership of Russia's Muslims
has been careful not to side with the Chechens. Supreme Mufti
Talgat Tajuddin told worshippers in the Tatar city of Ufa that the war
was a "necessary measure against terrorists rather than brothers-in-faith."
The second most senior cleric, Moscow-based
Ravil Gaynutdin, opened the country's first Islamic university in Tatarstan
last September to prepare clerics, and was at pains to say it would "protect
the country from foreign extremist teachings."
The country's most prominent Muslim
member of parliament, Abdul-Vakhid Niyazov of the Refakh (Welfare) movement,
sits in the pro-Putin Unity bloc in the legislative body.
There is, however, disillusion among
many young Muslims at the political subservience and local complacency
of their religious and community leaders, which has fed into Russians'
traditional distrust of Islam to produce some ugly anti-Muslim acts.
Combined with antagonism stirred
up by the Chechen war and alleged terrorist attacks on Russian civilians,
this has led to an atmosphere of police intimidation and public suspicion
against Muslims or people who simply "look Muslim."
The Muslims of Russia number about
20 million, or 15% of the population. Perhaps 4 million to
5 million of these are practicing their faith, although their higher birthrate
and increasing cultural and religious self-confidence mean that Muslims
are likely to increase both in absolute numbers and in their proportion
of the population.
In terms of political orientation,
they have tended to vote for the Communist Party, as the bastion of conservatism
and regional elites, although nationalist and pro-Islamic parties are gaining
popularity in Tatarstan and the northern Caucasus.
The Muslims of the industrialized
Volga -- mainly the Tatars, Bashkirs and Chuvash -- see Islam as a badge
of national self-confidence and the role of their regional leaders as power
brokers. They traditionally supply the elite of the Muslim
community, such as Tajuddin and Gaynutdin.
The Muslims of the northern Caucasus
-- Chechens, Circassians and Dagestanis, among others -- often feel like
poor relations. They were absorbed into Russia much later,
live in poor mountain areas, and have suffered most from their community's
grim reputation among Russians.
This reputation has been fed by
media stereotyping and the growth of Islamic law and militant sects --
such as the pro-Saudi Wahhabis -- in the Caucasus.
Russia's leaders may have decided
the time has come to court the growing Muslim constituency before its loyal,
Tatar leadership gives way to more militant trends that seek guidance from
abroad.
