‘For Prophet
and Tsar’
By Dr. Rizwana Rahim
Chicago, IL
In
Russia, not only does the history repeat itself
but it also seems to echo -- maybe, different history
in different regions.
In Chechnya and northern Caucasus, there seems no
end to the conflict between Muslims and Russians.
However, a different situation exists in the Volga-Ural
region, another area of Muslim Republics, where
attempts are often made for co-operation between
Muslims and Russian government: independence in
the Muslim Republics’ internal affairs in
exchange for co-operation with Russians. This has
been the trend (if not always and always successfully)
for centuries, certainly since the reign of Catherine
the Great (1762-1796). This has been detailed in
a recent book based on just-released records from
the area. “For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and
Empire in Russia and Central Asia” by Robert
D. Crews (463 pages, May 2006, Harvard University
Press. ISBN 0674021649).
Islam has been present in what is now Russia since
the mid-7th century (657-659 AD), after the Arab
conquest of Derbent in Dagestan, a Muslim Russian
Republic on the western shores of the Caspian Sea.
This was within 25 years of Prophet Mohammad’s
death. Derbent has the oldest mosque in Europe,
and in its cemetery are the graves of some of Prophet
Mohammad’s ‘sahebis’. From there,
after further conquests, it spread westward to its
neighbor, Chechnya, and along the northern Caucasus.
North Caucasus is one of the two areas of largest
Muslim concentrations, with Muslim majority in several
southern Republics of Russia. Despite the troubled
history Islam has had in Russia, it has survived
the repression over the centuries.
Tolstoy’s ‘Hadji Murat’, a novella
not nearly as widely read as his other novels, must
still echo through not just Chechnya but throughout
Russia today. Nearly 100 years ago, Tolstoy told
the story of how the eponymous Chechen fighter,
who had fiercely engaged the Russian military for
long, came to surrender himself to Russia because
of his conflict with his own commander, and how
culturally and behaviorally different was he (in
the 1850s) compared to then-Tsar, Nicholas I. Here,
this history of conflict still continues.
In the Volga-Ural region, another area of a few
more Russian Muslim Republics, Islam came later,
mostly through trade, commerce and other peaceful
exchanges with Central Asian Muslims. Muslims of
this region (as elsewhere in Russia) have not, however,
forgotten the horrible destruction in 1572 of Kazan
(now capital of Tatarstan, and long a center of
Muslim civilization and culture) by Ivan the Terrible
or the repression that followed for some 200 years.
That was before Catherine the Great made conciliatory
gestures toward Muslims, stopped the destruction
of their mosques and established the first Muslim
institution in Ufa (now, Capital another Muslim
Russian Republic, Bashkorostan in the Volga region),
in return for Muslim co-operation. Nor have the
Russians forgotten the Mongol Golden Horde reign
of the 13th century of most of the present-day Russia
and the Muslim-Tatar influence. Berke Khan, a grandson
of Genghis, was the first Mongol of rank to adopt
Islam, which became the official religion in early
14th century during the reign of Uzbeg Khan (1312-1341).
Despite all this, Volga-Ural Muslims have a history
different from that of northern Caucasus, and prefer
their own ways of trade: loyalty to Russia in exchange
for independence in their local/regional/ religious
affairs.
Apart from Muslim republics in Northern Caucasus
and Volga-Ural region, Muslims are also present
in large numbers in Moscow and St. Petersburg (2-3
million of the total). Today in Russia, after the
independence of several Muslim republics when the
Soviet Union was dissolved, those who declare themselves
Muslims account for about 5% of the total population
(150 million). After about 70 years of communist
rule, a period in which religious activities were
discouraged, a third of Russians declare no religious
affiliation, and this fraction may well include
people with Muslim ancestry. Significant Muslim
concentrations are present in 89 territories within
Russia, some in remote areas like Kamchatka Peninsula.
For a broader historical discussion of Muslims in
Russia, I refer the readers to a series of my three
articles (‘Islam in Russia’) in Pakistan
Link [8 & 22 July, 2005
http://www.pakistanlink.com/Commentary/2005/July/08/07.HTM
;
http://www.pakistanlink.com/Opinion/2005/July05/22/03.HTM,
and
15 September, 2005
http://www.pakistanlink.com/Opinion/2005/Sep05/16/05.HTM
].
Crews, a history professor at Stanford and a Russian
expert, gets into the historiography of Muslims
in Russia and the fluctuations in their relationship
with the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union and the
present-day Russia. Instead of the inevitable ‘clash
of civilization’ theory advanced by so many
others, he shows how Russians tried to acquire Muslim
support, loyalty and co-operation in the name of
Allah and the Prophet, while they provided them
necessary protection, as they went about expanding
their Empire. He sketches an elaborate picture of
a deep multi-faceted relationship between the Muslims
and the Russians, based on the provincial archives
(including police and court records, Muslim petitions,
and clerical writings, not accessible before 1991)
of Kazan and Ufa, both important centers of Russian
Islam in the Volga region.
He returns to the accommodative policies of Catherine
the Great, and how she regarded Islam as a pillar,
along with Russian (Christian) Orthodoxy. He compares
this with attempts in the modern Russia to re-establish
and reconstruct the State-religious ties, not just
with Orthodoxy to the exclusion of Islam but with
both, in some balance. He recalls how, soon after
capturing Tashkent, a Russian general developed
a compact with the Central Asian Muslim religious
scholars guaranteeing to uphold their religious
tradition, authority and institutions in exchange
of their support and loyalty. The Tsarists not only
supported the Muslim scholars and elite but helped
them fight to uphold the Sharia law and fighting
what they thought was heresy. Russians of course
helped their favorite scholars, and even adjudicated
and mediated internal conflicts and grievances,
not leaving entirely in the hands of Islamic judges.
Crews believes that an understanding between the
modern Russian nationalism and Russian Muslims is
not such an impossibility, despite the vociferous
anti-Muslim sentiments among the neo-nationalist
Russians today. In Russia today, there are many
high-ranking political figures of Muslim-Tartar
background who seem to be leaning toward a Eurasian
or ‘Slavic-Turkic’ union (i.e., most
of the former Soviet Union) to resist the Western
Anglo-Saxon capitalistic (read: US-UK) policies.
In his briefing to Radio Free Europe office Washington,
DC, Paul Goble (a Russia expert from University
of Tallinn, Estonia, a former Soviet republic) predicted
that Russia will have a Muslim majority “within
our life-time.” He based this on the following
ethnographic statistics: (i) Since 1989, there has
been a 40% increase in Muslim population in Russia
(25 million, self-declared), with 2.5 to 3.5 million
living in Moscow alone, more than in any European
city, (ii) Russia had about 300 mosques in 1991,
and now more than 8,000, (iii) military experts
predict that in the next 4-5 years, Muslim conscripts
in Russian military would account for 40%, and (iv)
the 70% or so ethnic Russians who now have anti-Muslim
feelings wouldn’t be able to dampen the Muslim
rise; instead, it might radicalize more Muslims
not radicalized now.
Crews thinks that turning the Chechen war into a
‘war of civilizations’ would further
alienate Muslims who now live quietly in 89 different
regions of Russia, some in deep Slavic heartland.
This, Russia cannot afford at this time, but the
debate continues as things develop. History echoes
loud.
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