30.12.2020
Moscow
Damir Mukhetdinov - about the results of the XVI Muslim International Forum and the outcomes of 2020
The Muslim International Forum, which takes place annually in December, traditionally becomes a summing up of the year and formulates the current development vectors for the coming year. 2020 was a very unusual and complex year, full of events and new ideas in its own way. The most significant results of 2020 are analyzed in a traditional interview following the discussions of the XVI International Muslim Forum "The culture of encounter: religious ethics during the pandemic" by the Executive Secretary of the MIF, First Deputy Chairman of the RBM of the Russian Federation, Doctor of theology Damir Mukhetdinov.
- Damir-hazrat, the most acute theme of the outgoing year was the new European state policy towards Muslim minorities. This is an important change in official rhetoric, which cannot but affect the political landscape of Europe as a whole.
You know, when I have been talking about state-confessional (state-Islamic) cooperation in the field of financing the statutory activities of religious boards of Muslims and Islamic education in the Russian Federation for many recent years, I have received grins from many Muslim leaders of European countries, officials from the ministries of France, Germany and other states of the European Union, as well as the United States. They said that " in Russia, Vladimir Putin and the presidential administration want to control religious life, restrict rights and freedoms." This included the policy of the Russian state towards its own Muslim population, which included the establishment by Catherine II, the German princess on the Russian throne — of the Orenburg Mohammedan Ecclesiastical Assembly (OMDS) with its history, the start of a training program for Muslim staff and the intellectual elite, and the work of a special fund that finances programs for the development of Muslim institutions.
And now the Europeans themselves have come to what Russia was thinking about almost 20 years ago — the integration and socialization of the Muslim community. However, in contrast to Russia, the tools chosen were completely different, namely, restricting the rights of believers, insulting and defaming them. It has come to the point that EU officials call Islam fascism and put an equal sign between these words.
It is obvious to me that sooner or later the Western states will be forced to change their internal policies towards Muslims living in these countries, primarily in the field of training specialists for religious organizations. Here everything is transparent and predictable. The number of the Muslim community in Western countries is constantly increasing, both due to the high birth rate and due to the migration influx. You can try to limit this migration, but you will not be able to cancel it, because often people simply save their lives: because of climate change in the Middle East, life is becoming more difficult, there is not enough food and water, there is no work, there are no social elevators. The greater the number of Muslims, the more they need imams, hafizs and reciters of the Koran, mudarris - teachers of the basics of Islam. Since it is almost impossible to get a full-fledged Muslim theological education in European countries (at least until recently it was), religious authorities are invited to the community from the country of origin: Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, etc.
Imams who have spent their entire lives in a particular Muslim country and received a theological education there come to Europe for religious service and see there a" terrible", in their opinion, picture of "universal moral decay". Maybe not all of them, but many remember the hadith of the Prophet (peace be upon him): "Who will see the sinful, let him change it with his hands; if not with our hands, change it by his word, and if you can't, so they are at least in your heart does not agree with it." Further, a certain part of the parishioners tries to change this "evil" with their hands, although most do it with words in their homes, in their kitchens.
Western Muslims, with rare exceptions, are excluded from the political, cultural, financial and economic life of the states where they live by the will of fate. In this regard, our Russian Muslims, although they have developed independently from the Russian state for many centuries, are today much more a part of Russian society. Our Muslims have something to be proud of both in historical terms, and in cultural, sports, military achievements, as well as in economic success, if you look at the first lines of the Forbes lists, and political ones. For example, according to one of the analytical centers, three Muslim politicians-President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov, head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov and head of Bashkortostan Radiy Khabirov — entered the top ten of the rating of heads of subjects of the Russian Federation. And the first two from the list are in the top three. Other similar ratings confirm these results. And I am talking about political and state figures at the level of deputies, mayors of cities, heads of regional parliaments at the same.
Let us remember such an iconic figure as Imam Shamil: half his life he fought against the Russian Empire, but then he changed his paradigm, his view of life, and realized the scale of Russia's greatness. Seeing it firsthand, he was struck by the factories, railways, architecture, and living conditions that existed in the empire of that era. He did not agree with all aspects of life (for example, the performance at the opera shocked him; he was also a critic of the social-class system), but in the end he realized that the Caucasus outside of Russia will never be able to achieve such a high level of civilizational development, which was achieved by the inhabitants of the Russian regions and cities. Now tell me: can the Muslims of the Netherlands or Switzerland give an example of a single figure who has made a significant contribution to the history of these states and these communities?
The conclusion is obvious: Western Muslims are isolated from Western society. Western politicians will do everything possible and impossible to bridge this gap. Today, the trend is set for a forceful, knee-deep solution to the issue, as we see from the actions of the French political leadership. I do not believe that such a complex and large-scale issue can be solved in this way. Let's see what the results of such a policy will be. However, we believe that the Muslim communities of Western countries will have to react in one way or another to the unprecedented interference of politicians in their internal life, because this is a direct violation of the constitutions of many Western countries, especially the constitution of the Fifth Republic (France)! It would be good if they could develop adequate responses and move from confrontation to beneficial solutions for all parties. We are ready to share brotherly advice and instructions on how to move smoothly to cooperation with authorities in Western countries.
— All the more so since these issues were studied and understood by Russian Muslim philosophers centuries earlier, although, unfortunately, all this intellectual heritage is still not accessible to European, even Russian-speaking readers.
For decades, we have done everything possible to revive the memory of the great theologians of the past, who stood at the origins and developed in Russia and other countries the school of progressive approach to the modern world — the school of Jadidism. Paradoxically, some muftis and imams, rectors of Islamic universities, including religious figures, especially in the Republic of Tatarstan, have been endlessly slandering Jadid theologians in recent years, contrasting them with Kadimists and reactionaries. Such a large-scale trend and ideological pressure did not affect our position: we are proud of Husain Faizkhanov and Shigabutdin Marjani, Ismail Gasprinsky, Galimjan Baroudi, Rizaetdin Fakhretdin, Zyetdin Kamali, Ali Kayaev and Sayfulla-qadi Bashlarov, Abdurrahman Rasuli, Musa Bigiyev and other enlighteners who realized the need for reforms in Islamic education and in the way of thinking of Muslims. In early 2021 A series of works in Russian, Tatar, Arabic, and Old Ottoman languages will be published, including those first introduced into scientific circulation by Husain Faizkhanov, Rizaetdin Fakhretdin, and Musa Bigiev. And during 2021-2022, we will work on the publication of complete works by these authors.
Many of the Jadid ideas were ahead of their time, sometimes by more than a century. Today, Musa Bigiev's ideas about the inclusiveness of God's mercy are more relevant than ever, which oppose exclusivism, which has been established in the Islamic tradition since the early Middle Ages. At the same time, none of the Jadid heritage contradicts the Qur'an, but is based on a broad view of the Qur'an and the Sunnah, develops the ideas of the greatest philosophers and theologians of the past, from Abu Hanifa, Al-Ghazali and Ibn Arabi to Muhammad Abdo and Rashid Rida, Muhammad Iqbal (the last three, unfortunately, did not manage to create a stable theological school).
Islam in the Russian environment developed in a special way, primarily due to the involvement of Russian Muslims in the processes of the industrial revolution of the XIX century, as well as cooperation with the scientific (Oriental) community of the Russian Empire. It is no coincidence that the first geographical points of spread of Jadidism are the St. Petersburg Imperial University, where Husain Faizkhanov, Mirza Kazem Bey, Sheikh Muhammad at-Tantawi worked; Bakhchisarai with its proximity to Turkey and Europe, where Ismail bey Gasprinsky's activity unfolded; Nizhny Novgorod with its international Makaryev Fair, one of the first stone mosques and the Jadid madrasah of the Russian Empire, where Gasprinsky found funding for his activities from key figures of the Russian Muslim capital of that time; Kazan as the center of Muslim printing and the activities of the intellectual block of Marjani. Today, the entire Muslim world, especially communities in Western countries, find themselves in a situation where the environment, with its ideological basis of liberalism and neo-capitalist way of life, puts pressure on followers of different traditions and religions, including Islam, to integrate into this environment. In fact, there are only three ways out: to wage war with the West, which is obviously losing in the conditions of industrial backwardness of Muslims; to abandon religion and switch to the position of atheism, as sometimes happens in Western countries (and as the Turkish Republic developed for decades, up to the 1990s); try to modernize those conservative attitudes that are not related to the religion, but are accepted as such due to the fact that Islamic theology has not progressed for centuries. We are ready to work with the third group of believers to convey to them the basic principles of Jadidism, which, of course, will be in demand due to their lack of alternatives.
— Let's turn our eyes from the West to the conditional East — our closest neighbors and brothers in the CIS countries. Today, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and other republics are experiencing a real Islamic renaissance, fully supported by the governments of these countries and their leadership at the presidential level.
— As the First Deputy Chairman of the Religious Board of Muslims of the Russian Federation, I want to express my full satisfaction with the processes of our interaction with the Muslim communities of the CIS countries. We have full mutual understanding with muftis and rectors of Islamic universities, as well as with statesmen and diplomats of all key CIS countries. Muftis of the CIS countries, rectors of Islamic universities regularly attend our events, including visiting ones, and invite us to their countries. The works of theologians of both the past and the present are translated into the languages of the peoples of the CIS and published. Our achievements are being implemented in the programmes of Islamic universities in the CIS countries. Just like the religious leaders of other Muslim countries, our brothers in the CIS are well aware of the need for timely and correct reforms in thinking that correspond to the Koran and the image of our Prophet (peace be upon him). I would like to emphasize that we are not talking about the reform of Islam — we are always talking about changing the system of views of ordinary Muslims and their religious leaders, but not Islam.
Many tools of state-Islamic cooperation that have shown their usefulness for the Ummah and for the country as a whole in the Russian Federation are also reflected in the brotherly CIS countries. Thus, an analog of the Fund for Support of Islamic Culture, Science and Education was created in Kazakhstan. We have our own vision, strategy and implementation plan for popularizing the rich Hanafi-Maturid and Naqshbandi heritage of Uzbekistan and Central Asia as a whole.
Today, in the direction of the religious departments of Muslims of the CIS republics, we accept applicants to study at the Moscow Islamic Institute, after which they continue their education at St. Petersburg State or Moscow State Universities, and then employ them in the central office or regional religious departments of Muslims, as well as replenish the Moscow Islamic Institute with young specialists.Graduates of the Moscow Islamic Institute are now the backbone of the religious staff of the Muslim Religious Association of the Republic of Belarus. We intend to continue this practice, including the training of imams for European countries, including EU members. This includes Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Poland, Germany and other countries.
In general, Russian religious, political and public figures, of course, need to pay more attention to the countries of the post-Soviet space. The demographic problems that exist in our country in the coming decades will be solved exclusively at the expense of immigrants from Central Asia (although their immigrant potential is not unlimited); we should not have any illusions about moving to us Boers from South Africa or Old Believers from South America. Although it is possible that in the predictable future we will see a flow of migrant workers from the Middle East and Turkey. Therefore, today we need to think about how to integrate this fresh flow into Russian society.
Everything I said above about the problems of integrating Muslims into the communities of Western countries is relevant for the Russian Federation in this regard. So far, however, we see only two approaches, both counterproductive: the implicit, unspoken policy of baptizing migrant children through the imposition of services of Orthodox priests and Protestant priests in kindergartens, schools, the media and even hospitals, and the creation of appropriate infrastructure; or ignoring the problems of the multi-million-strong Muslim community and depriving representatives of Islam of their fundamental rights, including the right to build mosques, the right to reclaim and restore religious buildings that historically belonged to communities. In this regard, Mufti Gaynutdin's appeal regarding the Patriot Park has gained a wide resonance. In this park, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, a giant Orthodox church was built in honor of the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Mufti Gaynutdin called for the construction of temples of other religions, taking into account the multinational and multi-religious nature of the Red Army of the USSR.
The second approach prevailed at the time in Western Europe-France, Germany, the Netherlands. The problem with the integration of first-generation migrants, which was not solved in the 1960s," tackled " only in the second or third generation. In Russia we risk of repeating this situation, because the issue must be dealt with extensively and thoroughly now; at the same time, only reputable religious organizations with a clear vision of the future of state-confessional relations can be partners of the state in its solution, and not one-day firms or puppet muftiats created in the offices of leaders of other religious traditions. As long as state approaches do not prevail, we will all be hostages of trends imposed outside of Russia or by chauvinists of various classes.
— During the XVI Muslim International Forum, one of the semantic accents was the announcement of celebrations on the occasion of the 1100th anniversary of the official adoption of Islam by the peoples of Volga Bulgaria. What is the international significance of this event?
Volga Bulgaria is the first independent Muslim state in Europe, so we have always believed that the memory of it should be preserved and multiplied. In this regard, Mufti Gaynutdin had already in 2016 in Kazan addressed the leading statesmen of the Republic of Tatarstan — Mintimer Shaimiev and Rustam Minnikhanov-with a proposal for a broad celebration of the 1100th anniversary of the official adoption of Islam by the peoples of Volga Bulgaria. During his online conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 4th November 2020. Mufti Gaynutdin appealed to him with a request to give the celebrations an All-Russian state character. The response was immediate, and the President has already instructed the Government of the Russian Federation to set up an organizing committee and start discussing proposals for events to be held at the state level throughout the country.
It is important to understand that the scale of Volga Bulgaria was significant even by medieval standards. The predecessor of this state was Great Bulgaria (VII century AD) in the Southern Russian steppes, which gave birth to Danube Bulgaria (VII century), the Balkar people in the North Caucasus, and Volga Bulgaria (VIII century) on the Middle Volga. Archaeologists have recorded and described the monuments of the Bulgar culture from the Perm region (Rozhdestvenskoe gorodishche) to the Astrakhan region (Saksin); Bulgar products are found throughout the Volga trade route up to the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. When the Bulgars, in the course of a fierce and desperate resistance to the invasion of the Mongol army, were forced to hide, they turned to the Vladimir-Suzdal Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich. According to the Russian historian and statesman V. N. Tatishchev, he allocated them lands in his principality, in the northern course of the Volga. Elements of the culture of Volga Bulgaria are found in all the peoples of the Volga region and the Urals, both Turkic and Ugro-Finnish. The descendants of the Volga Bulgars are considered to be modern Kazan Tatars (and most likely Chuvash), and they historically live throughout Russia, from the borders with Finland to Vladivostok. Therefore, it is quite logical that the celebration of the 1100th anniversary of the adoption of Islam by the peoples of Volga Bulgaria is not a holiday of one subject of the Russian Federation, but of our entire country.
In the international aspect, this anniversary is intended to emphasize that Islamic culture is not an alien component of European civilization, but, on the contrary, the state - and its cultural-forming part. Today, Europe itself is experiencing an identity crisis, on the one hand, remaining in the paradigm of thinking of the former world colonialist, and on the other — breaking away from its millennial religious foundations. Under the influence of the Black lives matter movement, the Old World is forced to rethink its historical heritage and will be able to accept those milestones that are associated with civilizational development, interaction and dialogue of cultures and peoples, as the head of the world's largest religious organization, Pope Francis, recently reminded all mankind. In order to demonstrate solidarity with many of the ideas of the Papal encyclical Fratelli tutti, the publishing house "Medina" and the Muslim International Forum on the eve of Christmas on 25th January published it first Russian translation.
Returning to your question, ideologically, the 1100th anniversary of the official adoption of Islam by the peoples of Volga Bulgaria and its celebration sets a paradigm for cooperation in many areas — both Asian-Islamic and European, state-confessional cooperation and interreligious dialogue.
We plan to hold scientific conferences, seminars, and round tables in the framework of the anniversary in the leading scientific centers of Islamic studies; scientific documentaries will be filmed and demonstrated; monographs, collected works and collections of articles will be published; TV and radio programs dedicated to the anniversary will be broadcast; mosques, madrassas and other objects of Muslim infrastructure will be built or restored. The Dissertation Council on Islamic Theology will be launched. And, of course, musical and theatrical performances of our best bands from Kazan, Ufa, Moscow, and St. Petersburg will be held all over the country. And the culmination of the events will be the XVIII Muslim International Forum in December 2022. The holiday should be nationwide and remain in the memory of everyone who honors Russian history and the rich culture of multinational Russia for a long time! In Sha Allah!
- Damir-hazrat, the most acute theme of the outgoing year was the new European state policy towards Muslim minorities. This is an important change in official rhetoric, which cannot but affect the political landscape of Europe as a whole.
You know, when I have been talking about state-confessional (state-Islamic) cooperation in the field of financing the statutory activities of religious boards of Muslims and Islamic education in the Russian Federation for many recent years, I have received grins from many Muslim leaders of European countries, officials from the ministries of France, Germany and other states of the European Union, as well as the United States. They said that " in Russia, Vladimir Putin and the presidential administration want to control religious life, restrict rights and freedoms." This included the policy of the Russian state towards its own Muslim population, which included the establishment by Catherine II, the German princess on the Russian throne — of the Orenburg Mohammedan Ecclesiastical Assembly (OMDS) with its history, the start of a training program for Muslim staff and the intellectual elite, and the work of a special fund that finances programs for the development of Muslim institutions.
And now the Europeans themselves have come to what Russia was thinking about almost 20 years ago — the integration and socialization of the Muslim community. However, in contrast to Russia, the tools chosen were completely different, namely, restricting the rights of believers, insulting and defaming them. It has come to the point that EU officials call Islam fascism and put an equal sign between these words.
It is obvious to me that sooner or later the Western states will be forced to change their internal policies towards Muslims living in these countries, primarily in the field of training specialists for religious organizations. Here everything is transparent and predictable. The number of the Muslim community in Western countries is constantly increasing, both due to the high birth rate and due to the migration influx. You can try to limit this migration, but you will not be able to cancel it, because often people simply save their lives: because of climate change in the Middle East, life is becoming more difficult, there is not enough food and water, there is no work, there are no social elevators. The greater the number of Muslims, the more they need imams, hafizs and reciters of the Koran, mudarris - teachers of the basics of Islam. Since it is almost impossible to get a full-fledged Muslim theological education in European countries (at least until recently it was), religious authorities are invited to the community from the country of origin: Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, etc.
Imams who have spent their entire lives in a particular Muslim country and received a theological education there come to Europe for religious service and see there a" terrible", in their opinion, picture of "universal moral decay". Maybe not all of them, but many remember the hadith of the Prophet (peace be upon him): "Who will see the sinful, let him change it with his hands; if not with our hands, change it by his word, and if you can't, so they are at least in your heart does not agree with it." Further, a certain part of the parishioners tries to change this "evil" with their hands, although most do it with words in their homes, in their kitchens.
Western Muslims, with rare exceptions, are excluded from the political, cultural, financial and economic life of the states where they live by the will of fate. In this regard, our Russian Muslims, although they have developed independently from the Russian state for many centuries, are today much more a part of Russian society. Our Muslims have something to be proud of both in historical terms, and in cultural, sports, military achievements, as well as in economic success, if you look at the first lines of the Forbes lists, and political ones. For example, according to one of the analytical centers, three Muslim politicians-President of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov, head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov and head of Bashkortostan Radiy Khabirov — entered the top ten of the rating of heads of subjects of the Russian Federation. And the first two from the list are in the top three. Other similar ratings confirm these results. And I am talking about political and state figures at the level of deputies, mayors of cities, heads of regional parliaments at the same.
Let us remember such an iconic figure as Imam Shamil: half his life he fought against the Russian Empire, but then he changed his paradigm, his view of life, and realized the scale of Russia's greatness. Seeing it firsthand, he was struck by the factories, railways, architecture, and living conditions that existed in the empire of that era. He did not agree with all aspects of life (for example, the performance at the opera shocked him; he was also a critic of the social-class system), but in the end he realized that the Caucasus outside of Russia will never be able to achieve such a high level of civilizational development, which was achieved by the inhabitants of the Russian regions and cities. Now tell me: can the Muslims of the Netherlands or Switzerland give an example of a single figure who has made a significant contribution to the history of these states and these communities?
The conclusion is obvious: Western Muslims are isolated from Western society. Western politicians will do everything possible and impossible to bridge this gap. Today, the trend is set for a forceful, knee-deep solution to the issue, as we see from the actions of the French political leadership. I do not believe that such a complex and large-scale issue can be solved in this way. Let's see what the results of such a policy will be. However, we believe that the Muslim communities of Western countries will have to react in one way or another to the unprecedented interference of politicians in their internal life, because this is a direct violation of the constitutions of many Western countries, especially the constitution of the Fifth Republic (France)! It would be good if they could develop adequate responses and move from confrontation to beneficial solutions for all parties. We are ready to share brotherly advice and instructions on how to move smoothly to cooperation with authorities in Western countries.
— All the more so since these issues were studied and understood by Russian Muslim philosophers centuries earlier, although, unfortunately, all this intellectual heritage is still not accessible to European, even Russian-speaking readers.
For decades, we have done everything possible to revive the memory of the great theologians of the past, who stood at the origins and developed in Russia and other countries the school of progressive approach to the modern world — the school of Jadidism. Paradoxically, some muftis and imams, rectors of Islamic universities, including religious figures, especially in the Republic of Tatarstan, have been endlessly slandering Jadid theologians in recent years, contrasting them with Kadimists and reactionaries. Such a large-scale trend and ideological pressure did not affect our position: we are proud of Husain Faizkhanov and Shigabutdin Marjani, Ismail Gasprinsky, Galimjan Baroudi, Rizaetdin Fakhretdin, Zyetdin Kamali, Ali Kayaev and Sayfulla-qadi Bashlarov, Abdurrahman Rasuli, Musa Bigiyev and other enlighteners who realized the need for reforms in Islamic education and in the way of thinking of Muslims. In early 2021 A series of works in Russian, Tatar, Arabic, and Old Ottoman languages will be published, including those first introduced into scientific circulation by Husain Faizkhanov, Rizaetdin Fakhretdin, and Musa Bigiev. And during 2021-2022, we will work on the publication of complete works by these authors.
Many of the Jadid ideas were ahead of their time, sometimes by more than a century. Today, Musa Bigiev's ideas about the inclusiveness of God's mercy are more relevant than ever, which oppose exclusivism, which has been established in the Islamic tradition since the early Middle Ages. At the same time, none of the Jadid heritage contradicts the Qur'an, but is based on a broad view of the Qur'an and the Sunnah, develops the ideas of the greatest philosophers and theologians of the past, from Abu Hanifa, Al-Ghazali and Ibn Arabi to Muhammad Abdo and Rashid Rida, Muhammad Iqbal (the last three, unfortunately, did not manage to create a stable theological school).
Islam in the Russian environment developed in a special way, primarily due to the involvement of Russian Muslims in the processes of the industrial revolution of the XIX century, as well as cooperation with the scientific (Oriental) community of the Russian Empire. It is no coincidence that the first geographical points of spread of Jadidism are the St. Petersburg Imperial University, where Husain Faizkhanov, Mirza Kazem Bey, Sheikh Muhammad at-Tantawi worked; Bakhchisarai with its proximity to Turkey and Europe, where Ismail bey Gasprinsky's activity unfolded; Nizhny Novgorod with its international Makaryev Fair, one of the first stone mosques and the Jadid madrasah of the Russian Empire, where Gasprinsky found funding for his activities from key figures of the Russian Muslim capital of that time; Kazan as the center of Muslim printing and the activities of the intellectual block of Marjani. Today, the entire Muslim world, especially communities in Western countries, find themselves in a situation where the environment, with its ideological basis of liberalism and neo-capitalist way of life, puts pressure on followers of different traditions and religions, including Islam, to integrate into this environment. In fact, there are only three ways out: to wage war with the West, which is obviously losing in the conditions of industrial backwardness of Muslims; to abandon religion and switch to the position of atheism, as sometimes happens in Western countries (and as the Turkish Republic developed for decades, up to the 1990s); try to modernize those conservative attitudes that are not related to the religion, but are accepted as such due to the fact that Islamic theology has not progressed for centuries. We are ready to work with the third group of believers to convey to them the basic principles of Jadidism, which, of course, will be in demand due to their lack of alternatives.
— Let's turn our eyes from the West to the conditional East — our closest neighbors and brothers in the CIS countries. Today, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and other republics are experiencing a real Islamic renaissance, fully supported by the governments of these countries and their leadership at the presidential level.
— As the First Deputy Chairman of the Religious Board of Muslims of the Russian Federation, I want to express my full satisfaction with the processes of our interaction with the Muslim communities of the CIS countries. We have full mutual understanding with muftis and rectors of Islamic universities, as well as with statesmen and diplomats of all key CIS countries. Muftis of the CIS countries, rectors of Islamic universities regularly attend our events, including visiting ones, and invite us to their countries. The works of theologians of both the past and the present are translated into the languages of the peoples of the CIS and published. Our achievements are being implemented in the programmes of Islamic universities in the CIS countries. Just like the religious leaders of other Muslim countries, our brothers in the CIS are well aware of the need for timely and correct reforms in thinking that correspond to the Koran and the image of our Prophet (peace be upon him). I would like to emphasize that we are not talking about the reform of Islam — we are always talking about changing the system of views of ordinary Muslims and their religious leaders, but not Islam.
Many tools of state-Islamic cooperation that have shown their usefulness for the Ummah and for the country as a whole in the Russian Federation are also reflected in the brotherly CIS countries. Thus, an analog of the Fund for Support of Islamic Culture, Science and Education was created in Kazakhstan. We have our own vision, strategy and implementation plan for popularizing the rich Hanafi-Maturid and Naqshbandi heritage of Uzbekistan and Central Asia as a whole.
Today, in the direction of the religious departments of Muslims of the CIS republics, we accept applicants to study at the Moscow Islamic Institute, after which they continue their education at St. Petersburg State or Moscow State Universities, and then employ them in the central office or regional religious departments of Muslims, as well as replenish the Moscow Islamic Institute with young specialists.Graduates of the Moscow Islamic Institute are now the backbone of the religious staff of the Muslim Religious Association of the Republic of Belarus. We intend to continue this practice, including the training of imams for European countries, including EU members. This includes Finland, the Baltic States, Ukraine, Poland, Germany and other countries.
In general, Russian religious, political and public figures, of course, need to pay more attention to the countries of the post-Soviet space. The demographic problems that exist in our country in the coming decades will be solved exclusively at the expense of immigrants from Central Asia (although their immigrant potential is not unlimited); we should not have any illusions about moving to us Boers from South Africa or Old Believers from South America. Although it is possible that in the predictable future we will see a flow of migrant workers from the Middle East and Turkey. Therefore, today we need to think about how to integrate this fresh flow into Russian society.
Everything I said above about the problems of integrating Muslims into the communities of Western countries is relevant for the Russian Federation in this regard. So far, however, we see only two approaches, both counterproductive: the implicit, unspoken policy of baptizing migrant children through the imposition of services of Orthodox priests and Protestant priests in kindergartens, schools, the media and even hospitals, and the creation of appropriate infrastructure; or ignoring the problems of the multi-million-strong Muslim community and depriving representatives of Islam of their fundamental rights, including the right to build mosques, the right to reclaim and restore religious buildings that historically belonged to communities. In this regard, Mufti Gaynutdin's appeal regarding the Patriot Park has gained a wide resonance. In this park, under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, a giant Orthodox church was built in honor of the 75th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. Mufti Gaynutdin called for the construction of temples of other religions, taking into account the multinational and multi-religious nature of the Red Army of the USSR.
The second approach prevailed at the time in Western Europe-France, Germany, the Netherlands. The problem with the integration of first-generation migrants, which was not solved in the 1960s," tackled " only in the second or third generation. In Russia we risk of repeating this situation, because the issue must be dealt with extensively and thoroughly now; at the same time, only reputable religious organizations with a clear vision of the future of state-confessional relations can be partners of the state in its solution, and not one-day firms or puppet muftiats created in the offices of leaders of other religious traditions. As long as state approaches do not prevail, we will all be hostages of trends imposed outside of Russia or by chauvinists of various classes.
— During the XVI Muslim International Forum, one of the semantic accents was the announcement of celebrations on the occasion of the 1100th anniversary of the official adoption of Islam by the peoples of Volga Bulgaria. What is the international significance of this event?
Volga Bulgaria is the first independent Muslim state in Europe, so we have always believed that the memory of it should be preserved and multiplied. In this regard, Mufti Gaynutdin had already in 2016 in Kazan addressed the leading statesmen of the Republic of Tatarstan — Mintimer Shaimiev and Rustam Minnikhanov-with a proposal for a broad celebration of the 1100th anniversary of the official adoption of Islam by the peoples of Volga Bulgaria. During his online conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 4th November 2020. Mufti Gaynutdin appealed to him with a request to give the celebrations an All-Russian state character. The response was immediate, and the President has already instructed the Government of the Russian Federation to set up an organizing committee and start discussing proposals for events to be held at the state level throughout the country.
It is important to understand that the scale of Volga Bulgaria was significant even by medieval standards. The predecessor of this state was Great Bulgaria (VII century AD) in the Southern Russian steppes, which gave birth to Danube Bulgaria (VII century), the Balkar people in the North Caucasus, and Volga Bulgaria (VIII century) on the Middle Volga. Archaeologists have recorded and described the monuments of the Bulgar culture from the Perm region (Rozhdestvenskoe gorodishche) to the Astrakhan region (Saksin); Bulgar products are found throughout the Volga trade route up to the island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. When the Bulgars, in the course of a fierce and desperate resistance to the invasion of the Mongol army, were forced to hide, they turned to the Vladimir-Suzdal Prince Yuri Vsevolodovich. According to the Russian historian and statesman V. N. Tatishchev, he allocated them lands in his principality, in the northern course of the Volga. Elements of the culture of Volga Bulgaria are found in all the peoples of the Volga region and the Urals, both Turkic and Ugro-Finnish. The descendants of the Volga Bulgars are considered to be modern Kazan Tatars (and most likely Chuvash), and they historically live throughout Russia, from the borders with Finland to Vladivostok. Therefore, it is quite logical that the celebration of the 1100th anniversary of the adoption of Islam by the peoples of Volga Bulgaria is not a holiday of one subject of the Russian Federation, but of our entire country.
In the international aspect, this anniversary is intended to emphasize that Islamic culture is not an alien component of European civilization, but, on the contrary, the state - and its cultural-forming part. Today, Europe itself is experiencing an identity crisis, on the one hand, remaining in the paradigm of thinking of the former world colonialist, and on the other — breaking away from its millennial religious foundations. Under the influence of the Black lives matter movement, the Old World is forced to rethink its historical heritage and will be able to accept those milestones that are associated with civilizational development, interaction and dialogue of cultures and peoples, as the head of the world's largest religious organization, Pope Francis, recently reminded all mankind. In order to demonstrate solidarity with many of the ideas of the Papal encyclical Fratelli tutti, the publishing house "Medina" and the Muslim International Forum on the eve of Christmas on 25th January published it first Russian translation.
Returning to your question, ideologically, the 1100th anniversary of the official adoption of Islam by the peoples of Volga Bulgaria and its celebration sets a paradigm for cooperation in many areas — both Asian-Islamic and European, state-confessional cooperation and interreligious dialogue.
We plan to hold scientific conferences, seminars, and round tables in the framework of the anniversary in the leading scientific centers of Islamic studies; scientific documentaries will be filmed and demonstrated; monographs, collected works and collections of articles will be published; TV and radio programs dedicated to the anniversary will be broadcast; mosques, madrassas and other objects of Muslim infrastructure will be built or restored. The Dissertation Council on Islamic Theology will be launched. And, of course, musical and theatrical performances of our best bands from Kazan, Ufa, Moscow, and St. Petersburg will be held all over the country. And the culmination of the events will be the XVIII Muslim International Forum in December 2022. The holiday should be nationwide and remain in the memory of everyone who honors Russian history and the rich culture of multinational Russia for a long time! In Sha Allah!