CC BY
37
proselytism is for Protestants ordinary missionary activity which is inseparable from the general principles of their teaching. This is where tension arises, since the traditional religions regard each of the South Caucasian countries as their “canonical territory,”11 on which the missionary activity of people of other faiths is considered to be proselytism. Missionaries are accused of bribing people, are called betrayers, traitors, and so on. What is more, most of society is incapable of distinguishing one denomination from another, which is the reason for the equally negative attitude toward all the organizations. This situation is becoming entrenched to a certain extent for the reason we already mentioned—lack of information (or to be more exact, lack of objective and unbiased information) about Protestants. There are also legislative problems, the resolution of which could play a great role in establishing an appropriate legal status for the Protestant denominations, regulating freedom of conscience, religious education in state schools, and questions relating to the property of religious organizations, and so on. These topics are extremely pertinent, although common approaches to resolving the problems have still not been found.
However, in spite of all the negative aspects, perceptible improvements are being seen, even though the entire social potential of Protestantism, which could have a positive influence on society in every respect, is unfortunately still not being tapped. This is possibly due to the insufficient development of these denominations or due to the still unfavorable climate created by the powers that be. Moreover, globalization has placed new tasks on the agenda to which solutions are being sought both outside and inside the Protestant world.
centripetal principle of missionary activity prevails in traditional confessions, which is carried out in church during the liturgy.
11 The representatives of the dominating confessions often appeal to this term, it sometimes also appears in written documents, although its substantiation (particularly legal) is doubtful.
Zaid ABDULAGATOV
Ph.D. (Philos.), head of the Sociology Department, Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography, Daghestanian Scientific Center of the RAS
(Makhachkala, Daghestan).
THE MORAL ASPECTS OF ADAPTATION TO GLOBAL CHANGES: DAGHESTAN CASE-STUDY
Abstract
T
he problem of religious extremism has not yet lost its urgency in the Northern Caucasus. In this context the state
continues to rely on force, even though it has become clear that it is fighting the results rather than the causes. If we want to
find other, more effective, methods for fighting religious extremism (called Wahhabism in the Northern Caucasus) we should study the Muslims’ religious consciousness and the way they are adapting to the changes in all spheres of public life (moral, political, economic, etc.). The author, who believes that the problem of North Caucasian Wahhabism is a problem of adaptation, suggests that non-violent opposition to it should be based on the specifics of Muslim adaptation in the
context of the liberal and democratic transformations now underway in Russia. In fact, Wahhabism as a protest movement that challenges society and the state can be described as one of the adaptation forms in the sphere of morality since it proclaims moral purification as one of its aims. The author offers his philosophical and sociological analysis designed to identify the current state and nature of the moral adaptation potential of ordinary Daghestanis.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
Today, Russian society, which has lost the unambiguous and clear ideological landmarks that kept the old system of moral values together, has come face to face with fairly urgent moral dilemmas. The ideological pluralism envisaged in the Constitution of the Russian Federation deprived all sorts of social institutions engaged, in one form or another, in raising and educating the younger generation of the philosophical foundations indispensable for shaping personalities and civil awareness. Today, personal socialization in Russia is proceeding under the impact of Western culture and liberal-democratic values which in many respects have little in common with the traditional culture of the peoples of Russia (which is doubly true of the Muslims of Russia). This is not all: amid the philosophical confusion that reigns in the Russian system of education and upbringing, all sorts of publications (fiction included) that glorify violence, individualism, egotism, and immorality have become an everyday feature. The media, TV in particular, add to the process. Today, television has become a powerful and never idling way to bring aggressive egotists and killers into the world. Young and still unformed minds that tend toward an emotional and romantic perception of the world are easily charmed by the image of strong and successful men who turn out to be hired guns, central figures in the American films shown daily and without restrictions on the Russian TV channels. It should be said that France, Germany, and some other countries have introduced strict quotas and high taxes on this type of American product. The situation in Russia has nothing to do with national and state interests.
The two largest confessions of Russia—the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and Islam—have shown the greatest concern for the state of morality in the country. They expressed this in the program documents of the ROC and the Council of the Muftis of Russia1 which speak of the important role of religion in shaping the nation’s spirituality. The spiritual leaders and theologians feel obliged to ensure either the presence of clergy or at least religious programs in the state educational and penitentiary systems and in the army. Religious morality has just acquired a universal nature and is offered as the only educational option designed to create an integral personality. To some extent these ideas are now realized by at least some academics across Russia and in Daghestan.2 Today we can say that they have partly succeeded. In November 2002 the RF Ministry of Science and Education sent a draft program to the regions for a new subject in the school curriculum—the Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture. The initiative of the spiritual leaders of Russia who want to place moral education on a firm foundation of religious world outlook has caused and still causes stormy discussions between the religious leaders, on the one hand, and the government and intelligentsia, on the other. Vitaly Ginzburg and Zhores Alferov, two
1 See: Osnovy sotsial’noy kontseptsii Russkoy pravoslavnoy tserkvi, Moscow, 2001; Osnovnye polozhenia sotsial’noy programmy Rossiyskikh musulman, Moscow, 2001.
2 See: S. Karpov (Dean of the Faculty of History of Moscow University), “Teologia v svetskikh vuzakh,” NG-Re-ligii, 29 November, 2000; D. Khalidov, “Islam i politika v Daghestane: reformy nazreli,” Molodezh Daghestana, 24 July, 1998; idem, “V poiskakh dostynoy nishi,” AiF Daghestan, 29 January, 1998.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Nobel Prize winners, joined in to sign, together with other Russian scientists and scholars, the Letter of the Eleven in which they objected to the church’s growing influence on the secular education system.
The above brings up at least two questions:
1. Can religious morality serve as the cornerstone of morality in a society that has embraced pluralism of world outlooks and ideologies?
2. To what extent does the mass conscience of the Daghestanis accept the religiosity of man as a sine qua non of his morality? Is a rank-and-file Muslim inclined to support the strict norms of religious morality based on the main sacral texts? Will he, caught as he is in the stream of global migration, information, cultural, and other processes and changes, look for different methods of adaptation?
Philosophy on the Nature of Morality
Morality defined as morals in philosophy is a subject studied by ethics. “Morals is a concept reflecting the actual behavior of members of big or small social groups, as well as the models and standards of conduct people adhere to,”3 which means that ethics, as part of the science of philosophy, studies the customs, mores, and conduct of people in society. In other words, morals can be defined as the “sum-total of regulators of adequate conduct through which man manifests himself as a reasonable, self-conscious, and free creature.”4
At all times ethics concerned itself with the nature and origins of morals; all ethical theories known so far relate morals to one of two types depending on its basic demands. First, there are theories that derive moral demands from the realities of human existence, the “nature of man,” people’s natural requirements and wishes, inborn feelings or facts of their lives taken as the obvious foundation of morals. The theories of the second type base morals on a certain unconditional and extra-historical principle, man’s existence in the outside world. The religious ideas of morals belong to this type.
There is another aspect to the problem: either moral exactions are based on the achievable good, or the very notion of good should be identified and justified through the idea of what should be. The former describes the approaches of consequential ethics, which simplify the moral problem: the motives behind any act and the demand to follow the general principle are of no consequence. Immanuel Kant, who supported the latter, the supremacy of categorical imperative, was convinced that the motive behind human acts and the act itself in the name of moral law are more important than the results of such acts, which do not always depend on man. Religious morals have come close to this position.
In view of the above it should be said that liberal democratic values based on the laws of market economy contradict, to a fairly great extent, the nature of what is morally correct and the German philosopher’s position. In the light of Adam Smith’s economic theory, the market economy preaches individualism, shrewdness, and the priority of the individual’s rights over those of the collective.
Immanuel Kant, on the other hand, as one of the most profound students of morals in the history of philosophy, believed that moral behavior could be described as following one’s duty rather than pursuing one’s own, frequently egoistic, aims. This means that commercial activities that pursue profit rather than public well-being cannot be described as moral even though they produce socially positive effects. The moral requirements placed on man do not imply pursuing private aims in specific situations but rather compliance with general norms and principles of conduct. The forms that express moral norms should not be taken as a rule of external expediency (to achieve something one should act in such and such a way)—they are imperative demands that man should obey in all situations.
3 Dictionary of Philosophy, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1984, p. 277.
4 R.G. Apresian, Slovar filosofskikh terminov, Moscow, 2007.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
The Moral Potential of Religions
The Quran and the Sunnah undoubtedly contribute to man’s moral maturation. The same is true of all other religions—both world and national. Today, some of the Muslim leaders assert that Islam does not contradict democratic and liberal values. In fact, all confessions and states are duty bound to fight drugs, alcohol abuse, and extremism and help resolve the demographic problem; educating a law-abiding citizen and a good family man is one of their common tasks. The issues to which religions (Islam as one of them) contribute in an effort to formulate and preserve human values are numerous, which means that the state and society should tap religious potential.
At the same time, religious consciousness plays a one-sided role in shaping man’s spirituality; from this point of view, religious spirituality is something close to the sacral and the divine; more than that: it completely entrusts itself to them. An atheist is not deprived of spirituality, he is not free from remorse; he loves his neighbor, strives for the ideal, is impressed by beauty. He is an active creator of spiritual-cultural values. Morals as part of spirituality may rest not only on faith but also on a feeling of duty. Prominent Italian scholar and writer Umberto Eco offered this idea by asking: “How else can we explain the fact that atheists also have their share of remorse?”5
This position serves one of the pillars of “autonomous ethics” that treats morals as a sphere of free choice in which man is an autonomous creature. It spreads to the sphere of man’s responsible judgments and actions, in which doing and not-doing belong solely to man, who alone is rewarded or condemned.
The principles of faith which man selects on his own free will are undoubtedly a sign of the autonomous nature of his morals, but religion cannot accept the idea of its autonomy as the possibility of remaining a moral creature outside religion. Man is a spiritual phenomenon only if he is connected to God. “The parable of those who reject faith is as if one were to shout like a goat-herd, to things that listen to nothing but calls and cries: Deaf, dumb, and blind, they are void of wisdom” (Surah 2, Ayah 171). It was not by chance that the Osnovnye polozhenia sotsial’noy programmy rossiiskikh musulman (The Basic Principles of the Social Program of the Muslims of Russia) quoted great Russian writer Dostoevsky: “If there is no God, everything is permitted.”6
The nature of religious morality is much better understood within Max Weber’s idea of two conceptions of rational activities: rationality of traditional feudal society, which he called “value rationality,” and rationality of capitalist society, which he described as “instrumental rationality.” The former describes activity as applied to society and assesses the correlation between activity and the values society has accepted. In religion this is the correlation between activity and religious values, that is, moral behavior. In this case it is not the aim of every individual as a subject of activity that is important but the degree to which his activity corresponds to the values of time, socially important canons, and social status.
Capitalism created a new aspect of rational activity: To what extent can activity produce a result that coincides with the aim? And to what extent do the selected tools ensure effective realization of the aim, that is, to what extent is activity rational?7 In this case, human behavior is rational if it secures the aim. It is moral if it does not violate the law, does not infringe on the legal interests of others, and does not shirk duties. These are the morals of liberal-democratic society put in a nutshell. These two interpretations of rational behavior are not identical—they are even mutually contradictory. Value rationality rejects the individual nature of human rights. Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia Alexy II has pointed out that today, in the context of capitalist social relations, a “new generation of rights that goes against morals” has appeared, as well as “attempts to justify immoral deed by refer-
5 “Pro et Contra,” NG-Religii, 7 December, 2005.
6 Osnovnye polozhenia..., p. 18.
7 See: I.T. Kasavin, V.A. Lektorskiy, V.I. Shvyrev, “Stary i novy ratsionalizm,” Dialog kultur v globaliziruiush-chemsia mire, Moscow, 2005, pp. 102-103.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
ences to human rights.”8 The Osnovnye polozhenia sotsial’noy programmy rossiiskikh musulman agrees with this. Today, in the absence of spirituality young men and teenagers borrow their abuse of drugs and alcohol and the desire to achieve physical pleasure through perversion from the wide-scale promotion of lifestyles “based on the philosophy of liberalism.”9
This is true: liberal-democratic values (or, rather, their Western and American variant) largely contradict the norms of religious morals, especially those preached by Islam. A superficial observer might think that religion and human rights are about the same things: spirituality, humanism, freedom, and well-being. This is true, but the interpretations of these principles are not always identical.
Religious humanism should not be understood as humanism in general. In fact both the interpretation of the principles of religious humanism as part of man’s moral makeup and their realization in everyday life are limited. The norm elevated to the principle can be regarded as the bedrock of morals only when it is reasonably justified and universalized. In other words, the norm, or principle, should promote those rules of conduct that can be tested by universality.
Religious humanism is limited to the faithful. The Quran tells the story of Noah, who was sent to his people with a mission. Some of the people (including Noah’s son) refused to follow him and were drowned in the Flood. “And Noah called upon his Lord, and said: ‘O my Lord, surely my son is of my family, and Your promise [to save my family] is true, and You are the justest of Judges’” (Surah
11, Ayah 45). “He said: ‘O Noah, he is not of your family for his conduct unrighteous. So ask not of Me that of which you have no knowledge...” (Surah 11, Ayah 46).
The Salafi (fundamentalist) Islamic conscience is even more inclined toward the corporate nature of religious morals. For example, Wahhabism teaches humanity in relation to others: be kind, cautious, keep your promise, exercise patience, do not lie and help the blind. Wahhabis called on the faithful to take care of their servants and hired labor and in general preached egalitarianism.10 Their humanism, however, is of a limited nature: it is not even reserved for all Muslims but only for those who are Wahhabis. Their extremist wing thinks nothing of killing a Muslim non-Wahhabi and appropriating his possessions (this is treated as halal). On the other hand, members of traditional Islam in Daghestan do not apply their humanitarian principles to the Wahhabis.11
In the philosophical context the difference between religious humanism and the humanist world outlook boils down to the following. In the broad sense the term describes a mode of thinking that proclaims the well-being of man to be the main aim of social and cultural development and insists on the primary value of man as an individual. Religion, on the other hand, appreciates man’s value depending on the extent to which his behavior corresponds to the norms of any given religious corporation. Man affirms himself by being as actively involved as possible in the social group of believers, in the order organized by God. In other words, religious humanism is theocentric while the humanity of humanism is an anthropocentric phenomenon. These two types are locked in a very complicated contradiction in the sphere of their relations associated with the role of religion in society. Indeed, humanism firmly rejects the claims of the church and the clergy to domination in society, that is, it is anti-clerical in its essence. This is one of the forms of negation of the universal and the binding nature of religious morality and religious humanism as its part.
These differences between the religious and secular understanding of the nature of morality should not be absolutized. This operation is applicable only within the task of identifying the philosophical differences and opposites of these two spiritual orientations. In social practice these two positions often peacefully exist side by side. This can be seen, first, in all sorts of Islamic reformist trends: Jadidism, or rather its enlightening activities, is one of the key elements of humanism. In this
8 From a speech by Patriarch Alexy II at a PACE plenary session in Strasbiurg in October 2007 (see: P. Krug, “Prava cheloveka po Aleksiu II,” Nezavisimaia gazeta, 4 October, 2007).
9 Osnovnye polozhenia... p. 18.
10 See: A.M. Vasiliev, Puritane islama? Moscow, 1967, pp. 107-109.
11 In one of his public speeches late Mufti of Daghestan Said Muhammad Abubakarov said: those killed by a Wahhabi will go to heaven, those who kill a Wahhabi will also go to heaven.”
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
case unyielding theocentrism and the providential nature of traditional Islam stand opposed to the enlightening conception of human nature. Second, I shall demonstrate below that mass religious consciousness frequently departs from the consistent religious position on issues of morality and on the problems of religious-legal regulation of social relations. This phenomenon can be taken as an aftermath of the random desacralization processes and, by inference, of the secular adaptation of religious consciousness. Unyielding Islamic theocentrism always regards this as immature Islamic conscience. For this reason the main contradictions of Islamic conscience and the changes in traditional culture are observed not in ordinary believers but in two other groups of bearers of Islamic conscience: (a) spiritual leaders and (b) some of the Salafi movements.
Quite often the cohesion of religion and morals is supported by Kant’s ethical ideas. Indeed, he wrote that it is morally binding to accept the existence of God12 and that everything, besides his mental disposition toward goodness, man presupposes to do to please God is merely a religious illusion and false service to God.13 It is wrong to think that he took morality for Divine reality. It is typical of Muslim religious ethics to establish, besides relations among humans (in Islam they are regulated by muamalat, a section of Muslim law), the norms of man’s relationship with God (ibadat), which interpret the ethical norms as divine commands of absolute value. Kant’s ethics are specific because he understands the place of “divine commands” in ethics in a special way. He asked: Should man be virtuous only because there is the next world? Or it is vice versa: are human deeds rewarded because they are good and virtuous by themselves? The philosopher went on: Indeed, since moral prescriptions are present in the human heart no machines operating from another world are needed to force man to act in this world according to his predestination.14
These questions and statements of the German philosopher should not be taken to mean that he denied God a role in morality because this would have contradicted one of the statements quoted above: “it is morally binding to accept the existence of God.” Kant never denied God his role in morality but rather showed his special attitude to the divine and the moral illustrated by the following: the moral is moral not because God wishes it—God wishes it because it is moral. Faith in God creates a balance between moral virtues and bliss, but it should not be taken as the reason for but rather as the result of the moral train of thought.15
Daghestanis on the Sources of Morality
The above questions prompted a sociological poll to be carried out in 14 populated centers (four towns and ten villages). The questionnaire concentrated on the role of the Shari‘a in the public, state, and personal life of the Muslims. This and other aspects of the Shari‘a figured prominently in the previous polls of 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2007.
In 2007 the question about the Shari‘a was formulated more specifically: the respondent could select one of the spheres in which the Shari‘a can be applied (the state, society, private life) or a combination of the personal and the public.
The 2007 poll was intended to identify the differences in the answers of two groups of respondents conventionally called “fundamentalists” and “modernists.” Those who agreed that “Islam should remain the same as it was under the Prophet Muhammad” were described as “fundamentalists.”
12 See: I. Kant, “Kritika prakticheskogo razuma” (Critique of Practical Reason), in: Sochinenia, in 6 vols., Vol. 4, Part 2, p. 458.
13 See; I. Kant, Religia v predelakh tolk razuma (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone), St. Petersburg, 1908, p. 179.
14 See; I. Kant, “Grezy dukhovidtsa, poiasnennye grezami metafiziki” (Dreams of a Spirit-Seer), in: Sochinenia, in
6 vols., Vol. 4, Part 2, p. 458.
15 See: “Moralny zakon,” in: Slovar filosofskikh terminov, Moscow, 2007, p. 339.
“Modernists,” on the other hand, believe that “the Muslim religion should change in the course of time just like life itself.” Since 2000 the question about the possibility and advisability of modernizing Islam has been asked three times in all sorts of sociological polls. All of them revealed that “fundamentalists” comprised over half of the polled (51 percent on average) (the 2007 poll produced a figure of 52.1 percent). The share of “modernists” was 31.3 percent. Men turned out to be greater “fundamentalists” than women. Ethnic groups were distributed in the following way in the group of “fundamentalists”: Avars, Darghins, Lezghians, Lakhs, and Kumyks. The group of “modernists” consisted of five large ethnic groups headed by the Lakhs and closed by the Avars. The three polls suggest one conclusion: the positions of “modernists” and “fundamentalists” on various questions related to the attitude of Islam to the problems of our time are consistent. There are certain deviations in their verbal behavior: quite often they testify that the respondent might move away from the strictly confessional position.
Table 1 illustrates the attitude toward the Shari‘a displayed by the respondents.
Table 1
Distribution of Answers to the Question about the Role of the Shari‘a in the Life of Daghestanian Society (persons/%) (2007 poll with a sample of 451)
Islam should remain the same as it was under the Prophet Muhammad 42/17.9 105/44.7 39/16.6 17/7.2 0/0 31/13.2
The Muslim religion should change along with life 5/3.5 57/40.4 21/14.9 18/12.8 0/0 38/27.0
Undecided 4/5.3 22/29.3 18/24.0 5/6.7 0/0 29/38.7
Total 51/11.3 184/40.8 78/17.3 40/8.9 0/0.0 98/21.7
Table 1 contains several opinions: first, the two extreme positions relating to the role of the Shari‘a were rejected by the majority of the republic’s population. One of them—the Shari‘a should replace the state laws in all spheres of public and state life of Daghestan—was supported by
merely 11.3 percent of the polled. The Daghestanis (8.9 percent of the polled) are not prepared to completely exclude the Shari‘a from all spheres of human activity either. A certain inconsistency in the “fundamentalist” and “modernist” positions on the role of the Shari‘a notwithstanding and the degree to which the groups are dedicated to their views prove that the ideas were not formed at random.
Public opinion about the role of the Shari‘a is reduced to the view that it should regulate personal relations: 40.8 percent in the sphere of morality and 17.3 percent in the family and everyday sphere.
The high share of those convinced that the Shari‘a is morally charged (40.8 percent) suggests the following question: Are Islamic values today the only source of morality for rank-and-file Daghestanian believers? The 2004 poll asked the question point-blank: “Can man be moral outside religion?”
Table 2
Distribution of Answers about the Role of Religion in Man's Moral Maturation (%)
(2004 poll with a sample of 580)
Polled groups Anyone can be moral irrespective of his attitude to faith Only religious people can be moral Undecided
“Fundamentalists” 65.8 25.7 6.3
“Modernists” 85.8 7.9 5.5
Others 80.4 8.0 9.8
Total 74.6 16.8 6.9
There is a seeming contradiction between the two tables: Table 1 asserts that the Shari‘a is a predominantly moral factor while Table 2 demonstrates that faith plays a secondary role in man’s moral education. In fact, there is no contradiction at all: according to Table 2 the faithful do not deny the Shari‘a its moral mission—they merely reject the idea of its universal nature and religion’s exclusive role as the source of ethical philosophy. This means that the ordinary believer finds himself beyond the limits of corporate morality, which can be described as the inconsistency of his religious ideas. Indeed, as a believer he should completely obey the Shari‘a, which he fails to do. He is guilty as a believer, yet he cannot be described as immoral man.
This gave rise to a surmise related to two variants of moral choice: either the religious element in man, his faith, means that he should strictly obey God (Ibadat) and follow the demands of Iman (faith in Allah, his Angels and messengers) or the true believer is he who acts in a morally correct way rather than declare his faith and zealously perform religious rites. Far-fetched at first glance this approach is highly justified. On 23 August, 2007, speaking at a large international inter-religious forum in Gudermes (Chechnia), the Supreme Mufti of Iraq pointed out that the good deeds of any Muslim performed outside his religion are an important part of his faith and quoted from the Prophet who had said that he would rather spend a month helping his friend than sitting in a mosque. There were trends in Islam (the Harijids being one of them) that believed that good deeds were an inalienable part of faith rather than outward signs of one’s religious feelings. There is another side to the issue: people tend to be indignant with overzealous believers who insist on the strict performance of all rights and yet ignore the norms of decency.
To find out how society treated this situation the polled were asked to select one of five answers to the question: “Who can be described as a genuinely religious person?”
Table 3
Who Can be Described as a Genuinely Religious Person? (persons/%)
(2007 poll with a sample of 451)
Answers
Polled groups (“fundamentalists” and “modernists”)
d
n
a
Al rit, h
0 .y -s
1 I IS 1 ? ™
y tr all u
^rn O £ H
■§JE
5=ro <u °S o
°j=ro ^ ■S'K = ^
« 2 «a ee nm sf im
° = ■= -S thy ith d
<u ■§ **— ^
(5 E
= 8.2 °!
1 -S § =
- ^1n 10
2 «'S I
e mn fo ht a f
ro-“C
a
Islam should remain the same as it was under the Prophet Muhammad 21/8.9 102/43.4 80/34.0 49/20.9 10/4.3
The Muslim religion should change along with life 8/5.7 29/20.6 25/17.7 71/50.4 10/7.1
Undecided 7/9.3 9/12.0 23/30.7 27/36.0 9/12.0
Total 36/8.0 140/31.0 128/28.4 147/32.6 29/6.4
Table 3 demonstrates that one third of the polled believe that moral rather than sacral principles are important for true faith. Neither faithful performance of the demands of Islam (31 percent) nor of Iman (28.4 percent) is all-important for man’s moral makeup. At the same time the latter were on the whole firmly devoted to the idea of Islamic values in morality. The answers to this question, however, have demonstrated that the faithful were bold enough to transcend the limits of religious morality and demonstrated fairly high adaptability to pluralist approaches. In this respect women proved to be more flexible than men. Older age groups, likewise, proved to be more flexible than the others; educational level also affected adaptability. Desacralization of morality was accepted by ethnic groups in the following way: Lakhs, 51.2 percent; Kumyks, 38.2 percent; Lezghi-ans, 36.8 percent; Darghins, 29.6 percent; and Avars, 16.5 percent. These results noticeably correlate to the answers of the “fundamentalists” (“Islam should remain the same as it was under the Prophet Muhammad”) distributed among ethnic groups in the following way: Kumyks, 44.7 percent; Lakhs, 46.3 percent; Lezghians, 57.9 percent; Darghins, 65.3 percent; and Avars, 78.5 percent. There were no noticeable differences between urban and rural dwellers.
The next question was suggested by the following: orthodox Islam as a whole denies that the unfaithful can be described as entirely moral and self-sufficient; this is even more obvious among the fundamentalists. In the 1st century of Hegira (after 622) two types of believers appeared inside Islam, each with its own idea about the unity of faith and reason. They were “people of the book” (ahl al-hadith) who relied on the Quran and the Sunnah and the principle “I believe in order to understand”
and those who relied on reason when dealing with the sacral texts (ashab ar-ray) and the principle “I understand in order to believe.” This means that practically from the very beginning there were disagreements inside Islam related to the understanding of the unity of reason and faith. This should not be taken to mean that those who followed ashab ar-ray accepted the idea of the absolute autonomy of morals and the possibility of relying on non-sacral sources of morality. At the same time, this group, which has moved away from a literal understanding of the scriptures to promote the values of reason, is much more adaptable than the ahl al-hadith group.
This gave rise to a question about the role of reason and faith in man’s moral maturity designed to identify what believers thought about non-believers: Do they accept that their unbelieving neighbors can be moral or not? In this case reason and faith were related to different people: believers and non-believers. The aim was to find out how the believer adapts himself to the “un-believing” context or even to the conditions of “different faith” and “different morality.” Those who recognized that reason had a role to play in morality were obviously highly adaptable since they accepted, albeit partially, the autonomous nature of morality. This position confirmed the respondents’ position on the questions analyzed above.
Since the concepts of good and evil belong to ethics, the question was about the role of reason and faith in discerning between them. It was also taken into account that this question was deeply rooted in the history of religions, Islam in particular, which left its imprint on religious consciousness.
Table 4
Distribution of Answers about the Role of Religion in Man's Moral Maturation (%) (2007 poll with a sample of 451)
Answers Polled groups (“fundamentalists” and “modernists”) Human reason is capable of distinguishing between good and evil irrespective of the faith in God Faith rather than reason can show man the difference between good and evil Undecided
Islam should remain the same as it was under the Prophet Muhammad 60.0 28.9 7.7
Muslim religion should change together with life 66.0 17.0 12.1
Undecided 56.0 25.3 16.0
Total 61.2 24.6 10.4
The results of the poll (Table 4) confirm some of the previous surmises: the faithful believed that rational methods are most important for distinguishing between good and evil; it is very important that both “fundamentalists” and “modernists” agreed on this. In the general sample women turned out to be more rational than men (65.3 percent against 55.4 percent). This is hard to explain if we take into account that the latest polls in Daghestan demonstrated that there were more women than men among the faithful. We should not forget, however, that there are more “fundamentalists” among men than among women (58.9 percent against 44.8 percent) and that men are more consistent fundamentalists. This makes the result supplied by Table 4 not so surprising.
C o n c l u s i o n
1. Despite the fact that mass consciousness mostly regards the Shari‘a as a regulator of personal and family relations in the sphere of morality, its role is not absolutized. The believer refuses to recognize the universal nature of religious morality and religion’s exclusive right to forming a moral individual.
2. The Daghestanis believe that “morally correct deeds” are the main factor in the correlation between obeying the formal religious commands (Iman, Islam, Ibadat) and moral behavior. They have obviously moved away from the fundamentalist demand of following, unquestioningly and literally, the Quran and the Sunnah as preached by conservative Salafism.
3. The polled believed that reason was the determining factor in the relations between faith and reason when it came to cognizing the moral truths. This means that they accepted the right of non-believers, those who followed other faiths or moralities, to be described as moral.
4. On the whole, the Daghestanis’ mass consciousness is inclined to accept alien, non-Islamic ethical norms within their morality sphere. The morality of an ordinary Daghestani contains elements of autonomous ethics.
5. A relatively small part of the sample (from 10 to 30 percent depending on the question) remains consistent when it comes to the position of religion in morality.
The results of the sociological poll analyzed above could be taken as evidence of the considerable adaptation potential of Islamic consciousness among ordinary Daghestanis in the context of globalization and liberal-democratic changes. However, this would be wrong because this adaptation goes beyond the limits of Islamic consciousness and frequently contradicts it. The ordinary Daghestani is adapting to the current realia not because he is a Muslim and not because he reassesses the Islamic values to adjust them to the new spirit of the times. He merely disregards them and embraces, uncritically, the new conditions of life created by secular culture, which is growing increasingly rational. The Daghestani is actively adapting himself, however this cannot be described as Muslim adaptation: he might lose the traditional norms for regulating private and public life in the process. Whether this is good or bad remains to be seen. So far we can say that the best way to adapt would be through borrowing Western rationalism as the key method of adaptation to the contemporary world and grafting it to one’s own (Muslim) culture and history. This would produce Islam that assimilates contemporaneity. Though present in the Islamic world this trend has been unfolding slowly so far.
There is another type of adaptation that can be called self-assimilation, in the course of which Islam surrenders its values to the values of the West. This produces Islam assimilated by contemporaneity. Elements of this type of adaptation can be seen in Tatar neo-Jadidism (Euro-Islam). The Islamic umma as a whole is not prepared to accept this easy and effective method.
Another trend suggests that adaptation should be completely or partially rejected through selfisolation or active opposition to globalization, the road selected by conservative Salafism and radicalism. In Daghestan this phenomenon is described as Wahhabism.
The ordinary Daghestani’s verbal behavior in the sphere of morality has nothing to do either with “Islam that assimilated contemporaneity” or with “Islam assimilated by contemporaneity.”
