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The project "Islamic Identity of Tatar Young People in the Republic of Tatarstan" continued in 2012 and 2013.
"Ucheniye zapiski Kazanskogo universiteta Gumanitarniye Nauki," Kazan, 2012, vol. 154, book 6, pp. 76-86.
Irina Beshta,
Senior instructor, Simferopol Scientific Center (City of Simferopol)
CONFESSIONAL EVALUATION OF IDENTITY OF THE PEOPLE OF THE AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF CRIMEA
The Crimea is a unique region of Ukraine in many aspects: geographical, historical, national, ethnic and religious. The Crimea is the crossing point of the histories of two world empires - the Ottoman and the Russian. It is the place of coexistence of the two major world religions - Christianity and Islam, and different ethnic groups connected by common historical experience, both positive and negative.
The disintegration of the U.S.S.R., the "socialist camp," and the bipolar world has evoked not only mass migrations and repatriation of ethnic groups, but also a search for new identities by countries of the Black Sea region, during which nationalistic tendencies have grown rapidly, historical differences, interethnic and inter-religious conflicts have exacerbated, and competing national interests have emerged for all to see.
All these phenomena, processes and trends have touched, to a certain extent, the Crimea, and are now represented in its social medium.
An analysis of the latest investigations and publications shows that the problems of confessional measurement of identity of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea are not new. A great many essays, monographs, treatises, and articles in the mass media are devoted to confessional identity in its various manifestations: philosophical, social, political, etc. Individual works deal with the specific features of measuring this identity in multinational and poly-confessional regions, the Crimea being one of the most striking representative.
Despite a considerable knowledge of the problem under discussion, many aspects remain dubitable to this day, and this concerns not only political aspects, but also the philosophical-theoretical substantiation.
We begin with the very concept of "identity," which is so widely used in philosophy, psychology, ethnology, and cultural and social anthropology today with different meanings and in different aspects. Most generally, it means the realization by one object (subject) of belonging to another object (subject) as part and whole, as particular and universal. The main characteristic feature and foundation of this concept is identity to itself, and among its differentiating characteristics there can be the language, ethnic stereotypes of behavior, religious affiliation, etc.
One of the first forms of man's self-consciousness is religious identity, which is at the sources of the formation of other types of identity. Religious identity can be perceived as a form of collective and individual self-consciousness based on realization of one's own affiliation with definite religion and forming perceptions about oneself and the world with the help of corresponding religious dogmas; however, even this idea of religious identity has lately been used loosely. One of the reasons for this is identification in academic literature and mass consciousness of the concepts of "religion" and
"confession," which are often used as synonyms. However, this is not quite correct. People belonging to different confessions should adhere to different dogmas and perform different rites and rituals, that is, follow different social and religious practices.
Numerous sociological investigations reveal contradictions which cannot be explained, if the concepts of "religious identity" and "confessional identity" are considered synonyms. This is why it is necessary to perceive theoretically the processes going on in the spiritual sphere and touching on the problems of the formation of confessional identity, especially in such multicultural regions as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
At present there are 1,362 religious organizations of 52 confessions and religious trends registered in the Crimea (in 1988 there were 37), over 1,330 religious communities and nine religious educational institutions functioning there. Between 1991 and 2012, 166 hieratic buildings were constructed, including 80 mosques; 690 such buildings are used or owned by religious organizations.
A new confessional situation came into being in the Crimea after the proclamation of freedom of conscience in the early 1990s, recognition of the social value of religion, and the change of the socioeconomic and political system. Religion has become an important factor of public and state life, the number of confessions, denominations and religious trends has grown considerably, as well as the number of their adherents. Apart from traditional confessions of the Crimea, which include Orthodox Christianity, Islam of the Sunna trend, Judaism, and also Catholicism and Armenian Apostolic Christianity, there are other religious currents.
The unique character of the religious situation in the Crimea, in contrast to the general situation in Ukraine, lies in that there is a considerable number of Muslims and a small number of adherents to
Creek Catholicism and Ukrainian Orthodox Christians and Uniate Apostolic Christians. More than three-quarters of the Crimean population (78.9 percent) consider themselves Russian Orthodox Christians, the next group is Muslim (8.8 percent), the rest is inconsiderable in number. However, the key definition is the words "consider themselves." The point is religious identity in accordance with which a person feels his or her unity with a definite nation or ethnos developing within the ethical and everyday-life conditions of religion inherent in them. Far from all are ready to identify themselves with a definite confessional trend within the framework of the above-mentioned religions, observing definite rules and dogmas. Thus, religious rites and rituals in accordance with their confessional affiliation are performed daily by five percent of Crimean citizens only, and at different periods - 63 percent of the Crimean population from among those polled.
For the sake of justice it should be said that this is typical not only of the Crimean region. A change of self-identification features may be connected with the tendencies of historical development (in the Middle Ages significance of confessional identity prevailed, and beginning from the epoch of Renaissance linguistic and ethnic identity came to the fore). In the epoch of the dissemination of world religions emphasis on confessional identity could show the preponderance of universalistic tendencies. But in certain situations confessional affiliation can become the most important element of self-identification and a characteristic of the concept of "ethnos." In particular, the Russians in the Crimea have now found themselves in a situation when their "Russianness" is not clear as far as its essence and value are concerned. And Orthodox Christianity comes to their rescue, not as a religion, but rather as a symbol of Russian originality and a spiritual value. Similar picture can be observed among the Crimean Tatars, whose eviction from
and return to the Crimea have considerably strengthened the positions of Muslims, their way of life and confessional foundations.
The specific features of the historical development of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea have influenced the time and age framework of the self-identification of the peninsula population. The share of believers grows along with their age, and the share of adherents of the Ukrainian Orthodox Christian Church also becomes bigger, whereas the share of faithful Muslims is lower in the older age group than in the younger and middle age groups. High moral standards and spiritual values are considered an inalienable component of traditional religious word outlook, and in this sense the traditional Russian confessions can become the most crucial factor capable to overcome the negative aspects of society's development at the present stage, such as despiritualization, moral crisis, disintegration of the family, and demographic problems.
In the course of religious revival the reproduction of confessional identity is taking place, that is, religious conversion through socialization, in which members of the family play the main role. The religious way of life comes out as an individual free choice.
A no less important aspect in the formation and development of confessional identity of the Crimean peoples is state policy in the sphere of religion at the national and regional level. It can be stated that inter-confessional relations in the republic have an openly political tint and are aggravated by inadequate actions of various official bodies.
On the whole, one can single out two groups of factors contributing to the aggravation of intra- and inter-confessional differences - intra-religious and social. The first group includes: doctrinal, dogmatic differences; the idea of confessional exclusiveness; fundamentalism and religious intolerance, which aggravates relations within and between different confessions; emergence of new religious
movements, as well as the asocial or extremist character of certain religious ways and habits; proselytism, bitter rivalry on the religious "market," that is, struggle for parishioners, buildings and property, support on the part of the authorities, public leaders, the mass media, etc.
The second group includes social, external factors, and among them the following social phenomena and processes: religion becoming ethnic, that is, supporting nationalism and separatist movements, due to which ethnic conflicts acquire religious tint; politicization of religion, which is manifested in that different political forces playing a political card bring different confessions into conflict; weakness of the legislative base which regulates the interaction of the state and religious organizations; violation of the principle of freedom of conscience and faith on the part of the state or individual citizens.
In real practice these factors are often closely intertwined. However, cases of inter-confessional tension, which happen in the Crimea from time to time, are initiated not by rank-and-file believers, but by certain clerics and leaders of individual religious organizations, or even by the irresponsible and incompetent mass media. This is shown by the attitude of believers in the Crimea to alien religions: Christians have a positive attitude to Islam, and Muslims are neutral to Orthodox Christianity.
Summing up, it is possible to single out the following basic aspects of confessional measurement of identity of the peoples inhabiting the Autonomous Republic of Crimea:
Historical aspect, connected with a long period of denying religion as such and returning to its various confessions in recent years;
National aspect, characterized by the multicultural character of the region and its peoples;
Ethnic aspect, determining the formation and development of religiousness and confessional identity; the confessional self-
consciousness of present-day young people is not the determining factor in the development of ethnic self-consciousness and linguistic cultural orientation, which, by the way, has determined the distribution of Russian-language Islam;
Socio-political aspect, expressed in the use of inter-confessional relations in power struggle.
At present believers in the Crimea are distributed rather evenly in all groups of the population by age, sex, nationality, education, employment, etc. In modern society religiousness has lost the character of marginality of definite social groups, but become a spiritual quality equally inherent in all groups of the population, including the youngest, best educated, highly professional, and most active socially. At the same time the indices of the degree of religiousness and participation in religious life in the Crimea are much lower than the level of religiousness. This makes it possible to conclude that confessional identity of a greater part of believers bears a formal, declarative character and is not bolstered up by deep-going religious feelings, knowledge of dogmatic foundations and cult prescriptions of one's own religion corresponding to the level of religious behavior.
On the whole, confessional identity in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea has ceased to be the exclusive sphere of religious organizations. The active institutionalization of religions, on the one hand, has evoked certain expectations in society that traditional confessions are able to contribute to overcoming the spiritual and world-outlook crisis, and on the other hand, it posed a whole number of difficult problems to society, among them religious fanaticism, intolerance, aggressiveness, extremism, isolationism, escapism, etc. In the present conditions the formation of the confessional identity of young people is viewed as the most important theoretical and practical
task of society, whose solution could prevent a split between Orthodox Christian and Muslim believers.
This split is revealed, first of all, in an increase of the number of adherents of aggressive Muslim trends, whose representatives arrived from Arab countries (Wahhabis, for instance), which presents a threat not only to the Crimean Tatars, but to the whole of society.
Secondly, Muslims have no confessional unity, which can be seen in the presence of their three centers at the same time: Kiev, Donetsk and Simferopol.
Lastly, the Crimea is the venue of a confrontation between regional identity of the Orthodox Christian Slav population and ethno-confessional identity claiming the exclusive stratus of the "indigenous" Crimean-Tatar people.
Conclusions:
1. Any confession is a unity between religious consciousness, cult and religious organizations. However, a specific feature of the confessional self-identification of Crimean people is its non-conformity to identification by belief - non-belief. In the consciousness of many inhabitants of the peninsula confessional identity is a sort of original substitute for ethno-cultural identification, which is conditioned by the originality of the cultural-historical development of the region.
2. The confessional identity of the Crimean peoples is predominated by the element of tradition, and quite often it comes out as situational religiousness which is not a manifestation of deep and sincere faith, bears a spontaneous character and is revealed from time to time in definite, mostly unfavorable circumstances, and boils down to observance of certain traditional religious rites and rituals and manifestation of ethno-confessional stereotypes of behavior.
3. The globalization process of the modern world requires new approaches to the formation of personality and its self-identification in contemporary society. This is why one of the key directions of the upbringing of a modern-type personality should be the formation of tolerance, and its principle should creatively be applied to all social relations, including in the educational process. Special significance is attached to the formation of religious tolerance, which is a sine qua non of intercultural and inter-confessional dialogue without which such region as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea will not be able to exist.
"Obshchestvenniye nauki v sovremennom mire: voprosy sotsiologii, politologii, filosofii, istorii," Novosibirsk, 2013, pp. 70-78.
M. Yahyaev,
D. Sc. (Philosophy), Daghestan State University
REASONS FOR RADICALIZATION
OF ISLAM IN THE MODERN WORLD
Islamic radicalism is an ideology and political activity based on it, which is characterized by the consolidation of the standards of "pure Islam" as related to the world of "untrue faith" within Islam itself, and also to the world of the "infidels" outside Islam. It is important that such radical Islam is a distorted form of Islam. It should not be identified with Islam as a world religion, or its any concrete trend or current.
Nevertheless, today radical Islam is a real important factor of the socio-political life of the world, and a serious opposition ideological and political force. The radically-minded sections of devout Muslims are an effective social force which considers it appropriate to use terror and illegitimate violence as a means to achieve the political aims it sets
