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In 2005 many books of extremist nature were found in the cellar of the Cathedral mosque in the republican capital Saransk, which were used by several madrasahs in other regions.
As a result of the penetration and dissemination of radical Islamic ideas in Russia, the number of young Muslims adhering to fundamentalist and extremist views has grown considerably. This is due to many factors. At meetings of the presidents of the Volga republics and governors of the Volga regions with local Muslim leaders in recent years the subject of opposition to religious extremism has always been discussed. Among the main reasons for increasing fundamentalist and extremist trends were the activity of foreign radical-extremist movements and organizations, which discredit Russian Islam and create a threat of a split in the ranks of Muslims, lack of proper religious Muslim education, drawbacks in the work of local legal Muslim organizations, and insufficient attention to Islam of the regional and local authorities. In order to fight extremism it is necessary to revive and popularize the values of traditional Islam of the Volga area and improve interaction of the bodies of power and Islamic organizations in the social sphere, culture, education and work among young people.
"Kaspiisky region: politika, ekonomika, kultura, " Astrakhan, 2013, No 2, pp 19-24.
Andrei Baranov,
D. Sc. (Politics), Kuban State University POLITICIZATION OF ISLAM IN THE PRESENT-DAY CRIMEA: CONFLICTOLOGICAL ASPECT
Islamic religious associations are an influential actor in political processes in the present-day Crimea. Such aspects as reasons for conflicts, strategy and tactics of the sides of conflicts, interaction of
internal ethnic and external factors of conflicts draw special attention of experts and researchers. Exposure of the conflict potential of the politicization of Islam in the Crimea is important for a comparative analysis of risks for national security in the post-socialist countries. The Crimea plays an important geopolitical role in the Black Sea transborder region, and political and confessional processes in the Crimea influence the Russian North Caucasus.
Confessional conflict is a clash of actors of policy in their striving to realize their interests connected with power, influence on state policy, and their status in social hierarchy. The subject of confessional conflict is not a community of believers as a whole, but the leaders and elites of religious organizations. They use religious systems and their world outlook, organizational and ritual principles in their own pragmatic interests, and construct politicized myths and activity instructions. A politicized part of believers involved in conflict is an agent of this influence. Religion is a means of ethnopolitical mobilization and cohesion. Conflict is not fatal, its development level and dynamics depend on the correlation of political resources and a degree of purposefulness of actors.
The Crimea has always been poly-ethnic and poly-confessional. According to the 2001 population census, Russians comprised 60.2 percent of the total population of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukrainians - 23.9 percent, Crimean Tatars -10.2 percent. The rates of religious revival in the Crimea are considerably higher than in Ukraine as a whole. In 1990 the Crimea took the last but one, or 27th, place in the number of religious organizations, whereas in 2007 it took eighth place due to a bigger number of Islamic associations. According to information of the Republican Committee on Religious Affairs, by 2008 the authorities had registered 1,339 religious organizations of 48 confessions and
trends. Almost 43 percent of them belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The Moscow Patriarchate has 509 organizations. Registered Muslim organizations are in second place - 28.8 percent. Their work is coordinated by the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Crimea. Apart from that, there are over 600 Islamic associations functioning without registration. Protestant organizations hold third place. Judaists, Armenian Christian Apostolic Church, and others are also represented by a few organizations.
The key problem in the study of the conflict situation in the Crimea is that of the political status of the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea and Sevastopol. Among the demands put forward by the Russian Orthodox Christian organizations are gaining greater autonomy and eventually joining the Crimea to Russia. On the contrary, the Tatar associations are striving for greater statehood of the "titular" people, idealizing the historical experience of the Crimean Khanate and the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in the U.S.S.R. Tactically, the interests of the Tatar and Ukrainian organizations coincide in their desire to weaken the positions of the Russian and pro-Russian movements.
The interconfessional conflict situation is also manifested in attempts to create a monopoly information medium, and weaken the Orthodox organizations of the Moscow Patriarchate. As a result of the activities of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Crimea, interconfessional relations have deteriorated.
Muslim communities support the demand to abolish the practice of putting up intending crosses and roadside memorials, and in some cases their activists destroy Christian symbols at connivance of local authorities.
There are conflicts within Islamic organizations, too. Their radicalization began in the mid-1990s when separatists from Chechnya
came to the Crimea for medical treatment. They formed a criminal armed group "Imdat," which provoked mass disorders in the district of Sudak (Eastern Crimea) in 1995. This group continues to exist and act clandestinely. At the end of the 1990s a network of Muslim communities headed by young imams and independent from the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Crimea came into being supported by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. These imams have received religious education abroad and have been oriented to their sponsors and instructors there. The quazi-legal party "Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islamia" as a branch of the "Muslim Brothers" has been active in the Crimea. Its members call for the creation of the Worldwide Caliphate. They distribute salafist leaflets and various literature of this kind. In the view of certain public figures and newspapers and journals, there are several thousand Wahhabi supporters in the Crimea today. In the autumn of 2012 "Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islamia" organized mass meetings in Simferopol.
There is a very slight difference between religious extremism and secular nationalism. The radical wing is represented by the "Adalet" party, which forms national self-defense units, "Nurjular" group, and also the "Site of Crimean Young People" oriented to salafist Turkish organizations.
The moderate current is represented by the National movement of Crimean Tatars, which rejects extremism and consists mainly of representatives of the local intelligentsia. There is also the Organization of the Crimean Tatar national movement supporting the idea of gradual creation of Tatar statehood. A strong rivalry has been going on between various groupings beginning from 2011.
The status proclaimed by Crimean Tatar organizations contradicts the legislation of Ukraine and the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea. Ukrainian laws do not envisage granting collective rights to
territorial autonomy on the basis of ethnic origin, or advantages to the "indigenous people." Representation of interests is ensured by quotas at the Supreme Rada (Council) of the Autonomous Republic of the Crimea, its commissions and consultative bodies, as well as at the ARC Council of Ministers.
To what extent does confessional conflict influence public opinion in the Crimea? Investigations carried out by a surveillance center in Sevastopol among all ethnic groups have shown that among the reasons for confessional conflicts pride of place is taken by political and national contradictions and clashes of economic interests. Religious fanaticism, intolerance, and dislike of religious organizations are secondary. Certain respondents lay the blame for conflicts on representatives of foreign political and public organizations, foreign religious centers, as well as leaders of Crimean religious organizations, and officials of the authorities of the Crimea and Ukraine. Meanwhile, a stable conflict of identities has emerged.
Summing up, the confessional conflict in the present-day Crimea caused by the politicization of Islam has a complex and bloc character. It is latent in the forms of manifestation, that is, "is postponed to the future." But a radical Islamist project is capable to destabilize the balance of ethno-confessional interests.
It should be emphasized that the complex ethno-confessional conflict in the Crimea is not only between groups of people, but also between blocs, that is, bodies of state power and the elites of Ukraine and the region. Simultaneously, internal conflicts develop within religious communities.
An effective regulation of conflicts may be possible on the basis of a purposeful policy of integrating Crimean Tatars in a secular state and building mechanisms of real democracy.
"Vlast," Moscow, 2013, No 4, pp. 196-200.
