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the term of federalization by the term of decentralization) to protect the interests of the Russian and Russian-speaking population and the worthy role of the Russian language.
Secondly, to ensure the neutral status of Ukraine. True, to continue drawing the bankrupt and half-ruined country in a military-political block would be utter lunacy.
One would wish to think that Ukrainians will agree on fulfillment the accords reached in Geneva. However, a negative turn of developments should not be excluded. Supposing, it will not be possible to disarm all illegal armed groups and stop escalation of violence. I'd risk to suppose that in this case an international peacekeeping contingent may be brought in to Ukraine (naturally, with Russian participation and strict observance of international legal standards). The West will also be interested in this, for it is also concerned with the preservation of integrity and stability of Ukraine and liquidation of the seats of tension there. By ignoring the Geneva agreements, the present Kiev leaders will make this alternative inevitable.
"Rossiya v globalnoi politike," Moscow, 2014, No 2, March-April, pp. 18-21.
R. Nurullina,
Center of Islamic Studies, Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, (Kazan)
DEVELOPMENT OF TRADITIONAL ISLAM IN TATARSTAN IN THE CONTEXT OF THE FORMATION OF INTERCONFESSIONAL TOLERANCE
In the past decades the Republic of Tatarstan has presented itself as a region with stable harmonious interconfessional relations.
Researchers have repeatedly emphasized the fact that the region has a many-century experience of the tolerant coexistence of representatives of various religions, which is in demand all over the world. Tatar Islam belongs to the Hanafiyah Madhhab, which is distinguished by a high degree of tolerance.1
This is a result of the painstaking efforts of representatives of traditional Russian confessions - Orthodox Christianity and Islam - and state and government bodies. At present daily work is going on in the region aimed at developing and improving the inter-religious dialogue. Among other things, the scholarly community of Tatarstan and the heads of the Spiritual Board of Muslims exert efforts constantly to revive the national theological heritage. Works by Tatar scholars and thinkers and theologians of the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries are published, translated and studied. Much attention is paid to propaganda of the religious experience of the Tatar people, who, despite unfavorable political conditions, have been able to build civilized intercofessional relations in multinational Russia. "Our ancestors were wise and had evolved a definite model of Islamic-Christian cooperation," R. Muhametshin, rector of the Religious University of Tatarstan, said at the 2nd festival of Muslim youth in June 2008.
Yet, as recent events have shown, the problem of religious extremism still exists in the region. The model of tolerant Tatarstan, which many states and regions took as an example, can be destroyed. This is due to the penetration of the ideas of Salaphism (Wahhabism) in the socio-cultural area of Russian Islam.
The history of Salaphism began in the 18th century, when the Hanabilah preacher Mohammed ibn al-Wahhab declared that Muslim religion had been distorted after the death of Prophet Mohammed, and therefore it was necessary to return to the sources of "pure Islam" ("as-salif as-salih"). The main feature of the new trend
was a literal and primitive interpretation of the Koran, which gave rise to negation of a considerable part of Muslim religious literature, as well as a whole number of dogmas and rites which were branded as "bida," that is, prohibited innovations. The followers of Wahhabism declared a whole number of trends of Islam as heretic and branded their adepts as heathens. Certain adherents of Salaphism try to interpret it as Islam without Madhhab. The emergence and development of this trend in Islam is connected with the Hanabilah Madhhab of Sunnism, which is the most conservative of all four Madhhabs. In 1925 Wahhabism was recognized as official religion in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.2
By the beginning of the 21st century this trend of Islam has become widespread, in one or another form, all over the world. New realities of life have led to the formation of the political doctrine of Salaphism. Among its main features are intolerance and enmity toward civil secular society and striving to replace it with Islamic society based on the Sharia law, impermissibility of separate existence of religion and the state, opposition of the Islamic world to all civilizational models, and negation of all non-Islamic laws.3
The spreading of this trend of Islam in Tatarstan is connected with the features of the Islamic revival of the early 1990s, when the activity of foreign missionaries and the study of young Russian Muslims abroad played a major role in the conditions of the loss of a great part of our own religious traditions. Islam for a definite part of the ummah is, above all, world religion, which is not connected with a definite national tradition, and if this is not so, it is connected with the Arab, rather than the Tatar national tradition. "The key problem of the activity of graduates from foreign Islamic universities and institutes is adaptation of the knowledge received to Russian
reality, traditions and specific features of the development and present state of Islamic religion in Russia and its regions."4
The character of ideological preferences of believers largely depends on the activity of imams of mosques and their ability to comply with spiritual requirements of their parishioners and form tolerant ideas and feelings characteristic of the traditional Hanafiyah Madhhab among them. However, despite the presence of a sufficient number of Islamic educational institutions in the region, mosques still need highly qualified priests. There is discrepancy between the objective need for well-educated imams to work in Muslim parishes of Tatarstan, and the absence of precise knowledge about the real level of training of mosque priests and their ideological preferences. To solve this problem the Center of Islamic Studies at Tatarstan's Academy of Sciences is carrying on investigation work among the Islamic clergy with a view to determining their views and preferences and determining whether they correspond to the basic premises of the Hanafiyah religious-legal school.
According to the official data, the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Republic of Tatarstan supervises the activity of 1,300 religious communities united in 45 urban and rural sections. To date about 250 imams have been surveyed in various districts of the republic (they had to fill special questionnaires).
Despite the importance of the subject, only few respondents (nine percent of all those polled) included their ideological preferences in the set of problems, which they come across in their activity (absence of unity, contradictions, Wahhabi problems). Material and financial difficulties (60 percent) and shortage of parishioners (40 percent) were the most widespread problems. Next came the shortage of priests and familiars.
This situation can be explained by several reasons. On the one hand, there are views that the scope of the spreading of radical currents in the republic is exaggerated. Facts have been cited tendentiously in the Russian mass media, and it actually looks like an information war against Islam in Tatarstan. In April 2013 the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Tatarstan organized a conference "Islam on line" for journalists, at which it was decided to evolve the rules and methods of presenting and publishing information in the Muslim mass media with a view to forming a positive attitude toward the Muslim ummah and eradicating anti-Islamic sentiments in society.5
On the other hand, in rural communities the problem of radicalism is not as acute as in big cities. A certain role can be played there by the inadequate level of theological education of rural imams, which does not allow them to see and understand dangerous views which some of their parishioners may have. Only 38 percent of rural imams said that they had some religious education, 18.5 percent of them - primary, 12.5 percent - secondary, and seven percent - higher.
It is possible that some respondents do not answer direct questions due to psychological reasons, thus, the real situation differs from the results of the survey. In any case, work should be continued in this direction.
Notes
A. Malashenko. Foreword to R. Muhametrshin. "Islam in Tatarstan." Moscow. Logos, 2006, p. 7.
L. Yamayeva. Reislamizatsiya: traditsionnoye i novoye v religioznoi culture Bashkir // Sotsiologiya i obshchestvo: globalniye vyzovy i regionalnoye razvitiye [Re-Islamization: the Traditional and the New in Religious Culture of Bashkirs // Sociology and Society: Global Challenges and Regional Development]. Ufa, October 23-25, 2012. Moscow, ROS, 2012 - URL: http://www.ssarss.ru/ iv_ovsk_full. html Ibid.
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5
A. Shapovalov. Problemy institutsionalizatsii islamskogo obrazovaniya v sovremennoi Rossii [Problems of Institutionalization of Islamic Education in Modern Russia] // Vlast. 2011, No 3, p. 4. Official site of DUM RT - http://dumrt.ru/node/8046
"Sotsiokulturny potentsial mezhkonfessionalnogo dialoiga: materialy Mezhdunarodnoi nauchnoi konferentsii (Kazan, May 21-24, 2013)," Kazan, 2013, pp. 363-367.
Aslan Borov,
Ph. D. (Hist.), Kabardino-Balkarian State University (Nalchik) POLITICIZED ETHNICITY: THE "CIRCASSIAN PROBLEM" - ANOTHER SEAT OF TENSION IN THE NORTH CAUCASUS
Putting to the fore the crisis and conflict elements of the situation in the North Caucasus has become a stable feature of the public and scholarly discourse of the past two decades. The "images" of the region, which have taken shape recently, largely predetermine the picture of the past of this territory and its modern position. The most general characteristic of the position of the North Caucasus in the public discourse of Russia is an obvious discrepancy between its periphery place on the political-economic map of the country and the level of concern, even alarm, displayed by Russian society concerning this territory.
Strictly speaking, these discourse practices often render it difficult to make an unbiased and rational analysis of the regional socio-political and socio-economic situation. An alarmist vector of research prevents to see the real parameters of existing problems and phenomena. This also concerns the inadequate understanding of the aggravation of the "Circassian problems" (approximately from 2008).
