Foreign religious influence on the Muslims of Tatarstan in the post-Soviet period
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent political changes in the post-Soviet space caused the CIS republics to declare their rejection of state atheism towards religious freedom and the activities of religious organizations, while maintaining the secular nature of the state. This gave impetus to religious revival among the population, which was explained by the lack of state ideology in any of its forms. In turn, this gave rise to the desire among the broad masses of the people to strive for the search for spiritual ideals, which could be acquired, including in religion. The natural desire of the post-Soviet people to restore the religious practice of life that existed before the revolution found understanding on the part of state bodies that supported religious organizations of various faiths.A specific feature of the religious revival of Islam in Russia, including in Tatarstan, was that the “return to Islam” process in the post-Soviet space was influenced by foreign countries of the Muslim East, pursuing not only humanitarian and educational goals of “helping co-religionists”, but and specific political objectives. It should be noted that on the part of state bodies both in Russia and Tatarstan, there was practically no obstacle to the Muslim community in the country and the region from interfering with the peculiar care of the foreign Islamic world. As even no elementary control over the activities of various organizations and structures formally declaring charitable purposes existed. On the contrary, some representatives of the republican authorities in Tatarstan in the 1990s viewed the active missionary activities of foreign enlighteners as a rapprochement with the Muslim world, which gave dividends to the local ruling elite, who took the course to build a "sovereign state" that received a collective name in the newest stories Russia as a "parade of sovereignties." It should be added here that similar contacts with Arab and Turkish emissaries of various religious organizations were perceived as highly complimentary and by a certain part of the Tatar population striving to comprehend the basics of Islam, but during the years of Soviet power it lost the tradition of both theology and ordinary ritual practice, resulting in mass the mind of the Tatars any Arab or Turk was perceived as a beacon of knowledge about Islam. The current mufti of Tatarstan Ildus Faizov in one of his interviews described the mood among the Tatar population at the beginning of 1990 in the following way: “We even looked at any Arab student almost as a prophet Muhammad, it seemed to us that right now they (the Arabs or Turks) will teach us Islam. " The foreign countries of the Middle East easily took advantage of this natural desire of the broad masses of the Tatar people to join the religious values of the Muslim religion.
The tradition of Tatar pre-revolutionary theology, which has managed over the centuries of Russian autocracy to substantiate the need for peaceful coexistence in a multi-religious society, failed to properly develop its development in the 1990s. This was caused by the aggressive onslaught of the spiritual expansion of foreign Muslim countries that had significant material resources to conduct wide coverage of propaganda from financing the construction of mosques to educational activities in various fields: replicating religious literature of foreign preachers, opening a network of educational institutions both religious and secular, using very popular and perceived as an elite population, creating a network of Muslim summer lags Ray and the organization of foreign training. The carriers of the Hanafi madhhab, traditional for the Tatars of Islam (named after the founder of the religious law school of Sunni Islam Abu Hanifa (699-767), which most of the Russian Muslim peoples, including the Tatars, adhere to, lost out to competition from foreign missionaries. In addition, the age factor often played here: traditional Islam in the eyes of the Tatar population and, first of all, youth was associated with the old people who, due to the conservatism of thinking inherent in this generation, lost in the field of information warfare, often without knowing how to even conduct this propaganda. In addition, for the broad masses of the Tatar population experiencing an acute shortage of religious literature, their own pre-revolutionary classics of theology were elementary inaccessible due to the language and alphabetical barriers, since their works were not republished after 1917, and in the pre-Soviet period they were written only in Arabic Arabic or Old Tatar, which was significantly different from the modern due to the presence in the vocabulary of a large number of Arabisms and Persisms. The modern Tatar language is based on Cyrillic (the transition to it occurred in 1939, before that there was also a transition from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin in 1927). This was easily used by missionaries who translated a huge number of religious literature of Turkish and Arab authors into modern Tatar and Russian languages, thus filling bookstores or distributing it often free of charge.
The collapse of the USSR, along with the political collapse of a single state, inevitably gave rise to the collapse of the once unified system of Muslim religious education in the country. In the Soviet Union, there was a single Muslim training center for all Muslims - in Uzbekistan, where they studied at the imam in the Mir-Arab madrasa in Bukhara and the Islamic Institute in Tashkent. Such a unification of official Muslim education allowed the state to control this process, as well as instill a pro-Soviet orientation in its students, which at that time was evidence of the civil patriotism of the Muslim clergy. Study in foreign countries could only be carried out at the beginning of training in Soviet Uzbekistan, and sent to study outside the USSR only after a thorough check and not without control from the Soviet security agencies. For example, the current chairman of the Central Spiritual Board of Muslims (TSDUM) Talgat Tajuddin, after completing his studies in Central Asia, is going to study at Al-Azhar University in Egypt (1973-1978). For the most part, such foreign studies at that time were caused by purely pragmatic considerations: in the eyes of the Muslim world abroad, Soviet muftis should look decent, which ensured the fact that they were studying in some religious educational center generally accepted in Islamic countries. Sending a young 25-year-old graduate of the Bukhara madrasah Tajuddin to Al-Azhar allowed her to take the post of mufti of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the European part of the USSR and Siberia (in the post-Soviet time - TsDUM) in 32 in the near future. Subsequently, it was Tajuddin who, after 1991, and to this day, will unswervingly adhere to the line of loyalty to the state, support and development of traditional Islam for Russia and the always-emphasized respect for the Russian Orthodox Church. That is, a similar scheme for the selection of foreign studies in the Soviet era has established itself effectively.
In the post-Soviet period, the Muslim Ummah (community) of Tatarstan became the object of religious influence of various countries of the foreign Islamic world. The degree of religious expansion of a country depended and continues to depend on the education of the clergy, the presence of followers of various non-traditional for Tatar currents of Islam of foreign origin in the region, religious information spread through literature and media and the role of various organizations of foreign countries from charitable foundations to diplomatic representative offices in Kazan and their patron status in the bureaucratic hierarchy of state bodies of Russia and Tatarstan. At the moment we can talk about the influence of the Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait), Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and the countries of Southeast Asia on the Muslims of Tatarstan of varying degrees of intensity.
The influence of Arab countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait)
Since after 1991, the Central Asian centers of religious education turned out to be abroad, Russian, including Tatarstan, Muslims had to build their system of religious education (the last of the Tatars, who in the post-Soviet time continued the tradition of teaching in Bukhara, was the current imam of the Kazan mosque "Suleiman »Ildar Bayazitov (1997-1998). However, this process faced certain, including inevitable, difficulties, the main of which can be called the shortage of personnel and the lack of religious training. based on the principles of Tatar traditional Islam, these shortcomings were compensated by foreign philanthropists who offered both cadres and literature, which resulted in the fact that secondary schools and higher religious schools in Tatarstan appeared in 1990 in the Republic of Tatarstan. The faculty consisted of foreigners, mainly Arabs, and textbooks were of Arabic origin. As a result, the Salafist ideology was introduced through Arabic teachers and through literature among young people habism).
Salafism is an ideology formulated by the Islamic theologian Takiddin ibn-Taimiya (1263-1328), the essence of which was reduced to the idea of the need to return to Islam, which existed in the times of the Prophet Mohammed (VII century AD), which is interpreted as “pure” Islam , without any innovations that have taken place or of the national characteristics of the Muslim regions. In practice, this was expressed in their radical elimination, often to the detriment of the national culture and the daily life of Muslim peoples. In the 18th century, the theoretical reasoning of Ibn Taymiy attempted to be applied in the Ottoman province of Hijaz (now the territory of Saudi Arabia) by his follower Muhammad Abdel Wahhab (1703-1792), on whose behalf the teaching was called “Wahhabism”. The Wahhabis themselves prefer to call themselves Salafis (from the Arabic. “Salaf” - the preceding), hinting that they profess the very form of Islam that was in the very preceding of their time, i.e. in the time of Muhammad. Therefore, the words “Wahhabism and Salafism” can be considered synonymous.
At first glance, the seemingly puritanism of the Wahhabis, it would seem, should not threaten society and the state in Russia. However, the main danger of the Wahhabis lies in their akida (creed). The traditional for the Tatars was the Maturiditsky akyd (named after the theologian Mansur al-Maturidi (870-944). The aqyda of the Wahhabis is that the faith of a Muslim depends on his actions, and from the point of view of the Wahhabis a person who, for example, does not pray, he is not a Muslim, that is, a kafer (incorrect), even if at the same time he speaks and considers himself a Muslim. However, the actions of Wahhabis mean not only the obligation to perform all the rituals and rituals of the religious practice of Islam, but including the need to jihad ( "Effort n and the ways of faith "), which is interpreted as an armed confrontation, help those who materially finance the jihadists and morally (justifying their actions in the information space). Wahhabi, one of the most popular in the radical Islamist world, expressed a similar differentiation of Muslims bard of Chechen origin Timur Mutsurayev says: “Before Allah, the one praying in the silence of comfort and whoever is ready for the deprivation of war every moment is not equal, thus making it clear that the more“ real and true ”Muslim is It is only the leading armed struggle man.
In 1990, along with the creation of a Muslim’s own religious education system in Tatarstan (the result was the opening of 1 Islamic University, 1 higher madrasah and 10 secondary madrasas), the practice of foreign religious education was widespread, presenting the greatest problem for Muslims of Tatarstan until today. The first foreign missionaries from the Middle East arrived in 1992 of the year, starting the organization of summer Muslim youth camps, the essence of which was to intensively teach the Arabic language and preach radical forms of Islam (the first such camp was organized in Naberezhnye Chelny). After a similar stay in the camps, youth were recruited to train them in foreign countries. Since the domestic system of religious education experienced the process of creation, studying in foreign countries seemed at that time a quick solution to the shortage of clergy personnel and the same teachers for Tatarstan madrasas. From that time on, an almost uncontrolled flow of people willing to study at foreign Islamic universities began, especially since the host country provided the Tatars with accommodation and meals, often paying for the way. Such comfortable conditions for the admission of applicants caused a flurry of those who wanted to study in Islamic universities of the Arab East, mainly Saudi Arabia, who most of all recruited in Tatarstan who wanted to study in its universities.
One of the main problems in the foreign training of Russian Muslims is that they often perceive the traditions and values of the country where they study as ideal, serving as a role model. Returning to their homeland, they strive to transfer the practice of life that they observed abroad to Russian realities, which inevitably leads to a radicalization of the flock, through which visiting graduates of Arab universities carry out the values acquired abroad. Often there is a situation when young people aged 17-20 who went to school yesterday and now go to the Arab East for knowledge go to the Arab states to study in the Arab states. Studying there for a long time (there are cases when Russians studied in Saudi Arabia for eight to nine years), their formation as an adult personality took place in the Muslim environment of a foreign country. Subjectivity and slavery before foreign Muslim culture, which is perceived as the only correct and true, leads to the situation that graduates of foreign Islamic universities tend to replace the traditional form of Islam for the indigenous Muslim peoples of Russia, which are common in the countries of the Middle East. The most important difference in foreign Islamic education is the absence of a centuries-old experience of peaceful coexistence with foreign religious (and specifically Christian) peoples, dominated by the latter. In the case of the Tatars, being numerically smaller and living for several centuries together with the Orthodox nations (and first of all with the Russians), we managed to develop a unique interfaith practice of peaceful development. This has also reflected on the perception of Russia as its state, the readiness to serve in its army and even participate in wars with its co-religionists as part of the troops of their country (numerous Russian-Turkish and Caucasian wars are direct evidence of that). Patriotism left its mark on the religious education of Russian Muslims within the country.
However, abroad, in the same Saudi Arabia, where even Shiites, who are in any way Muslims, are discriminated against, in the education system they lay down Salafi values, which are based on rejection of peaceful coexistence with the Gentiles. By the way, officially Christianity in Saudi Arabia is prohibited, its confession is punishable by death. Upon return, a graduate of a Saudi university sees the picture when Russians and Tatars coexist peacefully together in Kazan, often marry each other (the percentage of Russian-Tatar families is 25%), can not only congratulate each other on religious holidays, but even participate in celebrations and treats for their occasion, and others, which destroys the value picture of the world of an Arab university graduate, who was inspired before this during his training that thought that any non-practicing Muslim is a kafer, and in Tatarstan he sees when it’s not that a large percentage of secular Muslims, but even that which is unthinkable for him, does not develop into a worldview formed abroad: Muslims coexist perfectly well with Christians, make friends, create families, etc. As a result, Wahhabi aspires to to change this tradition, declaring it a “bidgat” (innovation). After joining the imam of a mosque in Tatarstan, he begins to preach this idea through preaching, alienating even more Muslims from Christians, building an ideological wall of separation between them, inciting hatred and a sense of superiority over all others, including traditional Muslims. The presence of an imam with Wahhabi convictions and even more of Mukhtasib (the chief imam of a city or rural area with administrative power among the rest of the clergy) allows spreading such value attitudes to a large audience, justifying the official status of Wahhabism in the eyes of his flock, declaring Wahhabism “true "Or" pure "Islam, and traditional Islam -" bidgatom "(innovation), alien to Islam. In addition, government agencies are forced to reckon with such an imam or muhtasib, since he now occupies the leading role of the lower or middle, and sometimes the highest, link in the system of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan.
Since in Soviet times Muslims could receive religious education in the Bukhara madrassa “World Arab” and the Tashkent Islamic Institute, then the Tatar clergy of the older generation had an education that is commonly called “Bukharian”, which is why many graduates of religious schools are called “Bukhara mullahs”. These include Talgat Tajuddin (Ufa), Ravil Gainutdin (Moscow), Abbas Bibarsov (Penza), but also a significant part of Kazan imams: in the past, the muftis of Tatarstan Gabdulla Galiullin and Gusman Iskhakov, ex-Muhtasib of Almetyevsk Nail Sahchzyanov, former deputy. , Muhtasib Zelenodolsk Gabdelhamit Zinnatullin and several others. Despite the fact that these Kazan imams had finished, it would seem, domestic educational institutions, many of them became conductors of Wahhabism in post-Soviet Tatarstan. Some of them went later to study in Saudi Arabia: Nail Sahibzyanov (1993-1996), Suleiman Zaripov (1993-1996), etc.
Along with them, the percentage of imams who received education in Saudi Arabia is very significant without first receiving it in their homeland. These include the imam of the main Kazan mosque "Kul Sharif" Ramil Yunusov (1992-1997) by the holyman of the Kazan mosque "Kazan Nury" by Rustem Zinnurov (by 1993-2000); Shavkat Abubakirov (2003-2004), Imam of the Kazan Mosque “Enilar”, imam of the Tauba Mosque, Naberezhnye Chelny Idris Galyautdinov and others. These people are (even if they have already been removed from their leadership positions after the election of the mufti of Tatarstan Ildus Faizov) in 2011 year) prov arrestor non-traditional Tatar Islam foreign flows. The problem is that from 1998 to 13 in January 2011, the mufti of Tatarstan was Gusman Iskhakov, who, having studied in the Mir Arab Arab Bukhara madrasah (1978-1982) and the Libyan University of Tripoli (1984-1985), created favorable soil for the spread of radical Islamism in Tatarstan. In September 2010 of the year, six months before his resignation, he, speaking at the All-Russian Forum of Tatar Imams, spoke from the rostrum without any concealment that he was seeking to appoint imams and muhtasibs to graduates from Arab universities. At the same time, he argued his similar personnel policy with the fact that he cannot refuse people who are better versed in Islam, according to Iskhakov: “Well, how can I not appoint someone who has studied the Qur'an and Mediyadah or Riyadh for five or eight years? Hadith ?! These young people are better versed in Islam than we, the elderly. ” However, these excuses, sounding completely unconvincing due to the fact that they do not reveal the essence of the problem (knowledge in the field of Koranistic and Hadith studies can be based on Wahhabi ideology with a corresponding interpretation of Islamic dogma), as a result were disavowed by subsequent events. 25 November 2010 in the Nurlatsky district of Tatarstan was eliminated by an armed gang of fundamentalist militants who managed to equip a dugout with provisions and a warehouse in one of the forests of this Zakamsky region. weapons. The terrorists obviously planned to copy the North Caucasian model of the bandpol. When, after their liquidation by the forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the FSB, they began to study who these criminals were, it turned out that the gang consisted of both Wahhabis and members of the banned extremist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir (Islamic Liberation Party). It is very characteristic of the Volga region when there are adherents of different extremist movements in the same Jamaat (community). And in this case, for the sake of a common idea - the fight against kafers - the Wahhabis and Hizb ut-Tahrir are ready to unite, despite the differences in ideological subtleties.
Along with graduates from universities in Saudi Arabia, Tatarstan has graduates from other universities. In particular, there are those who graduated from the famous Al-Azhar University of Cairo. Founded in the 10th century, this university has fame as one of the largest centers of knowledge in the Islamic world. Basically, the reverent attitude towards Al-Azharu continues to this day among Russian Muslims. However, as observers note, today to talk about "Al-Azhar" as a center of knowledge in the field of Hanafi madhhab traditional for the indigenous Muslim peoples of the Volga region (and Al-Azkhar taught Muslim law in accordance with different mazhabs, but it was in Russian Muslims are the choice, so they chose the Hanafi madhhab peculiar to the Tatars and Bashkirs) is no longer necessary.
A characteristic feature of the training of Russian Muslims in Al-Azhar is their self-sufficiency on the spot. The situation is critical in that students from the republics of the former USSR, arriving to study in Egypt from their muftiates, are not financially secure. Often, they are not paid in Cairo, no one from the Motherland (unless relatives send it), but they need to live for something during their studies. This was used by various Salafi preachers who collect students from the CIS, pay for their accommodation in the hostel, feed them and organize their own lectures, which are not read in university classrooms, but in canteens, in rooms of the same hostels, etc. The practice of studying in Al-Azhar is such that the student has a lot of free time, which is given to him for self-education in libraries. But instead of sitting at the book, they go to lectures to Salafi preachers who provide them with material support (usually they eat together all together, pray, and then this “lecturer” speaks to the students). And it turns out that Muslim young people from the CIS spend most of their time studying at Al-Azhar under the influence of Salafi preachers, many of whom are formerly natives of the USSR. For example, the most popular broadcaster of “Salafi truth” in Russian is Abu Muhammad Rinat Kazakhstan (his real name is Rinat Zaynullin - an ethnic Tatar, born in Kazakhstan), who in 1990's studied in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and then in Egypt, just being in Cairo, he began to gather Russian Muslims from all over Al-Azhar to attend lectures in an informal setting. Former head of the Office of the President of Tatarstan’s work with religious associations Marat Gatin in the late 1990-X and the beginning of the 2000-i studied at the Arabic language courses at Al-Azhar and remembered that all Russians, no matter which faculty they study, Kazakhstan gathered for their sermons in hostels and at tea parties. The result was that upon returning home after years of study in Egypt and with an Al-Azhar diploma, the graduate took a job as imam at a mosque, but he also had a listened course of lectures on the Salafi version of Islam. As a result, the knowledge base of such clergy, proudly carrying Al-Azhar graduate status (this is comparable to Cambridge, Oxford or Harvard only in an Islamic environment), was based on Wahhabism or, most often, on the Muslim Brotherhood ideology ( "Ihwan al-Muslim"). Ikhvanism is an eclectic mixture of political Islam, the essence of which in Russian conditions is that all Muslims (be it Wahhabis, Hizb ut-Tahrir, Tabligi, Sufi, etc.) are brothers, regardless of difference and polarity in ideological values . Ikhvanists do not oppose the traditional Hanafi madhhab for Tatars of Islam openly, trying not to oppose themselves, but to use it for their own purposes, one of which is the politicization of Russian Islam (they often voice ideas of the need to create a special Islamic party in Russia or advocate so that Muslims go into politics, but not go as citizens, namely, positioning themselves as Muslims - this process is called “umma-building” by Russian Ikhvanists. It is also the Ikhvanists who usually act as rehabilitators of Wahhabism, speaking from the position that, they say, Wahhabis are also Muslims, albeit more radical, with whom it is necessary to have a dialogue, they must be recognized as equal members of the Muslim community along with traditionalists, however, in practice it means the legalization of Wahhabism. In Russia, they often play a prominent role in the Muslim information space. At the same time, they themselves strive to look very respectable: they do not wear thick beards like Wahhabis, dress in good suits, try to match the business style. Mukhammad Salyakhetdinov (the chief editor of the Russian-language information site Islamnews.ru), Rinat Mukhametov (an active author of articles on the Ansar.ru website) and others should be considered as ikhvanists. The ideologue of Ikhvanism is the Egyptian theologian Yusuf Kardawi (born in 1926), expelled by Hosni Mubarak from the country to Qatar.
Under the conditions of criticism of both traditional Muslim clergy and the Wahhabism expert community in Russia and, in particular, in Tatarstan, which usually meant focusing on the destructive consequences of the religious influence of Saudi Arabia, the idea of Al-Wasatia was promoted as an alternative to Wahhabism - "moderate Islam". Established in 2006 in Kuwait, the Al-Vasatiya International Center, represented by its ideologue, the Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs of this Arab country, Adel Al-Falyah, began to actively spread its influence on the Muslim Ummah of Russia and Tatarstan. Al-Vasatiya is opposed to Saudi Wahhabism, but in practice it is only its modernized copy, which has been given a hint of moderation. In 2010, a representative office of Al-Wasatia was opened in Moscow (headed by a former priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, converted to Islam Vyacheslav Polosin), and Adel al-Falyakh himself was awarded the State Order of Friendship (among experts for a long time joked about one curious fact: The same award was given to the director of the Bekhatle grocery store Muslime Latypova, thus, both the store manager and the Kuwaiti minister deserve one medal from the point of view of the authorities). The Vasatists, having large connections at a often high level, actively implant their ideology, literally imposing their teachings on Al-Vasatia on Russian Muslims, forcing even traditionalists to demonstrate loyalty to this religious trend of Kuwaiti origin. Today, imported Islam under the guise of "Al-Wasatiy" actually forces Russian Muslims to focus on Kuwait. Let it not Saudi Arabia, but still it is a foreign religious center. The Moscow Declaration on Jihad adopted in 2012, according to the Vasatists, should have been directed against Salafism. However, its text itself is full of quotations from the works of Ibn Taimiyyah’s “father of Salafism”, and the terrorists who are fighting in the North Caucasus are unlikely to read this document and immediately lay down their arms.
As a result, in Russia and, in particular, in Tatarstan, foreign religious education is often a guarantee of transferring the values of the Wahhabi and Ikhvanist communities to Russian soil, especially since, in addition to the clergy, they also join the ranks of the teaching staff of religious educational institutions, thereby introducing non-traditional Tatars of Islam are already being conducted through domestic educational institutions much more accessible to the population. To date, the number of Wahhabis and Wahhabis in Tatarstan is estimated at 3 thousands of people. 2010 Tatars studied at 120 in Saudi Arabia. In 2011, without notifying the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Tatarstan, 20 people went there.
Turkish influence
The collapse of the USSR and the undefined status of Tatarstan itself as part of Russia (in 1990, the Republic adopted a Declaration of State Sovereignty, and a referendum was held in 1992, which resulted in Tatarstan becoming a “sovereign state associated with Russia”) in the context of the weakness of the federal center and the lack of a proper vertical of power gave rise to a desire from the local ethnocratic elite of Kazan to start an active international policy, which, on the one hand, was connected with the confirmation of the status of sovereign states for Tatarstan, and on the other hand, it flattered vanity and vanity yesterday secretaries of the local Committee of the CPSU, suddenly as a result of geopolitical changes in the Eurasian area turned into rulers virtually independent states. Against this background, the desire of all the Turkic republics of the former USSR was the desire to enlist the support of Turkey - an ethnically and religiously “related” republic, besides being a pro-Western state, consisting in the military-political bloc of NATO. However, this desire for cooperation was mutual, as Turkey pursued its own interests in the "fraternal" Turkic republics, acting as an "elder brother" for them. Turkey’s ethnopolitical influence was reflected in the strengthening of Tatarstan’s international contacts when its first president, Mintimer Shaimiev, was met at the highest state level in Ankara. It is hard to imagine that, for example, the governor of some Turkish provinces would be accepted as the head of a foreign state by the president of Russia, but it was considered perfectly normal when Mintimer Shaimiev was honored in Turkey as the ruler of an independent country.
Along with the ethnopolitical influence, Turkey also carried out religious expansion in Tatarstan. This trend was presented in the form of the emergence in the region of Nursism, Gulenism and the Neo-Sufi currents of Islam of Turkish origin (suleymanists and qadirists).
Nursism (after the founder Said Nursi (1876-1960) - Turkish preacher) began to appear in Tatarstan at the very beginning of 1990-s, finding support from that part of the Tatar population that did not have sympathy for Wahhabism because of its open de-ethnization of Islam. In addition, Wahhabism was often perceived as something “Arab”, not very close. Turkish religious influence, taking into account the ethnocultural relations of the Tatars and Turks, was perceived much closer. In Kazan, one of the first emissaries of nurism was the Turkish Beytulla, who played a large role in the dissemination of this doctrine in Tatarstan at the beginning of the 1990s. Numerous literature translated into Tatar and Russian, consisting of the writings of Said Nursi, competed with the Wahhabi literature in the legal market that had just appeared after many years of state atheism of the religious book market. Affordable and easily distributed Nursist literature, after being checked by government agencies that only paid attention to it in 2000-s and eventually recognized its obvious extremist character, began to get out of the bookshelves of madrasas and shops when many people already knew it, and availability has become quite natural in the library of broad sections of Muslims.
However, the teachings of Said Nursi Fethiyullah Gülen (born in 1941) received the greatest influence, focusing on the promotion of the “dialogue of civilizations” in the form of neo-eurasism, interpreted by him as a Christian-Jewish symbiosis, and creating his own educational system. In Tatarstan, Gullenism was spread among the secular Tatar intelligentsia precisely because of its religious modernism with an appeal to the liberal values of man. Considering that the ruling state elite represented by political adviser to the first president of Mintimer Shaimiev, Rafael Khakimov, who now holds the post of director of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Tatarstan, actively promoted the idea of Euro-Islam (Islamic modernism, the essence of which was to cult to get knowledge as a godly deed, to alleviate religious duties Muslim, which in practice meant the exemption from ritualistic practices of rituals and the admission of violations of prohibitions, including the use of alcohol) some similarities with elements of Gulenism, especially in the idea of a “dialogue of civilizations” (in Tatarstan this idea is actively pursued by the platform “YES” - the representative office of the same name Turkish journal, which is in Kazan; the head of the representative is a graduate of the Turkish University Rasim Khusnutdinov), the latter received tacit legitimacy for its spread. A significant part of the secular Tatar intelligentsia found its way to Islam in Gulenism, since its emphasis on the ethical norms of Islam, rather than ritual and ritual practice, clearly found understanding among a certain secular part of Tatar society.
In 1990, 7 was opened in Tatarstan-Turkish lyceums in Tatarstan, based on the Nur-Gulen concept of education with the cult of quality education. Indeed, Tatar-Turkish lyceums began to be perceived in Tatarstan as elite schools, where Turkish men taught, which was and remains uncommon for Russian schools, where women mostly work as teachers. It should be added that the emphasis in schools was not only on the study of the basic program of secondary education, but it was given an in-depth study of the English and Turkish languages, programming, with the result that students of these high schools were often prize-winners of various city and regional competitions and competitions. Despite his Tatar-Turkish status, there were many Russian children among high school students. Within the framework of electives, often of a binding nature, the basics of Islam were taught in its Nuristic interpretation. But the most important function performed by the Turkish lyceums was that they grew up a generation that was complementary to Turkey, and after Fethiyullah Gülen moved to New York in 1998 to New York, and the United States. The strategic goal of the functioning of the Tatar-Turkish lyceums was to educate the future state and business elite of Tatarstan, which focuses on the countries of the West. By investing in education, the Nursist-Gulenist students provided high-quality knowledge to students, which ensured the competitiveness of a graduate of the Tatar-Turkish Lyceum and laid in the future perspective a significant likelihood of entering as a result of their better knowledge and better training in the leading elite of Tatarstan. The calculation was in the perspective of reorientation towards the establishment of the republic in Turkey and the United States, consisting of 15-20 years from graduates of Tatar-Turkish lyceums, in the event of certain political changes within Russia (for example, if it collapsed in the future). If you imagine such a scenario, then it is extremely important for Western countries that the regional elite is oriented towards it: who, if not graduates of Tatar-Turkish lyceums, who have a complimentary relationship with Turkey in school, will make the “right” choice when Tatarstan acquires independence.
In 2008, the republican law enforcement agencies decided to deport Turkish teachers of these lyceums to Turkey. The formal reasons were the expiration of a visa stay in Tatarstan, the absence of a number of teachers of higher education diplomas, etc. The real reasons were, of course, the missionary optional activities of Turkish teachers. The big miscalculation is that the law enforcement agencies failed to justify in time and clearly in the information space the deportation of Turkish teachers, as a result of which, in the Tatar national environment, this measure looked like an outright repression from Russia, which caused numerous publications in the local press, contributing to incitement of anti-Russian mood among the Tatars.
Neosufian influence on Muslims of Tatarstan was carried out through the activities of the Suleimanist movement (better known as “Suleimandzhilar”, after its leader Suleiman Hilmi Tunahanu (1988-1959) and Qadirists (followers of the Turkish theologian Haidar Bash (born in 1947)) a follower of the Sufi sheikh Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (1077-1166), by whose name the current received the name). Suleymanists organized an Ak Umut (“White Hope”) orphanage in Kirovsky district of Kazan They do not engage in biased activities, preferring to lock themselves in their community. Kadirista are mainly graduates of Turkish universities who have returned to their homeland. At their meetings they organize loud zikr - repeated pronunciation of prayer form, performed by kadiris very noisy and representing special ritual movements performed in a circle Despite the free distribution of religious literature (in almost any Muslim book store in Kazan, you can purchase translations into Russian Yeniya Khaydar Bash), there are not so many followers of Kadirism in Tatarstan and do not play a large role in the life of the Muslim community in the region, as suleymanists do. At least for now.
Experience shows that, during the period of active Turkish religious influence in Tatarstan, it was supported not only by various Turkish business, culture or religion figures visiting the region, but also by diplomats from the Consulate General of the Republic of Turkey in Kazan, opened in 1996 year. There have been cases when even Turkish builders-hiberianers were involved in the distribution of Turkish religious literature. However, when law enforcement agencies began to combat Turkish influence in the religious and educational sphere, the representatives of the Turkish consulate did not officially demonstrate their outrage, trying to observe the diplomatic protocol. This was largely due to the fact that Kemalist positions were significantly strong in Turkey itself, despite the fact that since 2002, the leader of the Islamist Justice and Development Party, Recep Erdogan, has been the country's prime minister. However, over the past two or three years, Erdogan has succeeded in reversing the influence of Kemalists in domestic politics, especially after the Ergenekon case, and increasingly positioning Turkey as an Islamic state. Inevitably in this situation, we can expect an increase in the religious influence of Turkey in the post-Soviet space. This was especially noticeable literally over the last six months, when the topic of nurism, forgotten over the past five years due to the deportation of Turkish teachers from Tatarstan and other regions of Russia, where such educational institutions existed, and the prohibition of Nurist literature, began to be actively raised in the Russian Islamic Internet media. . It is possible that the Muslims of Tatarstan will wait for the second wave of Turkish religious expansion, and the fertile ground for this is given by the fact that the republican authorities have focused more on the fight against Wahhabism, which is associated as a struggle against the religious influence of Saudi Arabia, not paying attention to the rest factors of foreign religious presence.
Iranian influence
The increased influence of Iran is connected with the opening of the Consulate General of this state in Kazan 2007. Even in the period before the emergence of the diplomatic mission of Tehran in Tatarstan, the Iranians sounded appeals to both the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of the republic and the regional authorities with a proposal to allow the construction of a Shiite mosque in Kazan. However, the latter came out resolutely against such wishes of the Iranians, considering it quite reasonable that the isolation of the Shiites in the form of having their own churches will help to strengthen their influence, including religious, uncontrolled by the authorities. However, the Iranians did not abandon this idea and tried to return to it already after the start of the work of the consulate in Kazan, finding some support from the then mufti of Tatarstan Gusman Iskhakov. Apparently for generous donations, he decided to go around the positions of regional authorities who politely but firmly opposed the construction of a Shiite mosque. Gusman Iskhakov decided to turn one of the operating mosques in Tatarstan into an actual Shiite mosque, and he did it not in the capital of the republic, but in Chistopol (a city in 135 km from Kazan). Ethnic Tajiks settled in the Nur and Anas mosques in Chistopol, but learned from religious universities in Iran and practicing the Shiite version of Islam. The de facto mosque became Shiite, and the Tajiks began to conduct propaganda among the Tatars. This provoked a protest from Muhtasib Chistopol Ilnur Khusnutdinov, who began to sound the alarm regarding the attempts to Shiitization of the Tatars, but in the end the mufti of Tatarstan, clearly dissatisfied with the speeches of Khusnutdinov, got him to be removed and left Chistopol. Despite the fact that Gusman Iskhakov 13 in January 2011 of the year resigned from the post of mufti after the events in the Nurlatsky district of Tatarstan, and today the head of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Tatarstan is Ildus Faizov, an ardent supporter of traditional Islam, the mosque is still influenced by Tajik Shiites, though In the new realities, when the current mufti began an offensive against non-traditional forms of Islam in the republic, Shiite preachers stopped active agitational work.
After justification in Tatarstan, Iranian diplomats tried to spread anti-Israeli sentiment among the Tatars, which was connected with Tehran’s foreign policy aimed at confronting Israel. They tried to influence the Tatar population through the local media, for which the then Iranian consul Reza Bagban Condori gathered journalists from a number of Tatar publications at one of the meetings and suggested that they begin to publish articles in support of the Palestinian people in their newspapers and magazines as a sign of general Muslim solidarity. However, the proposal of the Tehran diplomat did not find a response among the Tatar media, mainly because Tatar journalists agreed to publish anti-Israeli articles only for money, which the Iranian consul, who calculated for the solidarity of the Tatars with their Palestinian co-religionists, was very surprised by their mercantilism.
Shiites in Tatarstan are predominantly ethnic Azerbaijanis (60 thousands of people living legally and illegally, of whom 2 thousands can be considered actively believers of the Shiites) who attend the republic’s mosques on an equal footing with the rest of the migrants. Spiritually, the Azerbaijani community in the region is nourished by a family of Askers from Masalli (64-year-old Isa Askerov and his son Fariz Askerov). Shiites gather for their religious events in the Nurulla and Zakabannaya mosques in Kazan, often renting it for hotel conference rooms. Among Tatars, Shiism is not widespread, with the exception of the wives of Azerbaijanis. Azerbaijani Shiites themselves do not seek proselytism. Fariz Askerov, who had studied in Qom (Iran) for more than ten years, wrote on arrival in Kazan in 2007 two books Akiba va Amal (“Belief and Action”, 2007) and Split Sect (2011) in Azerbaijani (translated in Russian); the latter is directed against Wahhabism.
Today, the Iranian diplomatic mission, seeing that there are no special religious concessions from the official state bodies and the new mufti of the republic, is trying to influence various Muslim public organizations, for example, the Union of Muslims of Tatarstan (chaired by Nailia Ziganshina) and uniting mainly female pensioners "Muslim" (chairman - Almira Adiatullina), which is quite well possible. So, in 2011, the Iranian consulate in Kazan organized a visit to Tatarstan’s women's organizations in Iran, where they were met at a decent level, despite their purely public status. Subsequently, on their return, they organized cultural evenings in Kazan on the role of women in Islam with the participation of the wives of Iranian diplomats.
Among other measures of a religious nature in Tatarstan, Iranians have become the propaganda of the achievements of the Islamic revolution and the role of Ruhollah Khomeini in the Islamic world. Usually, such actions are carried out through the organization of scientific events in universities of the republic, in particular, in 2010, the international conference “Islamic revolution in Iran: a civilizational phenomenon and its prospects” was held at Kazan University, during which Iranian participants constantly pedaled the theme of the Islamic revolution 1979. in Tehran for the entire Muslim world, including the importance of this event for Russian Muslims.
In Iran, there were several students from Tatarstan, but in percentage terms this is less than 1% of all Tatars who send to study at religious universities in the foreign Muslim world. Upon return from Iran, most of them did not occupy any posts in the system of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims, preferring to work in commercial organizations related to Iran. Shiitization of Tatars is not even a noticeable phenomenon against the general background of the processes in the Muslim community of the region. Usually, this phenomenon happens either as a result of marriages or love relationships with Shiites (the institute of temporary marriage existing in Shiism is actively used by Shiite Azerbaijanis for cohabitation and romance with Tartars and even Russian girls who naively believe that entering into a religious marriage with them will be a guarantee of legally official secular marriage), or as a result of falling under the spell of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose position in the international arena is admired by his admirers in Tatarstan, which serves as motivation, if not for the actual adoption of Shi'ism, then, at least, hobbies them. Iranian diplomats themselves in Tatarstan are still actively lobbying for the idea of opening a separate Shiite class in one of the schools in Kazan, which has not yet found understanding among the republican authorities.
Pakistani influence
The influence of Pakistan in Tatarstan is felt through the activities of the extremist and banned in Russia organization “Jamaat Tabligh” (“The community of reunion”). Her adherents from among the Tatars are engaged in missionary activities by walking around the villages of a number of regions of the North-West and the oil South-East of Tatarstan, spending the night in mosques and collecting alms for their activities. They are easy to distinguish in appearance: long shaggy beards and always Pakistani clothing (shalvar-kamiz). In the 1990-ies, the tablogs in Tatarstan were headed by Gabdelaziz Zagidullin, currently one of the leaders is Rafael Samigullin. They conduct training in Pakistan and Bangladesh in camps, where they gather at their congresses. Classes are held on the principle of circles, uniting around a preacher. In Tatarstan, their number is based within 350 people. Without taking any posts in the system of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan, they are trying to play a certain role among the Muslims of the region. Their main method of propaganda is to invite people to the mosque. Here they are very reminiscent of Jehovah's Witnesses: when they meet, they begin to talk about Allah, the importance of ritual prayer, offering to read this or that brochure on Islam and be sure to come to the mosque. The tabligovtsy have their own “markup” (center) in one of the cottages in the settlement of Severny, Kazan, where they meet periodically to discuss the coordination of their activities.
Often, some of the imams treat them favorably, since the people of the Tablik show a kind of Muslim image in their way of life, which, however, is far from the truth. But it is they who, thus misleading the clergy and other people, create fertile soil for the same Wahhabis, despite differences in ideological attitudes. In practice, this is expressed in the fact that the new arrivals to the community, whom the Tabligian led by his agitation, may soon come under the influence of the Wahhabi missionary, often providing a more skilled preacher than the follower of Jamaat Tabligh.
It’s still difficult enough to trace the use of tabligans by Pakistan to strengthen its influence in Tatarstan due to the fact that it has less followers for the non-traditional Islam of the Tatars, but given that after a while, the Tabligans organize trips to their camps in Pakistan for their proselytes (Raivind and Bhopal) and Bangladesh (Dhaka), it cannot be ruled out that they are being recruited by Pakistani paragovernmental religious organizations to continue their missionary activities to return in Tatarstan.
Another line of strengthening Pakistani influence in Tatarstan can go through the activities of Tajiks who studied in this country. So, in the village of Shumkovo, Rybnoslobodsky district of Tatarstan, 7 settled with large families of Tajik migrants who are conducting religious propaganda among the local Russian and Tatar residents, which they strongly dislike to the indigenous Shumkovites. The religious leader of the Tajiks of this settlement is their compatriot who studied during 12 years in North Waziristan in the Jamaliya Madrasa.
The influence of the Muslim countries of Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore)
Passion and interest in Indonesia and Malaysia in the last few years in Tatarstan is mostly connected with the choice of targeting the regional leadership in the person of the current Tatarstan President Rustam Minnikhanov to the model of South-East Asia (Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia), which the head of the region decided to take sample of state management. This should include a certain image of the countries of this region as economically prosperous republics, with either a dominant in size or a significant part of the Muslim population. By setting the tone for a specific orientation of the region’s elite towards these countries, they encourage a peculiar interest in Islam in these countries, trying to connect its features with the reasons for the breakthrough in the economy. Against this background, one can speak for the time being purely about interest in the Islamic economy as the model that the countries of South-East Asia offer for export. Frequent various events (seminars, conferences, forums) related to Islamic banking, which have literally become regular in recent years, give potential investors from Indonesia and Malaysia to get acquainted with Tatarstan, which is actively advertised as a Muslim republic, despite the fact that almost half of its population it is not even ethnically Muslim in origin. The head of the State Investment Development Agency of the Republic of Tatarstan, Linar Yakupov, who graduated from the International Islamic University in Malaysia and who heads the Russian Center for Islamic Economics and Finance at the Russian Islamic University, plays an active role in attracting Islamic finance. It is he who acts in Tatarstan as a kind of propagandist of the model of Islamic economy, while appealing to the experience of Southeast Asia. For the time being, it is not necessary to speak about any religious influence of Indonesia or Malaysia on Tatarstan, since there is more talk about attracting potential investors from this remote Asian region for Russia, although not very strongly wanting to start an active business in the Volga region. It’s just worth remembering that under the guise of Islamic banking, actively promoted in Tatarstan, it is possible to get a legal way of financing non-traditional Islamic movements of a radical nature. In February, 2011 of the year, during the visit of the consul of the Indonesian Embassy in Russia, Aji Suriya, to Kazan, a proposal was made to be ready to provide 25 scholarships to train Russian students in this country. In May, the delegation of the Islamic State University "Sharif Hidayatullah" from Jakarta, led by Subarnoto Abdul Hakim, visited Tatarstan on 2011. In June, 2012, representatives of the Indonesian Muslim organization Nahdatul Ulam, led by the general chairman of this organization, Said Akil Siraj, came to the region.
In Islamic universities in Indonesia and Malaysia, several students from Tatarstan are currently studying, but their number does not exceed two dozen people.
Conclusions
Thus, religious foreign influence on Muslims of Tatarstan of a particular country depends on the intensity of international contacts of both secular leaders of the region and religious leaders from among the Islamic clergy. This also includes the factor of education, which often has a decisive role in shaping the values and beliefs of young people, the distribution of religious literature, and the presence of a patron of high-status Russian and Tatarstan government figures.
In our opinion, Russian Muslims should be focused on Russian religious centers: Kazan, Ufa, Grozny, but not like Ankara, Riyadh, Tehran, Cairo or Kuwait; if they do not change the tendency to focus on any foreign country, sooner or later, Russian Muslims will increasingly become the “fifth column” in their own country, for whom the ideologists of Wahhabism, Ikhvanism or al-Wasatiy will be the authority, not their muftis. Experience shows that foreign religious influence does not bode well for Muslims in Russia.
The report was prepared for the VIII Congress of Orientalists of Russia in Kazan (25-28 September 2012 of the year), was announced in the original version of the program. However, in the final program, he was expelled due to the actions of the Kazan members of the Organizing Committee of the congress, who were not able to give at least some intelligible explanation for their actions. Kirill Babaev, Vice-President of the Society of Orientalists of Russia (representative of the Moscow side) apologized for this incident to Rais Suleymanov, who remains a member of the Society of Orientalists of Russia (membership card number 99).
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