Euro-Islam

Paul Goble, on how attitudes towards Islam are seen to be deepening the split between Russia and Europe:

Tartu, November 23, 2004 – Differences in the way Russians and Europeans now think about Islam, about the Muslims living within their borders and beyond, and about the possibility of including an Islamic component in their respective identities, are exacerbating the split between Russia and Europe, according to a leading Russian specialist on Islam.

Aleksandr Ignatenko, who does research at Moscow State University and serves on the Presidential Council for Cooperation with Religious Groups, made this comment during a recent discussion at the Liberal Mission Foundation in Moscow. His comments and those of his fellow participants have been posted online at
http://www.liberl.ru/sitan.asp?Num=505 .

That session, organized by the Liberal Mission Foundation’s Igor Klyamkin was called to discuss the new Russian translation of a study exploring how peoples in general and Russians and Europeans in particular use images of „the other,” of outside groups, to define themselves and to promote the integration of their communities.

Entitled in Russian „Ispol’zovanie ‚Drugogo’” („The Use of the ‚Other’”), the book was written by Iver B. Neumann, a former Norwegian diplomat and social scientist who now works at the Oslo Institute for International Affairs.

In this study as in its English-language predecessor, „Russia and the Idea of Europe” (London, 1996), Neuman argues that Europeans over the last several centuries have tended to view Russia in one of two ways, both of which have flatter Europe at Russia’s expense.

On the one hand, he writes, Europeans have conceptualized Russia as „the barbarian at the gates,” as a threat to European civilization. On the other, Europeans have seen the state centered on Moscow as „the eternal apprentice,” as a country that wants to become European but constantly falls short.

Not surprisingly, such ideas provoked a lively and wide-ranging debate at this Moscow seesion whose participants included Klyamkin, Central European University Professor Aleksei Miller, Levada Center pollster Boris Dubin, Effective Politics Foundation expert Oleg Vitte, Moscow State University Africanist Vil’ Gel’bras, Social Accord Project expert Denis Dragunskiy, and Strategic Reserach Center director Andrei Piontkovskiy.

But perhaps the most intriguing comments were made by Ignatenko who addressed the very different ways Europeans and Russians currently view Islam and how that is dividing the two even more than they were in the past.

„European identity at present,” Ignatenko said, „is formed to a remarkable degree if not entirely in opposition to Islam as ‚the other.’” Hepointed out that in the recent discussion of whether to include any reference to Christianity in the European Constitution, Europeans were „prepared” to drop any reference to the faith that has defined them for centuries in order to avoid having to include any reference to „certain Islamic roots” of Europe.

And he said that this desire to keep Islam at bay even at the cost of denying Europe’s own religious past was even more clearly displayed by France’s decision to prohibit the wearing of all religious symbols in schools and other public places in order to prevent Muslims from wearing the hijab.

„In this way, the French said that they were prepared to pursue a far-reaching secularization in order that France not have anything Islamic as part of its public identity,” Ignatenko said.

The situation with regard to Russia, he continued, is very different. „At present, ever more Islamic aspects are being included in the image of Russia in the West.” The existence of indigenous Muslim populations in Russia itself – in Europe, Muslims are almost all immigrants -- and Moscow’s efforts to present itself as a Muslim country within the Organization of the Islamic Conference – something no European country has sought to do -- each have played a role, he said.

But the most important reasons for European attention to this Islamic aspect of Russia, Ignatenko continued, have to do with three ideological formulations that are now on offer in Russia itself and that have attracted much attention in the West.

The first of these is Eurasianism, the notion that Russia is „an Orthodox-Islamic state (country, civilization) and in this way is set apart both from the West and the East,” having taken „all the best from the one and the other.”

The second is EuroIslam, an idea advanced by Rafael Khakimov, the director of the Institute of History in Kazan and an advisor to Tatarstan President Mintimir Shaimiev. Khakimov’s call for a modernized, Europeanized Islam has attracted much interest, but it has also led many Europeans to conclude that Russia really is Islamic in important ways.

Reporting that he had been present when Khakimov discussed his ideas, Ignatenko observed „with what hope, the Westerners began to listen to him and how great was their disappointment. Because the conception of EuroIslam did not offer anything except that Tartarstan could and would like to move in the direction of Europe but without the rest of Russia, in which there is not ‚EuroIslam’ but eastern Orthodoxy.”

The third ideological formulation involves the idea of „so-called ‚Russian Islam.’” Its proponents advance the following proposition: „At one time in the histori past, Russians made a mistake when they adopted Orthodoxy and not let us say Islam, and on this basis, they decayed” as a people falling away from God and taking to drink.

Consequently, advocates of Russian Islam say that „if now [Russians] want to reestablish a certain historical justice and accept Islam, then this will save Russia – Russians will stop drinking and the demographic situation (under conditions of polygamy) will resolve itself.”

All these developments and ideas only add to Russia’s image in Europe as a very different and unwelcome „other,” Ignatenko concluded. And that in turn seems certain to deepen the existing divide between a Russia that has not yet made a final decision as to whether it is part of Europe and a Europe that appears to have concluded that it has yet another reason for believing that Russia is not a European country.

Via MAK