"The Vatican's religious expansion within the boundaries of the former USSR gives no basis for the Moscow patriarchate to hope for an improvement of relations with the Roman Catholic church" Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and all-Rus said today in response to questions from reporters, ITAR-TASS reports.
The patriarch said that Catholics are trying to convert Orthodox Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians to their faith and they are carrying out proselytism in Kazakhstan. He noted that "before the visit to Kazakhstan, where our church has its flock, the pope of Rome did not deem necessary informing us of his desire to visit that republic, just like Ukraine."
Along with this, Alexis II confirmed that a visit to Ukraine by the primate of the Russian Orthodox church "will be made, of this there is no doubt." But he thinks that "the continuing conflicts and schisms in the church community do not facilitate such a visit." This is why, despite several invitations from Leonid Kuchma, he has not gone to Kiev, although he would very much like "to meet with those who are maintaining their fidelity to the Russian church." The patriarch did not rule out that such a trip will be made next year. (tr. by PDS, posted 5 October 2001)
PATRIARCH ALEXIS II THINKS VISIT TO UKRAINE IMPOSSIBLE
by Ekaterina Antipova
RIA
"Novosti," 5 October 2001
Responding to reporters' questions on Friday, Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and all-Rus declared that he considers his visit to Ukraine impossible. The patriarch reported that he has several invitations from the president of this republic, Leonid Kuchma. Alexis II stressed that he would be happy to visit Ukraine, "but that religious conflict that now exists in Ukraine does not always facilitate a visit by the primate of the Russian Orthodox church." He said that for such a visit there must be created certain conditions. The patriarch said that, in the first place, Orthodox believers in western provinces of Ukraine who belong to the Moscow patriarchate must have equal rights with the Greek Catholics.
Alexis II recalled that ten years ago, Greek Catholics, with the help of nationalist forces of Ukraine, "militaristically" carried out seizures of Orthodox churches in Ukraine. He stressed that "all of this was done with the silent consent of the Roman Catholic church, which still has not put an end to proselytism on the canonical territory of RPTs."
Alexis II added that the head of the Roman Catholic church, John Paul II, who made a visit to Ukraine with an invitation from the official church of the republic, did not take note that Orthodox believers have suffered from the actions of Greek Catholics.
The pope's visit to Kazakhstan also did not have the consent of the Russian Orthodox church, the patriarch noted. He thinks that such visits by the pope of Rome do not promote religious peacemaking. They also do not improve relations between RPTs and the Vatican. (tr. by PDS, posted 5 October 2001)
Russia
Religion News Current News Items
After the explosions in Moscow, the Chechen war, and terrorist acts in USA, an optimist would characterize relations between the two largest world confessions as "cautious." Hot heads in many countries are talking about a third crusade and about the "clash of civilizations." But many forget that there are 1.5 billion Muslims in all the planet and at least 15 million of them are our fellow countrymen. Like Christians, Jews, and Buddhists, they grow grain, work in factories, take their children to school, and receive the same small wages. They are our friends, our relatives, and our neighbors. Islam and terrorism are not synonyms.
We talked about this over a "working breakfast" at Rossiiskaia gazeta with the supreme mufti, chairman of the Central Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims of Russia, Sheik-ul-Islam Talgat Tajuddin.
--Talgat-efendi, let's begin with letters from our readers:
"The Islamic slogans of Maskhadov, Khattab, and Basaev should not deceive healthy thinking people in Arab countries. Terrorists claim that they are fighting in the name of the faith. But that does not keep them from torturing imprisoned Russian soldiers and bringing down the roofs of houses upon the heads of children, women, and old folk regardless of their nationality and faith. Does Islam really permit such actions?
"The Chechen problem is not a problem of a nation fighting for its independence. This problem is connected with a certain group of people who are trying to impose their ways without hesitating to use violence and bloodshed. As a Muslim I declare: there is no forgiveness for the bandits' crimes against the Chechen people. While the Russian army is doing everything possible in order to restore order in Chechnia, Khattab and Basaev are trying to destabilize the situation in the republic. And I declare to you that the call for a jihad, holy war, will not find a response among the Arabs. Thanks to their historic experience, Muslims of the whole world can figure out who is right and who is guilty. Isa Salakhiddin, Syria."
And here is another letter from Russia, from Ufa. The writer is concerned that such a respected writer as Vasily Aksenov, in one interview with our paper, used the expression "Islamic extremism," and correctly notes that extremism and terrorism do not have a nationality or religious confession.
--I completely agree with both writers. It is impossible to equate what is happening in Chechnia and what happened in New York with Islam or with any other confession. It is not simply wrong, but is extremely dangerous.
In general, those who give terrorism some kind of religious coloration are either very naive people or adventurists. After all, the largest world religions--Judaism, Christianity, Islam--have common roots. Our prophets were sent by the same God. So it is impossible to qualify terrorism as Jewish, Christian, or Islamic. The Muslim who raises his hand against a Jew, Christian, Buddhist, or unbelieving person is violating the commandment of the Prophet. For the Prophet Muhammed said: "You will never get into paradise if you do not believe in God. But you do not believe in God if you do not love one another. Spread peace and tranquility and greet one another."
We Russian Muslims have lived now for five centuries in a united state, in Russia. We did not choose our homeland and neighbors for ourselves but it was by the will of the Supreme Creator. According to Islam, not one leaf falls nor does the wind blow except by the will of the Supreme Creator. And one's neighbor, the Quran and sunna of the Prophet teach, be he Christian or Jew, is nevertheless one's brother. Everything that contradicts this postulate contradicts Islam.
In any person the Muslim should first of all see a brother and sister, be they believers or nonbelievers. By the way, the right to freedom of religious confession is not given by the state but by God himself. The Quran says: "Whosoever wishes may believe in the One Creator and whosoever wishes may live without faith. But all the same he is your brother because he descends from Adam and Eve."
When our Prophet Muhammed moved from Mecca to Medina, his associates moved with him. Many of them had come out of paganism to Islam and their children before that had come out of paganism into Christianity. The associates of the Prophet were upset by this and asked him whether it would be possible for them to make the children accept Islam by force. But the Prophet Muhammed forbade them to do this. The Quran says: "There is no way to compel faith." By the way, nobody has removed this verse from the Quran; it cannot be removed.
Therefore, when Chechen bandits say that they are defending Islam this is simply untrue and it is yet another sin that they are bringing upon themselves, covering up their crimes with holy Islam.
--Indeed, properly speaking, from whom can one defend Islam in Russia? In any case we do not know of any cases of restrictions of Muslims or of unfavorable attitudes toward them on the part of the authorities nor of society.
--It is also possible to add that back in soviet times in this same Chechnia the construction of mosques began. I was there (although the communities of the northern Caucasus have never been members of the Central Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims of Russia) and I saw how much joy and enthusiasm the people had. Whom did all of this bother? Not Muslims.
In the past ten years more than a thousand mosques have been built in Russia. Now every week three or four new mosques are being opened. Day after tomorrow I am going to Ekaterinburg to break ground for a new mosque. There already is one mosque there and then another will be built. On the next day I'll go to Penza province to open a new mosque and then on to Ulianovsk.
There now are 2,500 communities in the Central Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims. We understand that of course the point is not buildings and their numbers. Religious educational institutions are being opened and in every mosque there are classes for studying the basics of Islam. From the start a temple should arise in the soul.
I do not want to say that Muslims in Russia have no problems. Just like everybody else, there is a shortage of resources and many people are too busy to have time for communion with God. But we are living in our own country and it would be strange if Muslims lived better than others.
Returning to Chechnia. The situation there very much reminds me of the situation in Yugoslavia. For 500 years Christians and Muslims lived there in peace. Moreover they are all slavs. They lived normally, speaking the same language and having the same traditions and mentality. But since the end of the seventies many Muslims from Yugoslavia began studying abroad at pseudo-Islamic centers. They were filled with absolutely alien ideas; they were hypnotized; they were given resources and told: "let's build the first Islamic state in Europe." But if even your own brother comes to dig in your garden, you won't say thank you to him. A fratricidal war began which did not bring good to either Christians or Muslims but only sowed delayed action mines for the years ahead.
In Turkey I had many arguments with fellow believers. Turkish politicians, businessmen, and theologians say that they love Russia as their neighbor and respect President Putin. It is just the question of Chechnia that bothers them and causes great regret and disappointment because this is a war against Islam and their Muslim brothers. I answered them: Here we are in the south of Turkey. Several million Kurds live here who by their religious confession are also our Muslim brothers, but who have tense relations with Turks, to put it mildly. Now suppose, for example, in the cities of Urfa or Diarbakr, where mostly Kurds live, they have declared independence from Turkey. What would you do? As true believing Muslims you would get into your tanks and flatten these cities.
In Saudi Arabia in 1980 several Shiite tribes announced that they were breaking away from Saudi Arabia and creating their own separate state. In three days they were put down. Troops and tanks were sent in and put them down. Nobody even said a word, not USA, or UN or Europe or the Islamic world--nobody.
Now here in our Chechnia, I want to repeat this yet another time, the issue is not a war against Islam or Muslims. The issue is the preservation of the unity and inseparability of the state.
Chechins, incidentally, were the last people in Russia to embrace Islam. This happened less than 300 years ago.
--What do you think of when you hear the expression "Islamic extremism," especially in the past few weeks?
--We have heard this expression not only in the past few weeks but we have heard it often in the past 7-8 years--constantly. Of course, it causes pain to the heart of every Muslim. But the main thing is not whether we are offended or not; taking offense only makes things worse, they say. The main thing is that in any country, and especially in Russia where more than 100 nations and peoples live, using such labels is not inconsequential. If the word "Muslim" leads a person to make an unconscious association with "Islamic extremism," this is abnormal and can lead to no good.
Extremism, unfortunately, exists throughout the world. Only for some reason nobody calls Irish extremism Christian extremism. But throughout the world some people's actions lead to the expression "Islamic extremism. There are conflicts which have accumulated for centuries in Great Britain, Yugoslavia, the Middle East, and Afghanistan. There are problems between Christians and Muslims, between Jews and Muslims, but there also are problems among Christians and among Muslims with one another. It is at least stupid to call all of this "Islamic extremism." One should not be hanging these labels on people but sitting down at the negotiating table. There exists a mass of international organizations and specially trained people, politicians and diplomats, for doing this.
--What kind of role do you think our foreign "friends" have played in stirring up extremist attitudes among Muslims?
--We lived for seventy years, bound hand and foot, and when various preachers from abroad began arriving we were shocked. Nobody controlled this process. The state has border troops who protect the country's boundaries and it has antiaircraft defense troops who protect the airspace, but nobody is protecting the spiritual space of the country. From the west, from the south, from the east they charged into the country to teach us about life. It's a wonder polar bears have not come from the north.
Quite recently a group of "fellow believers" from Pakistan came to a mosque in one of the Bashkurtastan villages. The people had gathered for evening prayer. They proclaimed: why are you living under nonbelievers? Why don't you follow the Chechen example? If you rise up against Russia we will help you; we'll give you money and weapons. Many such "well wishers" have come. Who is supposed to follow them?
Any peasant can come into the country and declare himself a preacher. Organizations that are prohibited even in Arab countries, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, to say nothing of European countries can operate freely among us. Many are prone to accuse the Muslim clergy of not being able to resist such spiritual expansion. Where is our clergy? In the Soviet Union there was one Muslim religious educational institution in Bukhara. For 70 million Muslims there were only fifty students. Now we have 2,500 mosques. In the past ten years we have trained about 500 clergy. You figure it out. Of course it would be possible to accelerate the process of training personnel greatly. But a spiritual teacher is not quite the same as a cobbler or engineer. Here it is not just a matter of knowledge. I studied for years and years with my spiritual advisor. Incubator chicks are only good for food, not for the continuation of the species.
Foreign help for Russian Muslims is a myth. Nobody has ever helped us in any substantial way. The small gifts are just pocket change for those who drop in. They are not coming here to help but to win supporters and to create a "fifth column." Spiritual expansion must not be permitted in any case because sooner or later they will destroy not only our faith but also our country.
Already now--and I think our intelligence services know this well--there are in Russia dozens, perhaps hundreds, of inveterate extremists and terrorists, people who are morally prepared for committing terrorist acts like in New York. Explosions in Moscow and explosions in gas factories in Tatarstan are real proofs of this. Two years ago almost a dozen young people were arrested and found guilty for the explosions in the gas factory. They were students of so-called religious educational institutions. This is what ideological expansion leads to. And it is unreasonable to hope for opposition to it only on the part of the Central Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims.
--Our reader Dmitry Rodin poses a question: are the moral requirements and values of Islam and Russian Orthodoxy essentially the same or, if not, where is the contradiction?
--There is no contradiction. In the main things, in essence, we are together. We have had fraternal relations with the Russian Orthodox church for a long time and we conduct regular dialogues and cooperation. I have been acquainted with His Holiness Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and all-Rus for twenty-five years now and I respect this man very much and I value the role which he has played in the spiritual and moral regeneration of Russia. The regeneration of Islam is one of the essential parts of this.
There exists the Interreligious Council of Russia which unites the four largest traditional confessions: Orthodox, Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists. Within its framework we are able to resolve any problems that arise. Other confessions, if there are any, also naturally have the right to exist. But just let them work their own garden and not try to pick plants on our land.
INFORMATIONAL NOTE: The Central Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims (TsDUM) of Russia and the European CIS countries was formed in 1789 by decree of Empress Catherine II after Muslims had appealed to her. At that time it was called the Orenburg Muslim Ecclesiastical Assembly. The residence of the head of Russian Muslims had always been located in Ufa.
Before 1917 the mufti (head of the ecclesiastical board) was appointed by imperial decree upon nomination by the minister of internal affairs. The ecclesiastical board was supported entirely from the state budget.
Since 1917 the ecclesiastical board has not received help on the part of the state. The mufti became an elected office. Sheikh-ul-Islam Talgat Tajuddin is the twelfth mufti in the 212-year existence of TsDUM. He was elected to this office on 19 June 1980.
In USSR there existed four ecclesiastical boards of Muslims. In addition to the Ufa board there were DUM of Central Asia and Kazakhstan in Tashkent, DUM of the Transcaucasus in Baku, and DUM of the northern Caucasus with its center originally in Buinaksk and later in Makhachkala. Now in Russia there are to ecclesiastical boards of Muslim: TsDUM of Russian and European CIS countries (with 28 Russian regional boards) and the Coordinating Center of the Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims of the northern Caucasus. Besides this in Kazan, Moscow, and a number of other cities there exist ecclesiastical boards that are not members of the Central Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims (TsDUM) of Russia. They are not recognized by TsDUM which considers that the "competitors" were created by foreign intelligence services. The authorities often cooperate with the "schismatics." Thus, for example, the Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims of Tatarstan, not recognized by TsDUM of Russia, enjoys the aid and support of the government of the republic.
--Talgat-efendi, at the time of the schism among Muslims of Russia you were often accused of being too close to the government. What do you think about this?
--If this is a fault then I accept the blame. Because this is my government; it is our government, and I pay respect to it and its constitution not only as a civil but also a religious duty. The Quran says: "Obey Allah, his messenger, and the powers that be." The Prophet Muhammed said: "Love for the fatherland is a part of your faith."
Our flesh and blood are from this land. We eat bread grown here and we drink water from the springs of this country. Therefore we are obliged to love and honor our motherland. Moreover we are obliged to obey its laws. The preservation of our faith depends to a great extent on how we conduct ourselves in society and in relations with the government. There would be no prayers or fasts or reading of sacred books if there were no peace and tranquility. Who thinks about building a mosque or how to pray now in Chechnia? Worship of Allah and performance of good deeds depend to a great extent on whether there is peace in the state.
Thus let those clergy who work not for their own state but for other states and intelligence services be ashamed of themselves. And unfortunately we have those who either consciously or unconsciously are like that.
--Besides the Central Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims are there some structures that may aspire to speak in the name of the Muslims of Russia?
--No. More than 95 percent of the Muslims of the country are united in TsDUM, not considering the northern Caucasus. There is no schism among Muslims. There are tempests in a teapot that are stirred up by those who consider themselves leaders. A schism would be were there were problems among ordinary Muslims. And there aren't any, praise be to Allah. Strife among so-called leaders paid from abroad is not schism.
--Is it true that the Quran contains phrases like "The one who does not believe in Allah does not have the right to exist," and "Kill the infidel"?
--Untrue. Even the devil, Satan, has the right to exist; then how can a person not have it? The Quran forbids killing people, whatever their faith. The Almighty in the Quran even forbade cursing the idols of the heathen because "if you curse them, they will curse God and this sin will be upon you and not on them." War, when your country is attacked, is another matter. Defense of the fatherland is a sacred duty.
--Destruction of statues of Buddha in Afghanistan, is this a sin?
--It is a sin. Besides, it is idiotic. Houses, schools, mosques--everything is already destroyed and ammunition remains so they shoot at statues.
--What is jihad?
--Within each of us there is our own small demon. It is necessary to struggle with it. That is the Great Jihad.
--How do you feel about the decision of Tatarstan authorities to change the Tatar script from Cyrillic to Latin?
--I am absolutely opposed. They call us Tatars, but actually we are Bulgars. Thus Cyrillic is not alien to us. You surely know that the Bulgarian Cyrill and Methodius created it. Bulgarians are closest of kin to Bulgars. It's just that some of them stayed on the Volga and others went farther, to the Danube, and mixed with slavs.
Besides this, at the least two thirds of Tatars live not in Tatarstan but in other regions of Russia. How will that be for them; did anybody think about this? For example, I am a Tatar, living in Ufa. I don't want to be a foreigner in my own country. It would be understandable if we returned to the Arabic script in which our ancestors wrote for more than a thousand years. Latin is absolutely foreign to Tatars. This decision by the Tatarstan authorities was clearly not thought out and I am sure that everybody would just say "thank you" to Shaimiev if he would repeal it.
--In recent weeks, in particular, in connection with the explosions in Moscow and aggression against Dagestan, there is much talk about wahhabis. Who are they and how are they different from "regular" Muslims?
--This is a radical sect within Islam that arose 150 years ago in Saudi Arabia, when it was still a British colony. Besides Saudi Arabia Great Britain had many other Muslim colonial countries. Controlling hundreds of millions of Muslims became more and more difficult. Then they came up with the virus (like now they come up with computer viruses) and the ideology of wahhabism was worked out. The goal was very simple: force Muslims to fight among themselves, diverting them from the real problem, gaining independence from Great Britain.
The basic idea of wahhabism is to take the Quran without any interpretation, eliminate all national accretions and traditions, and ignore the fact that alongside Muslims there live other people of other faiths and other traditions. Moreover, wahhabis even deny the right of other Muslims to their own reading of the Quran and the commandments of the Prophet Muhammed. In brief, wahhabism is an ideology of intolerance toward other faiths, customs, and traditions, and generally toward people who are different from one's self. Suffice to say that wahhabism was established in Saudi Arabia itself by the blood of thousands and thousands of people. There have been attempts to intrude the ideology of wahhabism into Russia for a long time. Back at the beginning of the century there were great efforts in this direction, but our scholar theologians delivered a decisive rebuff to wahhabism.
Recently at a "round table" with the presidential prefect for the Volga federal district, where people who have aided the penetration of wahhabism into our country were present, I said: unfortunately there are no real wahhabis in Russia. We would be able to speak with wahhabis in the language of the Quran and could convince them that they are in error. But our folk are wahhabis today and tomorrow they will become fascists, and the day after tomorrow semites or antisemites, depending on who's paying and for what.
I declare responsibly that there is no wahhabism in Russia on the mass level. People who sympathize with this movement do not constitute even one percent of Muslims of Russia.
--What is traditional Islam for Russia?
--In Islam there are two basic branches, Sunnites and Shiites. They were formed back at the time of the Prophet Muhammed's associates on the basis of political disagreements. Shiites insisted that power should be inherited and Sunnites said that all are equal before God and the government should be elected. Then these disagreements took shape in the form of theological problems and Muslims were divided for good.
Russian Muslims adhere to the Sunnite tradition in Islam. In turn, there are four basic trends within it. Two of them exist in Russia; the majority of Muslims in the center of the country are Hanafites, that is, adherents of the Hanafi school [of Muslim law], while in the northern Caucasus the overwhelming majority are Shafiites [from the Shafii school].
Our ancestors, the ancient Bulgars, voluntarily adopted Islam in the year 310 in the Muslim calendar (922 in the Christian calendar). As you know, Arabs never reached the Volga. Thus we profess that Islam which was adopted and bequeathed to us by our ancestors.
Since there exist many religious denomination, in principle this is nothing unusual. The Prophet Muhammed said: "Christians are divided into 72 groups. You are divided into 73. But only one of them will reach paradise."
My treacher, Akhmadzaki-khazrat from Kazan, said to me that when someone brings you water from a spring in a clean vessel, you drink it and praise the water. But if that very same water were brought in a garbage pail, it would be pointless to curse the spring. That's the way it is here. Islam is not hurt if someone twists and distorts it. We try to give our faith to people clean.
--There are very many readers' question dealing with spiritual literature, the press, and relations with your ecclesiastical board. To what address should they write?
--The address of TsDUM is 450057, Ufa, ul. Tukaia, 50. We put out a monthly newspaper, a magazine in Russian, "Islam i zhizh," and other literature. Write.
--Soon an international conference on "Islam against terror" will be held in Moscow. What questions do you intend to discuss there?
--Recently in Ufa at the main mosque there was a meeting of members of the presidium of the Central Ecclesiastical Board of Muslims of Russia with our President Vladimir Putin. He said, taking into account our opposition to the penetration of the country by alien ideologies, that the government owes us an unpayable debt. And we answered: Vladimir Vladimirovich, you know we are not from Africa and we respect our people. We are not a minority in Russia. It does not matter whether we are many or few. What matters is that this is our land, our country. And we want for our children and grandchildren to live in it peacefully and in harmony with other nations and traditional confessions of our country. The Prophet Muhammed said: earth is your mother; don't tear it up into little pieces lest it swallow you up. Where there are interethnic and interconfessional disputes and conflicts, the earth always quakes. Why were there earthquakes in Turkey and Afghanistan during intense national conflicts? Where people fight over land and divide it into pieces, it always quakes. Even a mother, when one child misbehaves, warns or punishes him. When all the children are misbehaving, she spanks them all so that nobody will be offended. So it is with the earth.
All of us now face an enormous task--to achieve the regeneration and prosperity of our motherland, Great Russia. And we are obliged to preserve peace and harmony on our soil in the name of our children and grandchildren, in the name of happiness within it and of eternal life. May God help us. (tr. by PDS, posted 4 October 2001)
Russia
Religion News Current News Items
DATE SET FOR MOSCOW RETRIAL AIMED AT BANNING JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES
Jehovah's Witnesses Office of Public Information, 29 September 2001
The retrial aimed at banning Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow is scheduled to start on October 30, 2001, in the Golovinsky Intermunicipal District Court. At the preliminary hearing on September 24, Judge Vera Konstantinovna Dubinskaya directed the parties to prepare for a further expert study of the religious literature of Jehovah's Witnesses.
An application is before the Supreme Court in Russia to review the appellate Moscow City Court's ordering of a retrial. Russian lawyer Galina Krylova commented: "If the Supreme Court will only consider the evidence of the appeal court's blatant bias, it will agree with the conclusion of the trial court and all previous investigators - there is no basis to ban Jehovah's Witnesses."
Since 1995 the Moscow's Prosecutor's Office, acting on the persistent complaints of an anti-cult extremist group entitled The Committee for Salvation of Youth From Totalitarian Sects, has been pursuing a lengthy prosecution of the Religious Community of Jehovah's Witnesses in both criminal and civil proceedings. Investigatory and judicial bodies in Moscow on six separate occasions have established that there is no evidence of any illegal acts on the part of the Community and its members.
During the trial in the Golovinsky Court, the prosecutor stated she wanted a ban on Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow and throughout Russia. The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation reregistered the "Administrative Center of Jehovah's Witnesses in Russia" on April 29, 1999. Under Russia's 1997 law On Freedom of Conscience and Religious Associations, Jehovah's Witnesses have successfully registered 382 communities in 71 regions of Russia. However, Moscow has repeatedly denied reregistration to Jehovah's Witnesses. Applications by the Witnesses to lower courts are delayed or dismissed on dubious technical grounds. John Burns, a Canadian human rights lawyer, asked, "Why is Moscow, in its attempts to ban religious minorities, allowed to act independently of the rest of the Russian Federation?" He added, "The whole process can only be described as prosecutorial abuse and harassment of a religious minority."
The Religious Community of Jehovah's Witnesses in Moscow was registered by the Moscow Justice Department on December 30, 1993. Today it is made up of approximately 10,000 practicing Jehovah's Witnesses. (posted 3 October 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
The international leader of the Salvation Army, General John Gowans, and his wife, Commissioner Gizelle Gowans, will come to Moscow for the ceremonial events devoted to the tenth anniversary of the return of this organization to Russia, Blagovest-info reports.
General John Gowans is a citizen of Great Britain and his wife is a citizen of France. At the present time they reside in London from where the general directs the ministry of the Army in more than 100 countries. Before his selection for this post John Gowans was the leader of the Salvation Army in Australia and France; he worked for some time in USA. He is known also as a poet, writer, and producer and director of several theatre musicals.
The tenth anniversary of the return of the Salvation Army to Russia will be celebrated by more than 500 of its "officers and soldiers." All events will occur on 6-7 October in the Izmailovo hotel complex. (tr. by PDS, posted 2 October 2001)
SALVATION ARMY LETTER TO ASSOCIATES
RELEASE DATE: 09/13/2001
13 September 2001
To Territorial Commanders, Officers Commanding, National Commander and International Secretaries
Dear Comrades, Message to all Salvationists
It is with regret that I write on behalf of the General to inform you that yesterday a Moscow city judge pronounced judgment for the liquidation of The Salvation Army in Moscow.
This will be deeply disappointing, not only to the Salvationists of Moscow, but also to the thousands of Salvationists and friends of the Army around the world who have joined with their comrades in Moscow in praying for a successful outcome to the court hearing.
But prayers are not always answered in the way or timeframe that we expect. And though the judgment is a serious setback, there are signs that it may not be the end of the story.
An appeal has been granted. And the Army intends to appeal. Under Russian law, while the matter is on appeal the liquidation will be held in abeyance and the Army will be able to continue its ministry. It is not known how long the appeal process will take.
Should the appeal fail, the Salvationists of Moscow, with the resourcefulness and courage that has historically characterised Salvationists around the world, will attempt to continue preaching the Gospel and ministering to human needs in Moscow by functioning under its national registration, as a Centralised Religious Organisation ? as distinguished from the disputed city registration. How far that will be possible is not clear.
The Army will also continue to use every possible avenue to challenge the seeming discrimination against the Army in Moscow. In this connection an appeal has been made to the European Court of Human Rights.
It should also be remembered that The Salvation Army's work in other cities in Russia will not be affected by yesterday's judgment ? only Moscow.
Colonel Ken Baillie, the Officer Commanding, and the Moscow Salvationists want to thank all Salvationists everywhere for the outpouring of prayer support that has been the means of so much encouragement to them. They remain confident ? despite the very real setback of the judgment ? that at some point and by some way the Army's ministry in Moscow will receive its rightful legal recognition and be able to continue unhindered. Yours sincerely,
John Larsson CHIEF OF THE STAFF
(posted 2 October 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
Around thirty leaders of protestant denominations of the Russian federation will take part in a prayer breakfast which will be held on 11 October in the Christian center on Nametkin Street in Moscow, Blagovest-info reports.
It will be held on the initiative of the Council of Christian Evangelical Churches in Russia (SkhETsR), the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians-Baptists, the Spiritual Regeneration Association, and the New Life Mission. It is expected that participants in the breakfast will include presidents and vice presidents of Evangelical Baptist, Pentecostal, Adventist, and charismatic religious associations as well as directors of the largest protestant missions of Russia. The topic of the meeting is "Protestantism, Orthodoxy, State."
Participants in the meeting will exchange opinions about what should be the reactions of protestant leaders to cases of pressure on the denominations that they head on the part of the state and Orthodox church. As one of the organizers of the prayer breakfast, SkhETsR President Pastor Alexander Fedichkin, reported, "Leaders of various protestant associations of the Russian federation are trying to have a regular exchange of information and a coordination of their ministry in spreading the Good News."
Alexander Fedichkin hopes that the "meeting, which will be held on 11 October at the Christian Center on Nametkin Street, will be one more step in the direction of creating an all-Russian protestant alliance." (tr. by PDS, posted 1 October 2001)
Russia Religion News Current News Items
If material is quoted, please give credit to the publication
from which it came.
It is not necessary to credit this Web page. If material
is transmitted electronically, please include reference to the URL, http://www.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/.