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The following is the text of a letter from the director of the Department for Relations with the Federal Assembly, Public Organizations, and Religious Associations, F.M. Muxhametshin to Deputy Prime Minister G.N. Karelovaia, of 21 June 2003, regarding the process of fulfilling the orders by the president of the Russian federal for providing cooperation in the development of the sphere of Islamic religious education. Why were all the government's projects of the recent past connected with Muslim religious education conducted in secret from the public and then brought out during vacation season? So that nobody would interfere?
Esteemed Galina Nikolaevna
The rebirth of Islam in Russia has exposed the acute shortage of qualified clerical personnel. This problem is one of the causes of the activation of the work of various foreign funds and missions that are sending to our country hundreds of teachers and missionaries, as well as extremist literature that to a certain extend has facilitated the appearance of wahhabi groupings and the grounds for terrorism. Taking into account these circumstances, the president of the Russian federation ordered the government of the Russian federation (Order 849 of 21 May 2002 and Order 1089 of 9 June 2002) on a priority basis to develop a complex of measures for providing organizational, material, and methodological aid in the development of the sphere of religious education, Muslim education first of all. Also raised is the question of the creation of a academic methodological center which would be able to train qualified personnel and to conduct academic methodological work in this area.
In accordance with the order of the president of the Russian federation, number 1089 of 19 June 2002, federal offices of the executive branch and offices of the executive branch of component elements of the Russian federal have continued to put into effect a complex of measures for providing help in the development of Muslim education. These measures include the following:
1. Cooperation of federal offices of the executive branch and offices of the executive branch of component elements of the Russian federation for establishing and strengthening religious (Islamic) education conducted within the framework of the activity of the largest ecclesiastical boards of Muslims of Russia in accordance with existing legislation. At the present time seventeen Islamic institutions of higher education are functioning in the country and have received a license. On the part of offices of the government they have received definite material aid and the academic base has developed and they are receiving cooperation in the teaching of general academic disciplines and in the preparation and distribution of academic resources and consultations of the directors of educational and scientific institutions have been conducted. The Russian Ministry of Justice has put into effect the registration of religious academic institutions as religious organizations, and the Russian Ministry of Education has licensed their activity as educational institutions and has done all the preparation and consultation work on this and other questions of education. The Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice, and the FSB, with the participation of offices of the executive branch of the component entities of the Russian federation, have carried out plans on a regular basis for inspecting the activity of all registered Islamic academic institutions and they also conduct work for uncovering and stopping the activity of illegal religious educational institutions, Islamic educational summer camps, and the representations, missions, and funds of an extremist variety that are operating on the territory of the country, as well as the activity of teachers and missionaries who are conducting their activity illegally. Considerable work in the support and development of Muslim education within the framework of the ecclesiastical boards in the regions is performed by the offices for religious affairs of the component elements of the Russian federation.
2. Joint work of the federal offices of the executive branch and the offices of the executive branch of the component elements of the Russian federation with the ecclesiastical boards of Muslims in various areas of education. The Russian Ministry of Education has conducted work for preparing an agreement with the directors of the ecclesiastical boards of Muslims on cooperation and has held open competitions for conducting scientific research work within the framework of the federal special purpose program "Formation of the establishment of tolerant consciousness and prevention of extremism in Russian society (2001-2005)." Directors of offices of the executive branch of component elements of the Russian federation, on the initiative of the Russian Ministry of Education, have participated in an experiment for developing didactic academic methodological materials for the discipline of "Fundamentals of Religious Culture," and are continuing to put the finishing touches on a variant (Islamic) component of the state educational standards for a specialty in "Theology" and the like. The Russian Academic of State Service of the presidential administration of the Russia federation, in accordance with agreements with traditional confessions that have been concluded, has conducted the training and retraining of clerical personnel, including representatives of Islam.
3. Continuation of the search for the optimal resolution of the question of the creation of a higher educational institution for professional training in the area of the history and culture of Islam. Consultations have been conducted with the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and the Institute of Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, as well as with representatives of interested ministries and departments with the goal of working out resolutions of such questions as the organizational legal form of the aforementioned secular educational institution, the financing of its creation and subsequent activity, its location and facilities, and the like. The higher educational institution for professional training in the area of the history and culture of Islam presents the possibility for its graduates to receive a broad complex of information about Islam and to work both in state and public organizations and in Muslim organizations. At the same time such an educational institution would be able to conduct scientific methodological work in the area of education and the history and culture of Islam, producing informational products appropriate for use in ecclesiastical educational institutions that train people for professional religious activity and for religious educational work with children and youth.
According to the results of the last report to the president of the Russian federation that was composed on the basis of the investigations of interested ministries and departments, it is ordered that the work on fulfilling the above mentioned orders be continued until September of this year.
Considering what has been said, we consider it expedient to order the Russian Ministry of Education, along with the Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Russian Ministry of Finance, the Russian Ministry of Property, the Russian Ministry of Justice, and the Russian Academy of Sciences to continue to investigate questions connected with the possibility of opening a higher educational institutions for professional training in the area of the history and culture of Islam and to provide the conclusions of the work to the government of the Russian federation along with a draft of a report to the president of the Russian federation. A draft of the order is attached.
Director of the Department of Relations with the Federation Assembly,
Public Organizations, and Religious Associations
F. Mukhametshin
(tr. by PDS) Russian original
ORDER OF DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER OF THE RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT G. KARELOVAIA
To Russian Ministry of Finance, Russian Academy of Sciences, Russian Ministry of Education, Russian Ministry of Property
24 June 2003
I ask that, along with the Lomonosov Moscow State Univeristy, you continue investigation questions in accordance with the orders of the president of the Russian federation of 21 May 2002 and 19 June 2002 and in light of the memos of the Department of the Apparatus of the government, and that you present to the government of the federation the suggestions that you agree upon along with a draft of a report to the president of the Russian federation. Completion date: 15 September 2003
G. Karelova
(tr. by PDS, posted 4 July 2003) Russian original
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On 3 July the Russian Orthodox church of the Moscow patriarchate (RPTsMP) expressed its gratitude to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his understanding of its position in dialogue with the Vatican, Interfax agency reports. In the course of a recent visit to Great Britain Vladimir Putin stated that Russian secular authorities will facilitate the convergence of the positions of the Russian Orthodox church and the Holy See. "I know, Patriarch Alexis II of Moscow and all-Rus has a proper attitude," the president noted.
"It evokes satisfaction that President Putin relates to the position of His Holiness the patriarch with understanding in the question of relations of the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches," an official representative of the Moscow patriarchate, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, told Interfax. He recalled that "the Russian church continues direct contacts with the Vatican directed to correction of existing problems." At the same time the priest stressed that "difficulties arise not from our position but rather from the position of the Vatican."
The church's representative also recalled that "recently the authorities of several countries, Russia, Italy, and Kazakhstan, as well as the leadership of the European Union, have promoted initiatives in the area of Orthodox-Catholic dialogue." "It would not be bad were these efforts to lead somehow to a minimal softening of the position of the Vatican and to its readiness for more or less substantive concessions," Fr Vsevolod Chaplin added, expressing regret that "so far this has not happened." (tr. by PDS, posted 4 July 2003)
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A surprising decision by Kievan authorities announced last week may produce serious interreligious conflicts. The deputy chairman of the city administration of the Ukrainian capital, Mikhail Pozhivanov, declared at a briefing that from 7 to 10 August the World Congress of Jehovah's Witnesses will be held in Kiev. According to Pozhivanov, the congress will be held at the National Olympic Stadium, to which around 65,000 delegates from various countries will come. Pozhivanov based the necessity of conducting this event on the fact that "it is interesting for Kiev since this will permit sending information about the capital of Ukraine to the greatest number of people possible abroad. This will facilitate a flow not only of tourists to Ukraine but also investments."
It seems that in the race for tourists and investments Ukrainian authorities do not understand well how such a venture could end. Of course, any officially registered religious organization has the right to conduct any meeting it wishes, but this does not at all mean that the authorities should express open support for that event or provide the National Olympic Stadium for it.
Kievan authorities should take into account that the Jehovah's Witnesses do not have, to put it mildly, extremely good relations with representatives of various Christian confessions. Thanks to the efforts of the latter, there has arisen in public opinion a persistent image of members of this organization as dangerous sectarians. Among the new religious movements, this organization most often has become the object of attack on the part of representatives of traditional religions and confessions, and particularly on the part of state structures.
In Moscow a trial for the liquidation of the Jehovah's Witness congregation in the capital has been dragging on all the way from 1998. A South Sakhalin city court prohibited the congregation from building a house of worship in December of last year on a suit by local residents. In Georgia, Orthodox activists with the support of parliamentary Deputy Guram Sharadze, in May of this year, broke up the congress of Jehovists in the village of Ortashena in Gory district and blocked all roads to the population center. In August of last year unknown persons conducted a pogrom in one of the buildings in the Georgian district center of Kaspi in which Jehovists also planned to conduct their congress.
It seems that authorities are required to protect any religious organization from any restrictions whatever on the part of its competitors. But Ukrainian government workers have selected a rather strange way to cultivate toleration: instead of separating the potential participants of a conflict they are, on the contrary, knocking their heads together. Interreligious relations in Ukraine could be better. It is sufficient to recall the brawls at the time of the burial of the head of the Ukrainian Orthodox church of the Kievan patriarchate, Patriarch Vladimir Romaniuk. The incident with the "White Brotherhood" sect whose members seized Holy Wisdom cathedral in Kiev in 1993 received wide coverage.
In light of the upcoming presidential election, Ukrainian authorities would wish to demonstrate to the whole world their tolerance, but it is hardly worth doing this at the expense of the security of the believers themselves. (tr. by PDS, posted 3 July 2003)
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That the outcry over the pogrom at the "Beware, Religion!" exhibit and the teaching of "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture" and the problem of clericalization of the schools has achieved such a degree of bitterness is not accidental. Along with them came the unprecedented appeal of the State Duma to the prosecutor general calling for a "study of the question" regarding the violation of article 282 of the Criminal Code by "blasphemers" and the volley of appeals from representatives of various confessions to the prosecutor general demanding that the rights defenders who are opposing clericalization of the schools be brought to accountability. All these statements were expressed in extraordinarily sharp form. Apparently, some very sensitive points in the public consciousness have been touched.
It is necessary to recognize that whereas for one part of the public the clericalization of the schools and the gradual transformation of nationally accented Orthodoxy into something like a state ideology is a clear sign of totalitarian restoration, for a no less substantial portion the long awaited return of patriotic faith is a ray of light that is penetrating with difficulty the postcommunist religionless darkness. From the point of view of the proponents of "national Orthodoxy," teachers who introduce the religious course are performing a genuine heroic feat. It is heroism of the sort that was done a generation ago by the acts of soviet teachers who discussed the "semi-forbidden" writers and historic figures and who made a critical assessment of stalinism and stagnation. The spread of religious doctrines is sincerely understood as a final obstacle on the road to immorality and spiritual destruction.
Academic discussions about how the moral and ethical contents of the world's religions have been embued with culture for a long time cannot persuade the bearers of the traditional consciousness that has been shaken by the explosive reforms. Paralysis has seized the will of liberal Russian intellectuals in the face of the proponents of clericalization, although the majority of them understand well that the polemic collision of theological propositions of various confessions cannot raise the moral level while the displacement of secular humanist disciplines with "popular theology" will itself facilitate intolerance.
The decline of traditionalism and soviet-power mythology naturally provoked a very acute crisis of identity in tens of millions of "Russians." Now the formation of a Russian national state identity is underway in full force. And here it is very important to take into account that Russia is not a national state but a civilization. Since Lev Gumilev started it, such a phenomenon has been called "superethnic." Although Russian civilization is a "daughter" civilization (from Europe) in nature, along with the civilizations of North and Latin America, it still cannot be reduced to an ethnic or confessional-ethnic community. Unfortunately many contemporary ideologues of the national rebirth of Russia are well acquainted only with the model of the formation of a nation around an ethnic, or if you will, "tribal" core. The fall of USSR and the "federalization" of RSFSR gave numerous examples of such a consolidation and quest for ethnocracy. Since within the postsoviet space Israel clearly leads in the number of appeals to its success as a model of national regeneration and consolidation on a confessional and ethnic basis, we will call it the I-model.
If Russia were a state whose population numbered 10-15 millions and with a territory of a half million square kilometers, the I-model would be quite realizable. But Russia is a significantly more complex and qualitatively different system and the secular civilizational approach of the North American type is substantially more appropriate. This is why the liberal founders of the present-day Russian state strove to transplant the civil, cosmopolitan scheme of USA, or the A-model. It is not accidental that the preeminent models for successful national state politics in Russia are specifically America and Israel.
The general antiliberal thrust of the past decade has led to the situation where "progressives," armed with the legislative framework in the spirit of the A-model, have been replaced by the "romantic" adherents of the I-model, who have undertaken to mount their own constructions on this framework. Points of tension immediately arose and social and legal antagonism began growing. Conflict with ethnic separatism increased the enthusiasm of the "romantics." The notion arose that the failure of the federation in its fight against centrifugal forces of nationalism was caused, conditionally speaking, by the fact the "Russians" are not as consolidated as "Chechens." On some evidently rather high level it was decided to include in state propaganda, including in the education system, the doctrine of the formation of a national religious identity on the "tribal" principle (blood and soil plus the faith of the fathers). It is necessary to recall that the first case in our national history of the "tribal" approach to Russian national identity squeezing out the "civilizational" approach began in the 1880s, and from the moment of the appearance of the policies of the Black Hundreds in the arena, it became dominant. The result was the rapid disintegration of the Russian state in 1917-1918, in the process of which the separatism of south Russian cossackdom played a large role.
The rebirth of the imperial, civilizational approach was achieved only by the advance of the militant, cosmopolitan ideological project. At its earliest stages the establishment of such a project against south Russian sub-ethnic groups was the application of genuine genocide (today this is called "suppression of cossackdom"), and then followed the suppression of the national, religious autonomy of the Russian imperialistic ethnos that was amazing in its scope and barbarism.
The second departure from "leninist internationalism" occurred in two waves, in the forties (quickly rethought after 1953) and in the eighties. USSR did not survive this and Russia was "released." Now, thanks to the ill-considered actions of the adherents of the I-model, Russia is entering a third cycle of collapse. The adherents of the "tribal" conception see that to maintain such a system "energetically" is substantially simpler than maintaining the complex multi-tiered "civilization." They suggest that if they introduce a narrowly ethnic nationalism in measured doses, then nothing horrible will result. But there is an important vector here and not the force of an impulse.
The sharp crisis of Russian national identity can lead to the very strong reaction from the most insignificant ideological influence. For example, psychologists know that sexual orientation of a child can be transformed literally by a single erotic episode. Therefore the fall plan of the Ministry of Education to plant national identity by introducing "Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture" into the schools, built on the I-model, caused informed people to be so infernally alarmed. And this is why the religious authorities rose to the defense of the infamous "Fundamental of Orthodox Culture" textbook by A.V. Borodina. This text became the icebreaker, destroying all barriers of liberal convention. Introducing the quasi-Orthodox "national catechism" into state schools will so lower the criteria of the permissible that very soon religious studies will be transformed into the preaching of confessional and ethnic exclusiveness.
Political correctness, with its maniacal fear of offending a minority, is based on the modern "mosaic" groupings of people, in which there is no stable "majority." Rejection of political correctness in acquaintance with the history and traditions of Russian Orthodoxy, the feverish revival of medieval myths, and the arousal of ancient national and ecclesiastical conflicts will all within a generation transform Russia into a "two or three community" nation on the model of Ulster, Lebanon, or Bosnia-Herzegovina. And it will further produce the most horrible thing, the collapse of current-day Russia. After all even carving off a narrow border zone or the internal alienation of some enclaves will not lead to Russia's fall, although it will be extremely painful. But there is a high probability that the process of disintegration will lead to the political demarcation of "northern" and "southern" Russian ethnic subgroups. Their coexistence and complex interrelations are taboo for nationalistic publicists and historians. The "northern" ethnic subgroup historically inclines mainly to the "civilizational" A-model of identity, while the "southern," to the "tribal" I-model. Attempts to "drag" Russian civilization into the narrow boundaries of ethno-national statehood could become the detonator of a real schism in the Russian nucleus of the country into two, or more likely, into three or four hostile new formations. And each such fragment will become a stable "tribal" formation, a "barbarian" kingdom on the ruins of the universalist state. (tr. by PDS, posted 3 July 2003)
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Esteemed Vladimir Vasilievich
On 7 June 2003 Radio Liberty, which is well known for its old traditions of Russophobia and hatred of Russia, broadcast a discussion under the title "Debate over the 'Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture'" under the rubric of "Facts and Opinions," with Announcer Lev Roitman. At the time of this broadcast, a certain Igor Grigorievich Yakovenko, who was called a "doctor of philosophy and culturologist," labeled the Orthodox spiritual, moral, and religious values described in A.V. Borodina's textbook "abnormal values": "this is why it [Borodina's textbook] seems to me to be dangerous for Russia and not in accord with the normal values of liberal society, secularization, and all those ideals for which people have suffered, including in our society, too." As if it was not the militant atheists who massively destroyed Orthodox believers and Muslism; as if it was not those who hated Christianity and Islam, hiding behind the liberal slogans of secularization, who conducted from 1917 to the end of the 1930s of the past century the bloody genocide of Russians and other peoples of Russia, but the contrary. The public statement that I have quoted from I.G. Yakovenko is nothing other than propaganda of the inexpediency of identifying citizens in terms of relationship to religion (Orthodox Christianity) and nationality (Russian people, by reason of direct connection to the national, cultural, and religious autonomy of Russians). I ask you to open a criminal case against I.G. Yakovenko on article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian federation.
I ask you also to open a criminal case against the member of the All-Russian "For Human Rights" movement, E.V. Ikhlov, who again indulged in xenophobia, incitement of religious hostility, and advocacy of the inexpediency of identifying citizens in terms of relationship to religion (Orthodox Christianity) and nationality (Russian people, by reason of direct connection to the national, cultural, and religious autonomy of Russians), also at the time of the same broadcast on Radio Liberty. Ikhlov's statement was to the effect: " We are trying to get the administrative punishment of those officials who have violated the law 'On education,' the law 'On freedom of conscience,' the law 'On the status of state workers,' and have actually begun to introduce a xenophobic, vulgar version of the Law of God in the secondary schools." " That enormous outcry that is going on with regard to the clericalization of society, with regard to this textbook, which contains many xenophobic places and a great deal of primitive teaching and use of arguments taken from the 'yellow' press--all this is considered a 'positive result.'"
"That enormous outcry" of which E.V. Ikhlov speaks was itself ignited in direct opposition to the xenophobic attacks by Ikhlov himself and his mentor L.A. Ponomarev upon Orthodox Christianity. The crude statements of Ikhlov and Ponomarev evoked the outrage of even Russian Muslims and protestants.
Considering the substantial level of social danger in the criminal actions of E.V. Ikhlov that have been going on now for a year, who cannot in any way cease his intolerance of and hatred for Orthodox Christianity and who continues the propaganda of the inexpediency of identifying citizens by their attitude toward religion and nationality, I ask that you immediately take action with respect to E.V. Ikhlov to stop him in the form of placing him under arrest. I ask you to make your response in the legally established period.
With respect,
President of the Administration,
T.A. Kvitkovskaia
(tr. by PDS, posted 3 July 2003)
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