Window on Eurasia

Muslim Leader Decries Patriarchate’s Violations of
Russian Constitution

Paul Goble

Vienna, June 23, 2006 – A leading Muslim leader last week condemned the
Moscow Patriarchate for violating the Russian Constitution’s
provisions calling for the separation of church and state and for the
equality of religions, criticism that many Orthodox Christians say is
wrong but the ever more Muslims argue is long overdue.

At a June 14th meeting preparing for a September conference on “The
Dialogue of Cultures and Inter-Confessional Cooperation,” Umar
Khazrat Idrisov, the head of the Nizhniy Novgorod Muslim Spiritual Directorate,
criticized the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church in some of the
strongest language any Muslim there has ever used.

The Patriarchate, he said, has “actively cooperated with Islamic
theologicans and Muslim organizations of Iran, Syria, Palestina and
Other Arab-Muslim countries,” but it has failed to develop equally
successful cooperation with Muslims within the Russian Federation
[http://www.islamnn.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1130].

“Unfortunately,” he continued, “we do not observe or feel the
kind of Orthodox-Islamic dialogue, close cooperation and recognition of
equality” that we had hoped for. Instead, over the last 15 years,
“we have lost a unique opportunity after the common Soviet past to
begin relations anew.”

And Idrisov added that he “fears that today we again are prisoners of
a confrontational ideology which was laid down over the course of many
centuries before the Soviet epoch when Orthodoxy was the state religion
and all the rest were simply tolerated.”

Some senior Patriarchate spokesman – and he was referring in
particular to recent remarks by the top officials of the Church’s
Department of External Affairs – have said that Muslims and other
non-Orthodox groups must accept their second-class status –
regardless of what the Constitution says.

“In a secular state, one must not build chapels within state academic
institutions, make the foundations of Orthodox Culture an obligatory
subject in schools … or introduce priests into the army. If you want
to do all that, then change the Constitution!! We then will seek a
place for outselves within the framework of other laws.”

Idrisov pointed out that Russian government officials increasingly seem
to be working hand in glove with the Orthodox Church flagrantly
violating the Constitutional principles of the separation of church and
state and sending messages that Orthodoxy is again virtually the
relgion of the state.

The Nizhniy Muslim leader said he was especially angry about the recent
actions of the leaders of the Russian authorities in his home oblast
and in the Volga Federal District. On June 12, Russian Independence Day, he
said, for the first time since 1991, officials invited only Orthodox
religious leaders to take part.

Still worse, Idrisov said, the authorities chose to produce and then
show on local television on the same day, a film about Russian military
maneuvers where the enemies of Russia were “terrorists dressed in
Arabic clothing” who had seized a boat – a film that the Muslim
leader said reinforced the mistaken equation of terrorism and Islam.

Given all this, the MSD head said, “what are we Muslims to do? Sing
‘Alleluiah’ to the so evident Islamophobic line of the [regional]
plenopotentiary representation and celebrate the upcoming
inter-confessional dialogue?” Esepcially when the Patriarchate is
trying to present itself as committed to “justice and the equality of
religious confessions.

“Perhaps we have already ceased to be a polyconfessional region? Or
perhaps, we have simply constructing a clerical state? Then it is
necessary to speak about this openly in order that can change our
approach to the problem” of promoting interconfessional dialogue.

In his view, the outspoken MSD head said, “today in Russia has been
renewed that ideological line which does not leave a place for
interconfessional dialogue on an equal basis, which divides citizens
between those who are ‘ours’ and those who are not ‘ours’ and
religious communities” into those the state supports and those it
does not.

This is “the bitter truth of our reality,” he continued, especially
in the Middle Volga regions where both Orthodox Christians and Muslims
have typically enjoyed good relations, at least in recent years. But,
he concluded, “a a bitter truth is better than a sweet lie.”

Not surprisingly both Orthodox Church spokesmen and Orthodox Russian
nationalists have attacked Idrisov for his remarks, pointing out that
the special position of the Orthodox Church in the Russian state
reflects the fact that the population of the Russian Federation is
overwhelmingly Russian and hence overwhelmingly Orthodox.

But more significantly, many Muslims in the Russian Federation –
leaders and faithful alike – are lining up behind Idrisov, with some
arguing that what he said should have been said a decade and others
saying that “99 percent of Muslims think the same way”
[http://www.islamnn.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1137].

In an analysis of these developments posted this week on the Islam.ru
website, Dzhannat Markus, who hosts Muslim programming on Radio Rossia,
outlined the emerging Muslim consensus on the ways in which the
Orthodox Church is violating the Russian Constitution
[http://www.islam.ru/pressclub/tema/niprid/?print_page].

Markus suggested that the ways in which the Patriarchate is acting not
only represent a challenge to Russia’s constitutional order but also
should because of the ways in which they are setting some ethnic
communities against another be recognised for that they also are -- a
direct threat to the territorial integrity of the country as a whole.

For too long, Markus argued, no one, Orthodox nor Muslim, wanted to
speak up about these dangers, but now Idrisov’s speech – with which
Markus said he did not agree in all details – means that a full-dress
discussion may become possible and a change in the country’s
direction achieved.

If that does not happen, he said, he had great fears for the future of
the country because the current policy instead of promoting the
flowering of all religions is in fact contributing to the restoration
of a system in which there is “Russification Soviet-style,” albeit
with Orthodoxy rather than Marxism as the ideological cover.

“Contemporary nationality policy needs … policy,” Markus
continued. “The majority of experts are inclined to the conclusion
that today it simply does not exist.” In that vacuum, the
Patriarchate’s actions which boost an extreme form of Russian
nationalism are promoting separatism among non-Russian and non-Orthodox
groups.

Such a “divide and rule” approach, he continues, may work for a
while. But it will only carry the country “a short distance” and
then there will be disaster. President Vladimir Putin appears to
understand this, Markus added, but many Russian officials and equally
many in the Orthodox Church do not.

As a result, he said, Idrisov’s remarks are important because they
point out something many know but have not been willing to say in
public: The actions of the Orthodox Church and its allies within the
government bureaucracy mean that today “Russia is in danger!”