Window on Eurasia

Russia’s Muslims Remain Divided on Idea of Chaplaincy Corps

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 3, 2006 – Muslims in the Russian Federation remain deeply divided about the idea of creating a new chaplaincy corps in the
country’s military, something that reflects both fears about the ways
in which the Russian Orthodox Church might exploit that situation and
the absence of a clergy as such within Islam.

In a speech to a meeting in Kaliningrad last week of religious figures
currently working in the Russian military, Valiulla Yakupov, the first
deputy head of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Tatarstan,
discussed a recent poll on this subject and the reasons behind it,
Interfax-Religion reported on Friday.

According to the Tatar Muslim leadewr, 24 percent of Russia’s Muslims
are against the creation of a chaplaincy corps, something the Moscow
Patriarchate has been pushing hard for in recent months. Sixteen
percent of the country’s Muslims back the idea, but the largest share – 39
percent – believes that religious groups should create centers near
military facilities but not inside them to provide religious
sustenance.

This pattern, Yakupov continued, shows that “there is not a
majority” on either side of this question, a fact that he ascribed
both to the complicated history of Christian-Muslim relations in Russia
and to the special nature of religious leadership within Islamic
communities.

Unfortunately, the MSD deputy chief said, relations between Orthodoxy
and Islam have not always been “friendly in our history.” Instead,
“there have been wars and conflicts between our peoples,” something
that needs to be acknowledged if the two sides are to escape “the
inertia” of stereotypes that continue to exist on both sides.

One example of this inertia, he suggested, is the attitude many Muslims
have toward a chaplaincy corps. All too often, Muslims view this
institution as an effort by Orthodox Christians to use the captive
audience of soldiers to spread that faith at the expense of Islam.

But mullahs and akuns routinely served in the tsarist army, and
consequently, Yakupov insisted, it is entirely possible to create a new
“military clergy” that would not work against the interests of
Islam but rather help to support to the increasing number of Muslims in
Russian uniforms.

Such a development, however, will be possible only if, through
dialogue, Muslims and Orthodox Christians can overcome existing “suspicions”
of each other, and Muslims in particular work to eliminate the lack of
trust in Orthodoxy that continues to characterize the views of large
fraction of that community.

But there is another factor that must be considered, Yakupov said.
Isalm is different because it lacks “the institution of a church” with
priests and others who are invested with sacral functions. On the one
hand, that means that Muslims do not need a clergy to lead prayers. Any
Muslim who knows them can do that.

“Therefore the problem of establishing a special military clergy for
us is not so sharp as it is for Orthodox believers” who must have a
priest if they are to be able to fully participate in the life of that
church, Yakupov continued.

And on the other hand, the absence of a church within Islam has meant
that “de facto, the role of the church in Islam has always been
played by the state, either directly [as when the state is Islamic] or through
specialized institutions like those in tsarist Russia” – and one
might add, although Yakupov did not, in the USSR and Russia now.

Yakupov’s remarks in Kaliningrad last week are thus intriguing
because they appear to suggest that he, one of the most consistent critics of
modernist EuroIslam, is prepared to back a continuing role for the
Russian state, something many Muslims both traditionalist and otherwise
currently reject.

That could mean that he is positioning himself for a much more
important role in the evolving relationship between Islam and Moscow or it could
simply reflect the fact that he was speaking to a group that included
not very many Muslims but a large number of Russian Orthodox leaders.