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December 6, 2005

Russia: Coat of Arms "Too Christian" Say Muslims

From MosNews, a group of leading Muslim clerics have complained about Orthodox Christian symbols appearing on Russia's coat of arms, (pictured, right).

The chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Asian Russia, Nafigulla Ashirov, told reporters that the symbols on the coat of arms should be removed, and stated that other institutions in Russia's heirarchy also exploit Orthodox Christian icons, putting them up in offices.

"The power-wielding structures, the authorities and the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchy are erecting large crosses at border posts and the approaches to towns. Orthodox chapels are being built in the command bodies of the armed forces", he said.

Damir Mukhetdinov, deputy head of the group, added "We, the Muslims of Nizhny Novgorod region, were wholeheartedly in favour of introducing the unity of the peoples holiday. [The "People's Day of Unity"] We could not have imagined, however, that the sound of Orthodox bells and the icon of the Virgin of Kazan would become the symbols of this holiday in Russia."

The mufti said that "all this violates the secular nature of the state and doesn't contribute to the unity of Russia's peoples."

The head of the Spiritual Board of Karelia's Muslims, Visam Bardvil, said that Russia was neither "a Muslim nor a Christian country."

"The cross is not a Muslim symbol. We respect the religious feeling of Christians but do not recognize the crucifixion of Christ. Therefore, in my opinion Orthodox symbols should be removed from the coat of arms to make it acceptable to all religions."

Karelia is in northwest Russia, bordering Finland, and is not renowned for having a large population of Muslims. They may not represent a sizeable sphere of influence in Russian affairs,but the complaints have been raised before by others.

There seem to be two issues going on here, a reaction to the Romanov's coat of arms which speak perhaps of historical battles with Tatars and other Muslims, but also a demand to enforce a secularism as rigidly as it was maintained in the time of Soviet communism.

The double-headed eagle, carrying an orb and a scepter, has adorned Russian official documents, coins and seals for four hundred years. Ivan IV, the Terrible, had himself crowned the first Czar in 1547, but in 1613, Mikhail Romanov became the first Romanov to be a Czar. His family emblem was the double-headed eagle looking both ways.

Catherine the Great, who was not Russian but married into the Romanovs, and ruled from 1762 to 1796, exploited the icon to its fullest, having its image emblazoned on walls in the Alexander Palace. This palace was the favoured home of the last Romanovs, before they and their children and staff were invited into a basement in Ekaterinberg in July, 1918 on the orders of Yakov Sverdlov, chairman of the Soviet Central Executive.

An article from four years ago in the Baltimore Sun discussed the long and complex relationships of Muslims and those in power in Russia. He states that St Basil's Cathedral, the most famous landmark of Moscow, was built to commemorate a battle against Muslims - the defeat of the Khan of Kazan and the Volga Tatars by Ivan the Terrible in 1552.

For 250 years, the Tatars had extended their yoke over the princes of Muscovy, and when the Orthodox Russians finally turned the tables, nothing would do but to build the finest Russian church in the world.

So delighted were the Russians by their achievement that, to this day, many churches here feature a standard Orthodox cross with one slight addition - an upturned crescent at its base, Islam symbolically vanquished.

The Tatars, who still live along the Volga, are hardly less passionate. Last month, in their capital city of Kazan, a day of national mourning was marked. Between 1,000 and 2,000 people marched through the streets, grieving their defeat 449 years ago.

An old imperial flag was burned, and protesters called for the creation of an independent state of Tatarstan.

The region of Tatarstan is on the same latitude as Moscow. In 1980, it had 90 mosques. By 2001, it had more than a thousand.

At the time of that article, written a month after 9/11, the author, Will Englund, noted that in the three preceding years, several hundred thousand Muslims have entered Russia from the Central Asian republics.

The Chechens have been viewed as a distinct people since the 17th century, and their region, the Caucasus had been annexed from 1818 - 1917. Chechnya staged a rebellion against Bolshevik control in 1919, but were brought back under Soviet control in 1921. Their history is one of subjugation and rebellion, and perhaps a political more than religious struggle.

But the situation for Muslims in the Caucasus is not pleasant. On September 28, we reported that a group of 400 Muslims from the Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria had written an open letter to President Vladimir Putin. They asked to be allowed to leave Russia to go to any European or Asian state where "human rights are respected".

A fortnight later, on October 13, Nalchik, the capital of Kabardino-Balkaria, was attacked by 150 armed Islamic insurgents, probably from Jamaat Yarmuk. More than 100 died in the ensuing battle between the Islamists and Russian security forces.

In 2004, a year before the attack, a local Muslim journalist, Fatima Tlisova, wrote on September 29: " Ordinary people in Kabardino-Balkaria are afraid their republic, which has seen growing turbulence over the last few months, will be targeted by Islamic militants."

Her fears were proved right as a few weeks later, a group of Jamaat Yarmuk Islamists attacked the regional branch of the Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) in Nalchik on Dec 14, killing 14 people. On January 27 2005, a battle broke out between security forces and inhabitants of an apartment in Nalchik. Two days later when the battle ended, seven bodies were found in the flat, three of them women. One of the dead was Muslim Ataev, a leader of the Jamaat Yarmuk group.

A list had been prepared of 400 suspected Islamists in Nalchik and its environs a year before the October insurgency. The man at the top of the list claimed not to be an extremist

... Mukhozhev said that, as a result of a crackdown, ordinary people had been subject to arbitrary arrest and beatings and in the village of Dugulubguei young men had had crosses shaved into their scalp.

"Even though not one of the accusations against our community has been proven, we have no access to justice," Mukhozhev said. "The Muslims of Kabardino-Balkaria are completely deprived of their constitutional rights and civil liberties. It is very difficult for us to keep our young people from taking retaliation. You can't call the policies of the authorities reasonable, they are more like a provocation."

The issue of the extremists of Nalchik is still causing anger, according to a report just released from Reuters, which examines attitudes of Islamists now detained.

Before the insurgency of October 13, Timur Mamayev had been repeatedly beaten by police, had his religion insulted, and his wife and children harassed.

"It was a protest. They did not want to win independence, 150 people would not win anything. They sacrificed themselves in an attempt to change things," said his wife Fatima, 32. She says she has not seen her husband since the day of the attack.

To Russian officials, her husband is a terrorist who tried to overthrow secular rule. To his relatives, he was just a desperate man trying to make his point the only way he could."

Some Nalchik Muslims believe they are being targeted because they are not paying bribes. Following the events of the Nord-Ost theatre seige in Moscow and the tragic school attack on Beslan last year, it appears attitudes against Muslims are hardening.

We reported yesterday on the beatings which have been given to "extremists" in detention in Nalchik following the insurgency. Many of those in detention claim not to have been involved in the fighting.

Bodies of those accused of terrorism, and killed in the fighting, were not returned to relatives, against Muslim burial custom which expects a body to be interred within 24 hours of death, and this has affected the Nalchik community in general, reinforcing feelings of being persecuted. More than one relative claims that a dead family-member has been unfairly and posthumously accused of being a terrorist.

Another issue on Russia's Islamic agenda is Hizb ut-Tahrir. In Will Englund's article from November 2001, there had then been a recent influx of about 150 members of this group, which claims to desire a Caliphate, a centralised Islamist state. We reported on November 25th that three Hizb ut-Tahrir members were jailed at Nizhny Novgorod for "spreading terrorist propaganda".

In Bashkortostan in the south Urals, which adjoins Tatarstan, currently has a group of Hizb ut-Tahrir prisoners who are undergoing a Guantanamo-style hunger strike. Last week, the Khaleej Times reported that nine members of the group, which is banned in Russia, were protesting against what they perceived as an "illegal conviction on faked charges". Recently, Murtaza Rakhimov, the President of Bashkortostan has been cracking down on radicals.

So perhaps it is too easy to laugh at the criticisms of the Romanov flag. For many Russians, officially prohibited from promoting their Orthodox Christian faith under the official atheist doctrines of the Soviet era, maybe there is an over-eagerness to celebrate a historical Russia with roots far longer then the eighty or so years of communism.

The Muslims have been long seen as a threat to historical Russia and Europe, and Muslims in Russia have been feeling isolated at best, persecuted at worst. There needs to be a concerted battle against terrorism. But in that battle, it seems many Muslims are being perceived as terrorists, and being treated as second-class citizens will only encourage more to follow the path to extremism.

The pleas of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Asian Russia and Spiritual Board of Karelia's Muslims for the Romanov flag to be modified are childish. The whole icon should be ditched, or retained. To tinker with a historical heraldic emblem is like rewriting history. But to deny that Muslims are treated with suspicion would also be naive and manipulating.

To demand a redesigning of official emblems is expecting too much. To demand an official secularism after a population is only now living free after 80 plus years of communist state secularism, is also asking too much.

But to demand equal rights and equal treatment would be reasonable. Perhaps if these individuals stopped distracting with issues of Christian iconography and focused on real human rights issues, they may gain more credibility and respect.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 6, 2005 7:01 PM

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