Paul Goble<\/p>\n
Vienna, April 10 \u2013 Three very different actions by the Kazan Tatars, a major Muslim Spiritual Directorate, and the shamans of the Russian Federation both reflect the unintended consequences of Moscow\u2019s approach to ethnic and religious issues and present new challenges to the Russian government that it may find difficult to dismiss out of hand.
\nFirst of all, having secured Moscow\u2019s agreement to declare Kazan \u201cthe third capital\u201d of Russia, some Kazan Tatars are now seeking to have the central government declare their language \u201cthe second state language of Russia\u201d because the Tatars are the second largest language community there and serve as Russia\u2019s bridge to other Turkic-speaking peoples.
\nThe World Forum of Tatar Youth, which has organized this effort and put up a special website (uzebez.org\/) to press its case, seeks more than just recognition. It hopes to use this campaign to reverse recent cutbacks in Tatar language use outside of Tatarstan because unlike other nations in Russia, most Kazan Tatars live beyond their republic\u2019s current borders.
\nAnd to that end, the group plans an online petition campaign, something that will both raise national awareness among young Tatars (another goal of the group) and challenge Moscow\u2019s policy under Putin and Medvedev of cutting back the national component of education in many areas (mariuver.wordpress.com\/2009\/04\/09\/tatar-2-gosjazyk\/#more-7442).
\nSecond, the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of the European Part of Russia has pub two books by Said Nursi on its list of \u201capproved Islamic literature,\u201d even though these and other works of the Islamic writer have been declared \u201cextremist\u201d by Russian courts and are included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials (www.interfax-religion.ru\/?act=news&div=29686).
\nOn the one hand, this action by the MSD reflects a widespread view among many Muslim leaders that Russian courts lack the expertise to decide who is \u201cextremist\u201d among Muslims. And on the other, the timing of this action appears to be a protest against the composition of the new justice ministry group that is supposed to provide such testimony.
\nHowever that may be, at least some Muslims close to the Russian government, including Mufti Mukhammedgali Khuzin, who is himself a member of that new justice ministry group, say that the MSD\u2019s actions represents \u201ca challenge to the leadership of the country\u201d (www.interfax-religion.ru\/print.php?act=news&id=29689).
\nSuch \u201ca demonstrative approval of materials which form the ideological foundation of the Nurjilar organization, which the Supreme Court recognized last year as extremist, is an unconcealed challenge and may be considered as spitting in the face of the Russian powers that be,\u201d Khuzin told Interfax.
\nAt the very least, this decision of the MSD for the European Part of Russia, especially given the prominence of that group within the Union of Muftis of Russia and its authority among many Muslims as a traditional rather than radical forum, will spark new tensions between the government and Muslim leaders, at a time when Moscow would like to avoid them.
\nAnd third, there is another emerging challenge, although it may seem extraordinarily distant from Russia\u2019s corridors of power. The shamans of Russia have announced plans to hold the \u201cfirst popular elections of the Supreme Shaman of Russia,\u201d thus creating a leader who could speak for them in Moscow (www.shamanstvo.ru\/choice.htm).
\nIn recent months, shamans in Siberia and the Far East have been among the leaders of protests against the destruction of the environment by Russian officials and Russian firms, and with a popularly elected leader, they are likely to demand that they should be represented in Russia\u2019s Inter-Religious Council as one of the country\u2019s \u201ctraditional\u201d religions.
\nPatriarch Kirill, who in his earlier incarnation as the head of the Moscow Patriarchate\u2019s External Affairs Department took the lead in organizing that group and using the term \u201ctraditional\u201d to embrace only Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism, will thus face a new test, especially since many in Russia see shamanism as part of their heritage.
\nBut Moscow is unlikely to make a concession on this point because many would see the addition of yet another \u201ctraditional\u201d religion as opening the way for the inclusion of other groups, including Catholics and Protestants, and that could destroy precisely the exclusionary, religious \u201cpower vertical\u201d in which both Kirill and the Kremlin have invested so much.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/windowoneurasia.blogspot.com\/2009\/04\/window-on-eurasia-kazan-tatars-muslims.html<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paul Goble Vienna, April 10 \u2013 Three very different actions by the Kazan Tatars, a major Muslim Spiritual Directorate, and the shamans of the Russian Federation both reflect the unintended consequences of Moscow\u2019s approach to ethnic and religious issues and present new challenges to the Russian government that it may find difficult to dismiss out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":38128,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[604,820],"class_list":["post-11170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-russia","tag-tataristan","tag-tatars"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}