Muslims say “No”

By Vrstnik Kavkaza

On November 27th 2012 in Moscow the 8th Muslim Forum, "Consolidation of the Muslim community of the CIS: achievements and goals" was held by the Council of Muftis of Russia, the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the European part of Russia and the Moscow Islamic University. Various prominent political and religious activists from the CIS, the Baltic States, the Nordic States, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia gathered there.

Ravil Gainutdin, chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia, defined several targets for the forum: “We want to unite the people of Russia, the Russian Muslims, to carry out the consolidation of our minds, our hearts, our beliefs, and to contribute to peace and stability in our multi-ethnic and multi-religious country. We want to show that we are united not only to the Russians.

We want to show this to our fellow believers from other countries - because we have something to show and something to brag about. We, a multinational and multi-religious nation, thank God, for many centuries have lived in peace and harmony, and our brothers and partners come to us from European countries and from other continents to study the experience of peaceful coexistence between the religions and peoples of the Russian Federation.

Our forum, which was created as a Russian Muslim Forum, today received the status of an international forum. Praise be to God, now we have invited participants from 10 countries of the world, and, of course, first of all, we have invited our brothers from the CIS. We also have guests from the Baltic region, from South-East Asia. This means that we, Muslims of Russia, the CIS and the whole world, are a part of the Islamic world.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wrote to participants of the forum: " Against the background of profound transformation of the international landscape, the ongoing transformation processes in the Middle East and North Africa, often accompanied by strengthening of inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflicts, efforts to counter the ideas of extremism and religious intolerance and to contribute to peace and harmony between different religions are of particular importance. In these circumstances, the role played by the traditional religions in our country in the adoption of the eternal values - piety, kindness, mercy, and love for others – is particularly important. Surely, this forum will contribute to the development of inter-ethnic and inter-religious dialogue and build trust and understanding between our countries."

Vsevolod Chaplin, chairman of the Synodal Department of the Moscow Patriarchate, expressed his view at the forum: “There are a number of initiatives that are aimed at the convergence of Muslim communities of different countries of the CIS. Recently, a lot has been said about these initiatives in the media space. I hope that all these initiatives will help the processes bringing people closer together which I have just mentioned. It is known that our peoples have common serious challenges. This is a global economic crisis. This is a situation in which the world economy is no longer able to develop as it has evolved in recent decades, and therefore the world is waiting for new ways of development of the global economy. Another challenge is an ecological crisis which concerns individual nations and society in general, and this crisis also needs responses from people of faith,believers of different religions. Another challenge is the attempts to carry out various experiments to change the historical path of the peoples, to change the social order without the will of the peoples. We know that in the world there are forces that would like to get involved in conflicts in order to change the political system in various states and to make these states and their people hostages to geopolitical and strategic schemes that these people did not choose. I think that today defending the role of the people to determine their own historical path without external influences is one of the challenges facing all countries of the CIS. It is known that the external influence on the religious life, on the world of ideas, in the sphere of culture, inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations in the CIS countries is not always a constructive influence, it is not always a positive influence, and the people have the right to defend themselves, including helping each other, from the destructive influences that may occur, including in the area of religious and interreligious processes. It seems that we are called to care for the preservation of the rich cultural and spiritual heritage of our people, their prosperity, and in this way we have excellent opportunities for mutual support, communication and cooperation.”

As the result, the participants of the forum adopted the resolution which stated their aims as:

- to organize permanent platforms for development of a unified position on the most important issues of development of Islam in the CIS, including usage of Internet technologies by Muslim imams and scientist;

- to form a center for training imams of the CIS countries under Moscow Islamic University;

- to organize scientific research groups on development of scientific, religious, educational works on development of Islam in the CIS countries;

- to improve exchanging students and tutors between Muslim professional educational institutes of the CIS countries for reconstruction of lost spiritual, scientific, and educational ties between religious scientific centers;

- to develop a program of socio-cultural adaptation, legal education and defense, lingual and professional education for migrants from the Muslim countries of the CIS in Russia and in the Muslim countries of the CIS. To use mosques, Islamic centers, Spiritual Offices of Muslims of Russia as centers for working with Muslim migrants for harmonization of relations "migrant-society-government." To establish a regular exchange of imams among graduators from official universities, including for working with migrants;

- to judge attempts of insulting religious feelings of the faithful, their usage for violent actions;

- to support criminal punishment for insulting religious feelings in cases of direct violence and desecrating shrines;

- to reconsider an order of making court verdicts on religious literature for prevention of forbidding classic religious literature;

- to take a unified active principle position by the umma in the civic fight against Islamophobia, religious extremism, terrorism, xenophobia, migrantophobia; to explain a positive role of migrants in development of the CIS countries within establishing the Eurasian Union, the Common Economic Space and the free trade area of the CIS countries.