Vitaly Naumkin: "External forces seek to create discord in Russia's Islamic Ummah"

This week, during the conference "Islam in Russia: strength of traditions and openness to modernity", Islamic studies' scholars have supported the creation of the Russian Uluma Council. Scientific director of the Institute of Oriental Studies Vitaly Naumkin, who is also a senior political adviser to the UN Secretary General's special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, spoke about the problems of the Islamic Ummah in Russia and the ways to overcome them in an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza.

- Vitaly Vyacheslavovich, what are the problems within the Muslim Ummah in Russia? How can they be resolved?

- If we call a spade a spade, the external forces seek to cause discord in the Islamic Ummah in different directions, including through the use of personal ambition, rivalries, disagreements between different theological schools. This is something that does not really exist, because Ummah has always been united. There is Caucasian Shiite Islam, there is Salafi Islam among the Turkic-speaking peoples. It always existed, and they always lived in peace. Overall, there is a pluralism in Islam - there are many muftiates, which probably reflect the tendency of each region to resolve its own Islamic problems. It is a public movement.

There are signs of discord in the Russian Ummah, caused by radicals, Islamic terrorists and extremists. Sometimes this results in some small, minor clashes over certain issues that must be overcomed. The idea of the conference that we held is to encourage our Muslims to begin this consolidation, help them. 

We do not interfere in the affairs of Islamic communities, because there are secular people, Muslims and Christians, atheists among us. But we, as friends of Islam, people who study Islam for decades, urge to unite around the idea of rejection of terrorism and adherence to the norms of traditional Islam, and stop imposing your own standards on others. We urged to consolidate around all of these issues and be very careful in order to defeat and stop the discord, caused by detractors of Islam .

- Vitaly Vyacheslavovich, you brought up the statistics that right now about three thousand people from Russia are in Syria. Is it possible to say that less people are being sent to the Middle East since the beginning of Russian operations on the territory of this country?

- I don't have the exact statistics, but I know that it declined. Moreover, people started to leave this region and went to other regions of the Middle East. Some of these people even returned. Many people came there from Europe, from Turkey and from other countries. This process still exists, and of course, Muslims, young people deceived by pseudo-Jihad in Syria, are also going there. 

- What can you tell about the role of Muslims of Russia in strengthening the counry's positions in the Middle East and the Islamic world in general?

- We are an example. If we consider the discord, which shakes the Islamic world today, especially in the Middle East, the peaceful life of our Muslims, their tolerance, their coexistence with Christians, Buddhists, Jews - is a great example of constructive cooperation. And 20 million Russian Muslims, who live side by side with Orthodox people, it is a constructive example for the peoples of the Middle East. This example should be spread, just like the legacy of traditional scholars of the Muslim Ummah of Russia - Tatar, Bashkir, Chechen and Dagestani scholars. Today, they works are translated into Russian, distributed, printed. 

The Middle East pays more and more attention to this heritage. At the same time, our system new Islamic education is also developing - people travel abroad less, although major Islamic universities still attract young people. Today, the system of Islamic education in Russia is developing, the government helps it, there are special programs, many universities participate in them - Moscow State University, Institute of Asian and African Countries, St. Petersburg State University, Pyatigorsk State University and Kazan Federal University. I think it's great.