TATARSTAN VIES TO REMAIN LEADER OF MUSLIM COMMUNITY

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 000688 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/12/2018 TAGS: PGOV KISL PINR RS SUBJECT: TATARSTAN VIES TO REMAIN LEADER OF MUSLIM COMMUNITY Classified By: Pol Minister Counselor Alice Wells for reason 1.4 (d). ¶1. (C) Summary: Although its image as a center of Islam may have been tarnished somewhat during almost 70 years of obedience to Moscow during the Soviet period, the government of Tatarstan and the religious leadership there are now attempting to shore up their position as not only a leading force for Russia's estimated 24 million member Muslim community, but also a model for interfaith relations. End Summary. ¶2. (C) During a recent visit to Kazan just prior to the March 2 presidential elections (septel) we met with government officials from the Office of President Mintimer Shamiyev as well as with religious leaders Mufti Gusman Ishakov, head of the Muslim Spiritual Board of the Republic of Tatarstan; Dr. Rafik Mukhamedshin, Rector of the Russian Islamic University in Kazan; and Rinat Nabiyev, former Chairman of the Council for Religious Affairs and now the Chair of the Political History Department at Kazan State University. Presidential Advisor Rafael Khakimov stated that Tatarstan hoped to show the rest of the Russian Federation how the Russian Orthodox Church and Islam can co-exist. He noted proudly that many governors in the rest of Russia want their mosques to be headed by a Tatar imam because Tatarstan's more moderate form of Islam, heavily influenced by the European Islamic modernizing phenomena of "jadidism" most prevalent in Turkey, is a model for interfaith relations. (NOTE: Mufti Ravil Gaynutdin, since 1987 chief imam of the Cathedral Mosque in Moscow (known in the Muslim community in Moscow as the Tatar Mosque),is one such Tatar cleric. Gaynutkin is also chairman of the Russian Council of Muftis, an organization founded by several clerics in an attempt to centralize the leading religious figures in Russia's Muslim community. The Council elected Gaynutdin its head in 1996. He has also been the head of the Spiritual Directorate of Muslims of the European Part of Russia since 1994). ¶3. (C) Edward Khabibullin, head of the America, Europe and CIS Section of the Department of Foreign Affairs under President Mintimer Shamiyev, described the Tatarstan "model" of Islam not as a conflict between civilizations, but rather as a means to convince both groups (Islam and Christianity) that they can co-exist. Many of those with whom we spoke questioned the applicability of Tatarstan's development of Islam universally or even throughout the rest of the Russian Federation. Dr. Rafik Mukhamedshin Rector of the local Russian Islamic University, believed that local habits have a great effect on the practice of Islam. He cited as an example the absence of any language in the Koran instructing Muslims to mark a person's death on the third, seventh, and fortieth day and then again on its one-year anniversary. Neither Khabibullin nor former Religious Affairs Council head and Kazan State University professor Rinat Nabiyev believe that Tatarstan's model is applicable in the predominantly Muslim North Caucasus region because of the different local traditions there. Government Responds to Call for More Islamic Education -------------- -------------- ¶4. (C) Ishakov has been the chief mufti in Tatarstan for the past ten years, coming into the job when there was a great deal of tension in the muftiate. His goal during that time has been to ensure the peaceful coexistence of Tatarstan's two main religions (Islam and Russian Orthodox Christianity) and to secure much needed financing for Islamic education, especially higher education. According to Ishakov, there has been a huge increase in the number in mosques, from only 20 shortly before the break up of the Soviet Union to 1,200 currently, all but 73 of which are registered with and under the control of the Spiritual Board he heads. He first made the hajj in 1982 at the age of 26 when only 20 people from the Soviet Union were allowed to go. According to Ishakov, now 1,800 people from Tatarstan alone (60 percent of whom are women) make the yearly pilgrimage. (NOTE: According to Nabiyev, President Shamiyev has never made the hajj, but in 2007 he did perform the umrah or lesser hajj). ¶5. (C) Ishakov said that, despite persistent problems with the number of imams or religious leaders for all these new mosques, fewer students from Tatarstan go abroad for study now than before. Those who do travel to Turkey, Egypt or Libya, popular destinations for study during Soviet times. Ishakov himself received religious training in Uzbekistan and Libya. He stated that mosques in Tatarstan are mostly well attended with 70 percent of them full and added that the number of young people is noteworthy. He admitted that there is a problem with attendance outside the main cities and towns where, except on major holidays, only a few people attend. During our visit, however, there were few participants at noon prayers in the contemporary Kul Sharif Mosque, built in 2005 within the territory of Kazan's Kremlin, a UNESCO-protected World Heritage site. ¶6. (C) Nabiyev said that after Salafists from the Gulf states began coming to Tatarstan in the 1990s, the government decided to assist its own indigenous form of Islam so that it could compete for the hearts and minds of Tatarstan's slim majority Muslim population. There are now nine Muslim secondary schools in Tatarstan with 1,000 students, half of whom Ishakov hopes will eventually become imams. In 1998 the government founded the Russian Islamic University (RIU) in Kazan, which moved to its present location in 2000. Mukhamedshin has been rector of RIU in Kazan since December ¶2006. His goal for RIU is to create a Muslim intelligentsia in Tatarstan and the rest of Russia and to lessen "Islamaphobia" here. ¶7. (C) According to Mukhamedshin, RIU is far from self-sufficient, it now receives 80 percent of its budget from the government, up from just over half when it was founded. RIU has 250 full-time and 100 part-time students (95 percent of whom are from Tatarstan) who study in two faculties. One faculty is purely religious which prepares imams and issues licenses to them to head a mosque. The other has a more general curriculum with majors in computers, English language and physical education. The language of instruction is Russian. According to Mukhamedshin, there are also Islamic universities in Moscow, Makhachkala and Ufa, but the three are not related. RIU plans to open faculties of journalism and Islamic business/banking in the future. Former Religious Affairs Council head Nabiyev teaches similar classes at both RIU and Kazan State University and said that students at RIU are more engaged in class discussions than those at Kazan's other universities. BURNS