Report: Relations With Muslims Strained

By Evgenia Ivanova

Staff Writer

The majority of Russians are convinced that relations between Muslims and non-Muslims are generally bad, according to a survey published June 22.

In a worldwide study carried out by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, 53 percent of those surveyed in Russia said they did not feel the relations were good.

Alexey Malashenko, a professor at Moscow State Institute of International Relations and a co-chair of the Religion, Society and Security project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, believes Islamophobia in Russia is growing, but not as rapidly as in Western Europe or the U.S.

“It’s true that the conflict is quite serious and that Islam continues to be rejected in Russian society, but the process is significantly less dramatic compared to similar processes in the West,” Malashenko said in a telephone interview Monday.

“The attitudes to Islam in this country are considerably more tolerant as there has been a certain custom of cohabitation with Muslims in Russia,” Malashenko said.

According to the CIA World Factbook, up to 15 percent of Russia’s population are Muslims. Yet, the Pew’s researchers found, 56 percent of the country’s inhabitants believe that being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society is riddled with conflict.

“The religious ethics of Islam are not better or worse per se than ethics of other religions, but they are less modernized, less adapted to a quickly and radically changing world,” Roman Mogilevsky, advisor with the city’s branch of the Agency for Social Information, told the St. Petersburg Times on Thursday.

“If we look at Christianity, we find that this social institution reacted accordingly to changes in people’s present values, orientations and interests,” he said.

“People change inside, and if a religion is trying to rigorously stop this, then conflict is unavoidable,” Mogilevsky said.

“Society constantly stresses the freedom of people, talks about personal liberalization, but not about personal responsibility in terms of ethics and morals,” Metropolitan Kirill, the head of the department of external church relations of the Patriarch office of Moscow was quoted as saying on the Kirill&Mefody web portal last week.

“It’s absolutely clear to me that the roots of problems such as intolerance and xenophobia lie in the decay of the traditional system of ethical values that has taken place during the post-modernist era,” the metropolitan said.

Meanwhile, the counteraction of religious and national discord in Russia is set to be one of the primary goals of the Federation Council United Committee on National Politics and Relations of State and Religious Associations, said the Upper Chamber’s speaker Sergei Mironov on June 22.

Deputy chair of the Council of Russia’s Muftis, Marat Murtazin, speaking at the committee’s meeting on the same day, called for the state to give equal support to all the religions practiced in Russia.

“We don’t have any right to choose the dominant religion just because the majority of Russia’s citizens practice it,” he said.

“Attempts to put one religion in charge of the state ideology are apt to lead to complications and problems,” he added.

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