Source: Russia in Global Affairs
Russian society holds two contradictory attitudes to Islam. On the one hand, according to Nikolai Silayev, “the myth about the ’mysterious East,’ characteristic of Western Europe, never really materialized in Russia: the East has always been considered endemic to Russia.”
On the other hand, notions of the “mysterious East” do exist in the Russian mindset, and it is only necessary to consider the many Arab fairy tales, the harems, and the India of Afanasy Nikitin, not to mention Japan and China. And if the Tatars did not pose a mystery, the peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia posed it. The Muslim East has always been exotic, even if in close proximity to Russia.
Islam has at all times been perceived as something alien to Russia on the subconscious level: Muslims live primarily abroad—in the arid Middle East, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
This alienated view of Islam was largely promoted by official Soviet propaganda that divided Islam into “foreign,” that is, aggressive, politicized, and occasionally used as a slogan (jihad) in the liberation movement, and “Soviet Islam,” which was related to “backward old men” and “weak women,” and seen as a feudal relic. Needless to say, even then, some intelligent functionaries in the party apparatus and especially in the State Security Committee (KGB) realized that Islam in the Soviet Union had proved to be extremely resilient, retaining its functions as a regulator of social relations. But to reiterate, “Soviet Islam” was not identical to “their Islam,” while the religious identity of Soviet Muslims was regarded as marginal, doomed to extinction.
In the late 20th century, following the disintegration of the Soviet Union and under the impact of growing contradictions amongst the Muslim world, Europe and the United States, as well as internal conflicts in Russia, “Russian” Islam began to be increasingly identified with the Muslim world, with all of its strengths and weaknesses. This holds true especially for the North Caucasus—a border area that is a part of Russia and a part of the Muslim world at the same time.
The Muslims are perceived as alien or friendly depending on the specific political situation. The war in Chechnya caused the North Caucasus, in the public mindset, to move further away from Russia and closer to the Islamic world. Tatarstan, with its thousand mosques, Islamic University and resolve to adopt the Latin script, is also shifting closer to the world of Islam. Boris Yeltsin’s famous slogan, “Take as much sovereignty as you can swallow,” became a strong incentive for the Muslims to turn away from Russia.
The division of Islam into “alien” and “native” remains to the present time, which is especially characteristic of the new official ideology, although today there is a somewhat different emphasis: the qualifier “alien” is applied to Islamic fundamentalism (Wahhabism), as opposed to “native,” or traditional Islam, which maintains a separation of religion from politics and is absorbed into purely religious affairs.
The great majority of Russians judge Islam by:
- Actions of religious extremists;
- conflicts with the involvement of Muslims;
- radical statements by Muslim politicians and spiritual leaders;
- an influx of immigrants.
Very few people have opened the Koran, but yet practically everybody reads newspapers and watches television where Muslims are involved in bomb attacks, wars, and special operations in the North Caucasus, while in news reports, Muslim spiritual leaders are saying uttering banalities.
There are several common stereotypes associated with a Muslim: a head-shaven, bearded man with an automatic rifle; a terrorist wearing a facemask; a crooked businessman. It is noteworthy, however, that none of these negative stereotypes are associated with the Tatars, who, in their majority, especially in urban areas, are either close to or indistinguishable from the Slavs by their lifestyle and mentality. The Russian man on the street apparently ignores the Tatars’ Muslim identity: they are just neighbors that everyone has long become used to. “Scratch a Russian, find a Tatar,” as the saying goes. But no matter how hard you may scratch an Orthodox Russian, you will never find a Muslim.
The perception of the Islamic world has been aggravated by the 9/11 tragedy, terrorist attacks in Russia and in Europe, and the bellicose phraseology of Muslim politicians. There have been other “incidents” as well, such as the destruction of ancient Buddha statues by the Afghan Taliban (2001), the murder of Dutch film director Theo Van Gogh (2005), the prosecution of an Afghan citizen for conversion from Islam to Christianity, and so on.
Pro et Contra
In Russia, as everywhere, public opinion is influenced, above all, by crimes committed by Muslims, which are played up in the media. But while criticizing the media, politicians and other public figures for their negative image, it should be noted that Muslims themselves provide cause for their negative perception in the public mind.
Even without the benefit of a magnifying glass, it is obvious that Russians have ample grounds for complaints against immigrants from Muslim countries and regions. Meanwhile, attempts by Muslim spiritual leaders to cast Islam as a “world religion” are treated skeptically. First, imams and muftis are usually not eloquent enough to convince the public that they are right. Second, as freedom of expression is suppressed, judgments made in the media receive little credence, as was the case with Soviet propaganda. Third, the deeds of Islamic radicals belie Islam’s purported peace-loving nature in the public eye.
Furthermore, Russia has been fighting against Muslims for almost two decades now with little break. Thus, the enemy in the Russian mindset is associated with the Afghan mujaheddin and the Caucasus militant. The present generation of war veterans can rightfully call themselves the “veterans of Muslim wars.”
Russia’s attitude to Islam and Muslims also fits into the general context of xenophobia that in the first half of the 1990s was considered to be a hangover of post-totalitarian thinking; 10 years later, however, it has turned into a core element of the public consciousness. Whereas in 1989, some 20 percent of the population showed signs of xenophobia, by 2001 the share rose to 50 percent. According to Lev Gudkov, a well-known philosopher and social scientist, judging by its level of xenophobia, Russia had surpassed even Austria, the most xenophobic country in Europe.
A poll conducted by the All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion on Social and Economic Questions (VTsIOM) in March 2002 showed that Russian levels of xenophobia were the highest against people from the North Caucasus (43.3 percent), followed by Central Asia (38.7 percent), and then the Arab countries (30.3 percent). The percentage dropped to 12.6 percent for Belarusians, Moldovans, and Ukrainians. Some 73 percent of Interior Ministry officers were biased against non-Russian immigrants.
It would seem that on the issue of immigrants Russia is in the same league with most European countries. For example, according to The Wall Street Journal (December 10-12, 2004), Europeans expressed discontent with the presence of Muslims in their countries (75 percent of Swedes, 72 percent of Dutch, 67 percent of Danes and Swiss, 65 percent of Austrians and Belgians, 61 percent of Germans, 56 percent of Finns, 48 percent of Spaniards, 44 percent of Italians, 39 percent of Britons, and 35 percent of Greeks). Yet it should be borne in mind that in the not so distant past, Muslim immigrants in Russia were Soviet citizens or are still Russian citizens; they speak Russian and can easily adapt to Russia’s cultural environment. Muslims in Russia are “strangers among their own,” while the older generation of immigrants share the same mentality with the Russians. This may bring them closer to the “host nation,” but it can also be an additional source of irritation: “We used to be in the same boat,” some Russians seem to be saying, “but now you are crowding us out, living off us, and getting rich in the process.”
Whereas in the past xenophobia was mostly dominated by anti-Semitism, now its principal target are people from the south—70 percent of them being Muslims. Alexei Levinson has noted that “Caucasus-phobia” sometimes affects as much as two-thirds of the population.
According to a recent poll conducted by the Yuri Levada Center, Chechens evoked a negative reaction from 52.3 percent of respondents, Azeris from 29.2 percent, whereas Jews from only 11 percent.
Jews fought anti-Semitism mainly by leaving the Soviet Union and Russia or, contrary to xenophobic expectations, while preserving their ethnic/religious identity, they integrated into Russian culture, asserting themselves as part of Russia’s new elite. Muslims are not leaving or integrating. Rather, they painstakingly guard their religious identity, and they have extensive experience in resistance, including armed resistance.
So, cautious and even negative attitudes toward Islam have a strong base. When asked the question, “Which religion is more alien (hostile) toward Russian Christian Orthodoxy, Islam or Catholicism,” 50.1 percent of respondents mentioned Islam, whereas only 12.3 percent cited Catholicism (Levada Center, 2002). It may be recalled that in a 1994 poll, only 16.5 percent of respondents said they held a negative opinion toward Islam.
A negative view of Islam is also cultivated through the dissemination of biased comments by Islamic politicians and spiritual figures. These individuals talk about the inevitable Islamization of Russia, in addition to prospects for creating an Islamic state, which oppose marriages between Muslims and “infidels,” and so on.
Xenophobia toward internal enemies is inseparable from xenophobia toward external enemies, but “Americanophobia” is fundamentally different from Islamophobia. The Americans are not feared—they are envied and their lifestyle is imitated. I would describe this as a national inferiority complex because it affects one nation, which in the not-so-distant past was a superpower, in relation to another nation, which is still a superpower. There is no inferiority complex in relation to the Muslim world, although there is a certain measure of irritation over the fact that the former little brothers in need of assistance—Arabs, Afghans, Indonesians, and Central Asians—suddenly grew up and started acting independently. This is incomprehensible, and it inspires fear. Military experts and advisers who worked in the Near East find it hard to understand how the Algerians, Egyptians, Iraqis, Saudis, Yemenis, and others, who had great difficulty studying the military art, were able to produce such a large number of professional fighters (mujaheddin) that caused so much trouble for their former Western and Soviet mentors.
To the majority of Russians, however, relations with the Islamic world rank as a very low priority. When asked the question, “What countries should have priority for Russia in the long term,” only 1.8 percent of respondents mentioned Muslim countries, with 40.2 percent giving priority to the CIS countries, 26.2 percent to Western Europe, and 7 percent to China.
On the other hand, Russians do not view Muslim countries as a threat to Russia. In a poll conducted in the late 1990s, when pollsters asked people to name states hostile to Russia, respondents in the 17-26 age group mentioned the United States (16.9 percent), Chechnya (13.1 percent), Japan (8.1 percent), Afghanistan (5.7 percent), Iraq (2.9 percent), Turkey (2.6 percent), and Iran (2.1 percent); respondents in the 40-60 age group gave the following answers: the United States (24 percent), Chechnya (8.5 percent), Japan (10.1 percent), Afghanistan (8 percent), Iraq (1 percent), Turkey (1.6 percent), and Iran (2.1 percent).
Islam in Print and Electronic Media
At the end of last century and the start of this century, media outlets substantially contributed to a religious revival. They helped increase the ranks of believers, shaping their religious identity and encouraging them to observe religious rites. Although this mostly applied to Russian Christian Orthodoxy, Islam was also given some support, but in a rather cautious manner. Whereas the revival of Orthodoxy was encouraged by the state, Islamic revival was permitted.
The relatively rapid formation of Islam’s negative media image in the 1990s was due to a rise in nationalism among the Muslims and the ethnic/political conflicts that erupted in the late 1980s, with the conflicting sides often invoking Islam to justify their cause. From the 1990s, Islamic slogans started to be exploited by terrorists. These factors could be described as objective.
The main subjective factor was that the difficulties that had arisen in relations with the Muslims quickly evolved into an “Islam scare.” The Islamic factor was blown out of proportion (in the mid-1990s, the war in Chechnya was often referred to as a “conflict of civilizations”); the fundamental concepts of Islam (especially jihad) were distorted; and extremist ideology was extrapolated (purposely or through ignorance) to the entire Muslim tradition. Many Islam-related publications were linked to wars, terror attacks, and armed conflicts.
Here are just a few typical newspaper headlines: Islamic Wolves Kill Russian Soldiers; Muslims Besiege the Kremlin; Chechen Whores Blow Up Moscow; The Sword of Islamic Revolution Forged in London.
Here is an example of a “model” text: “In the theater center on Dubrovka, not only terrorists and commandos but also Allah and Christ came to blows. Both suffered a devastating defeat” (Moskovskiye Novosti, No. 45, 2002).
Russian television also contributed to Islamophobia, and more specifically to Caucasus-phobia. Individuals with a clearly non-Russian appearance are principal actors in such television shows as Criminal Russia, Man and Law, and Emergency Report. A comparison of Russian-made films with European and U.S. films shows that among those who stand up to evil in the Western productions, there are many non-European faces—Africans, Arabs, Chinese, and Southeast Asians, for example. However, in Russian films, exclusively “blond fellows with a Nordic character” fight against the enemy.
The Islamophobia component in crime reports and thrillers is not the result of malicious intent, but rather an attempt to assess the global situation, adapt to the public mindset, and boost ratings. On the other hand, cultivation of the enemy stereotype has long been part of the government’s political agenda, even if implicitly. In the past decade, this enemy image has become associated with the international terrorist (i.e., the “evil Muslim”). This was followed, at the start of the 21st century, by restoration of the archetype of U.S. imperialist, allegedly linked with the Islamic extremist.
What is even more worrying is that there are virtually no shows on Russian television that provide an honest and truthful account of Islam outside of politics, the “conflict of civilizations,” and so forth. There is a pressing need for objective information.
It is also remarkable that in the wake of high-profile terrorist attacks in Russia, no attempt has been made to check the rise of negative perceptions toward Islam. After the bomb attacks in Spain and France, local authorities repeatedly warned the public that anti-Islamism was unacceptable. U.S. President George W. Bush, who in the wake of 9/11 had inadvertently used the word “crusade,” deployed an extensive damage-control effort, talking in favorable terms about Islam and emphasizing the need to distinguish between terrorists and Muslims.
Almost nothing of the kind happened in Russia. While I do not think that Russian politicians and media outlets should slavishly copy European and U.S. experience, the fact that Islam remains terra incognita for Russian television must cause some concern: this vacuum tends to be filled with crudely apologetic or, on the contrary, provocative Islamophobic material.
Islam in Fiction
The Russian people do not only receive their impressions by watching television and reading newspapers; they also learn something about Islam from books. The problem is that the noble characters in the works of Pushkin, Lermontov and Tolstoy have been replaced in Russian pop culture by thugs and sadists.
The Russian classics did not idealize “persons of Caucasian extraction,” but they did not turn them into beasts justifying their deeds by references to Islam. Those old books aroused genuine interest in Islam and in its followers; there was no Islamophobia there. According to Yakov Gordin, “the classics and their contemporaries did not see an inseparable wall between two apparently irreconcilable worlds.” The general attitude at that time was: Russia as a great empire was “doomed” to victory, while its adversary was doomed to submit and adapt to it. The empire can afford to be magnanimous toward its new future subjects. This prospect looked fairly optimistic from the 19th century.
Today, by contrast, the situation looks murky, to put it mildly. Alexei Yermolov, Pavel Tsitsianov and Mikhail Vorontsov were the past conquerors of the Caucasus. However, considering the tactics being employed by army and police generals today, the word “thug” would seem somehow more appropriate. Meanwhile, an insurmountable wall represents the differences between the Russian and the Caucasus Muslim tradition.
Public opinion is becoming increasingly aware of this wall. And pop literature, above all thrillers, provides ample evidence of this awareness. There are series of works where anti-heroes are represented by “persons of Caucasian origin” and where their religious identity is described with references to “jihad,” “Koran,” “infidels,” “Allah,” etc. “Wahit will avenge us,’ he said in a hoarse voice. ’The whole of Russia will be shaken by the hand of Allah!’” (Daniil Koretsky. Kod vozvrashcheniya (The Code of Return), Moscow, 2006, p. 26). This is a good example of the “clash of civilizations” made simple.
Actually, thrillers only touch on Islam superficially, as though to remind the reader yet again that murderers and sadists profess this particular religion. Islam is a de rigueur characteristic of anti-heroes. It is noteworthy that more and more often standing behind the backs of Islamic terrorists and extremists are Western secret services, but as of lately, also Georgians and Ukrainians.
A case in point is Dzhakhannam, a thriller novel by Yulia Latynina, a political journalist. Judging from the book’s cover, which details a split crescent and a Muslim rosary, with one of its beads shaped in the form of a bullet, it bears all the hallmarks of Islamophobia. The novel attempts to make a separation between the Chechen and Russian criminal underworlds, which live according to their own distinct laws, even though they occasionally cooperate.
In these various fictional tales, the Islamic, Caucasian/Islamic, and Western/Islamic threats are primitive but at the same time multifaceted. There are recurring storylines in the Russian version, but also in U.S. and European variety. There is an attempt to initiate a terrorist attack with the use of nuclear weapons (e.g., Daniil Koretsky’s Kod Vozvrashcheniya). In yet another doomsday scenario, Chechen Wahid, a character from Alexander Prokhanov’s book Mr. Hexogen (Moscow, 2002, p. 196), also threatens to blow up nuclear power stations, missile silos and chemical plants. Yulia Latynina is only slightly less bloodthirsty than her contemporaries: the terrorists in her thriller only want to blow up a storage facility with 3,500 metric tons of hydrogen sulfide.
The threat of a nuclear apocalypse is present not only in fiction, but is constantly discussed by serious experts, many of whom are convinced that terrorist access to nuclear weapons is only a matter of time. This is a Catch-22 situation: the danger of “Islamic apocalypse” is taken for granted; it is reflected in pulp literature, which inspires the fear of Islam. This shreds the fabric of interreligious accord, which in turn affects the global political situation. In the end, all of these factors can serve to justify preparations for a no-holds-barred, “ultimate” war.
Unlike the 19th century, modern literature generally caters to people with “a passive mind,” who are tired and stressed out. They take everything they read for granted. Few readers will take the time to analyze a thriller. This is fertile soil for cultivating a Caucasian/Muslim enemy stereotype.
The Islamic theme, however, is not limited to thrillers. In the past few years it has also entered sci-fi literature with an element of political philosophy. All story lines here evolve against the backdrop of total Islamic expansion that some authors see as an apocalypse, while others as geopolitical intrigue, possibly with a favorable outcome for Russia.
A “classic” Islamophobic novel in this category is Mechet Parizhskoi Bogomateri (Notre-Dam de Paris Mosque) by Yelena Chudinova.
Chudinova describes the triumph of Islam in Paris in the middle of the 21st century. In “Sharia France,” women have to wear the hijab. One street is called Osama. Those who have refused to convert to Islam live in five ghettoes, while practicing Christians are forced to recite their prayers in catacombs, and if discovered face death by stoning. When they learn that the French Muslim authorities are going to destroy the ghettoes, the “non-Muslim” survivors revolt and in the end blow themselves up in the Notre-Dam de Paris Cathedral, which in the last few hours before the destruction regains its Christian identity.
The Muslim community ostracized Chudinova’s novel, but the critics missed one important passage that proves the author cannot be dismissed as a “zoological Islamophobe.” She believes that one of the causes of what happened in France, as well as in entire Western Europe, was that the enlightened Muslims who settled down in the Old World were caught unawares by their wild and fanatical religious brethren. It is this fear of “wild Islam” that breeds Islamophobia, sustaining the concept concerning the clash of civilizations.
In Chudinova’s novel, Russia survived because it had just barely managed to close its borders to “Euro-Islam.” Following this logic, Russian (Tatar) Islam also saved Russia by its strong immunity to “wild Islam.” But for the average reader, The Notre-Dam de Paris Mosque will only strengthen hostility and hatred of Islam, while a more enlightened reader will replace Paris with Moscow and tremble in horror.
Mikhail Veller, Chudinova’s ideological soul mate, sends a disturbing message that the Muslims’ ultimate objective is to destroy the Christian world. “They [Muslims] are stronger in spirit. They are ready to sacrifice more. They sacrifice themselves every day, destroying all those that they consider to be their enemies. They are ready to destroy all of us… They are ready to destroy our culture” (Mikhail Veller, Cassandra, St. Petersburg, 2002, p. 169).
Veller’s plan to fight terror is impressive: “All terrorists are Arab Muslims. So if all Arab Muslims are destroyed, there will be no terrorism. Its technological capacity today enables the white civilization to start and win an all-out war with no holds barred.” This passage needs no commentary, except that the author might be reminded that in addition to Arabs, Avars, Dargins, Kabardins, Russians, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Uighurs, Chechens, Americans, and many other nationalities carry out terrorist attacks.
Vladimir Mikhailov’s Variant-I (Moscow, 1999) rolls out a whole landscape of a futuristic world. Its storyline is phantasmagoric: Tsarevitch Alexei survives the 1917 execution of the tsarist family and ends up in Iran where he and his offspring succumb to the charms of Islam. In 2045, some international forces (primarily Muslim, but also Israeli) attempt to restore the monarchy and bring it to power in the hope of making Russia an Islamic state.
The concept of the future is represented through the eyes of Mikhailov’s characters. Here are some of their judgments:
- “Russia needed money and allies to compensate for what it had lost at the first stage after the disintegration, and it found even more than it looked for – in the Islamic world;”
- “there is a pressing need for a consensus with the Persian Gulf countries by establishing an international monopoly on oil;”
- “nuclear weapons may be transferred to some of our Muslim allies;”
- “Islam unites everything; it is more comprehensible to the average believer than the Holy Scripture is;” and
- “soldiers professing Islam will never waver.”
What impact will this book have on the average reader? Mikhailov uses a potent word in reference to the Islamic world—“Islamida,” apparently to emphasize the omnipotence of this world. But this “Islamophilia” spooks the Russian reader, eventually turning it into Islamophobia.
Yuri Nikitin builds a similar concept into his books, Anger and The Evil Empire. According to art critic Leonid Fishman, they present an “Islamic project” that can be summed up as “ideological revenge.” A union with Islam is proffered as the only way of saving Russia. Thus, Russians become the “new shakhids” (martyrs, those who suffer for the sake of principle) and ultimately defeat the West.
It is noteworthy that both Mikhailov and Nikitin wrote their novels before 9/11. Presumably, after the tragedy, the idea of Russia forming a united front with Islam can no longer evoke an unequivocally positive response from the reader. Nevertheless, such views remain, and, amid growing anti-American sentiments, are still relevant.
Most of the books with an Islamic theme that I have read have one thing in common: today, the Russian state is unable to protect its citizens against violence. It is corrupt and weak, while its officials collaborate with the adversary and are part of the mafia. Needless to say, the aforementioned books are ephemeral with plots and heroes that are easily forgotten. But their judgments, which shape the reader’s image of Islam and Muslims, remain in memory.
The main cause of Islamophobia lies in reality, in the events that are unfolding both in Russia and in the world at large: conflicts in the North Caucasus, the rise of nationalism in Russia’s “Muslim republics,” migration, and international and domestic terrorism. The main sources of fear are largely personified in the “evil Chechen” and the “evil Arab.”
But the “Islamic threat” is not so much reality as the perception of reality. Cultivated in the media, reflected in artistic forms, and blown up by politicians and clerics, it has become part of the Russian mass consciousness. This refers to the Islamic, not Islamist threat, which really exists. The difference between these two concepts did not begin to be appreciated until recently—due to the efforts of certain politicians, experts, and journalists. As for Muslim immigrants, the general irritation at their presence has little to do with religion. Against this backdrop, books like The Notre-Dam de Paris Mosque look especially provocative.
This article has placed an emphasis on the negative perception of Islam. Yet I would like to draw the reader’s attention to the fact that some of the aforementioned figures could have a different interpretation: only 26 percent of respondents said that Islam was an alien religion, while about one-half did not see it as an aggressive religion.
We must face the fact, however, that it is unlikely that the negative perception of Islam in Russia will be reversed in the foreseeable future, especially since many factors outside Russia influence this attitude. Everyone is interested in stopping the rise of Islamophobia, not least the Muslim themselves, who should also be more cautious and circumspect, and not speak, for example, about the inevitable “Islamization” of Russia.