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Religion, State and Society

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Public Interactions between Orthodox Christian and Muslim Organisations at the Federal Level in Russia Today
Alexander Verkhovsky

Online Publication Date: 01 December 2008

To cite this Article Verkhovsky, Alexander(2008)'Public Interactions between Orthodox Christian and Muslim Organisations at the

Federal Level in Russia Today',Religion, State and Society,36:4,379 392

To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/09637490802442983 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09637490802442983

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Religion, State & Society, Vol. 36, No. 4, December 2008

Public Interactions between Orthodox Christian and Muslim Organisations at the Federal Level in Russia Today

ALEXANDER VERKHOVSKY

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ABSTRACT When we discuss OrthodoxMuslim relations in Russia we need to be clear which particular partners we are talking about. My article is about relationships among the religious leaderships at the federal level. These relationships are essentially asymmetrical, and this is the result not only of dierences in the number of believers, but also of dierences in political weight and ideological loyalty to the regime. One important factor is that Orthodoxy is part of the basis of Russian ethnic self-identication, whereas Islam has not become a unifying factor for many varied ethnic groups in the country. Orthodox and Muslims have asymmetrical relations as far as tolerance is concerned. At all levels ordinary citizens, the mass media, the actions of leaders this is heavily dependent on the dominant political mythology. The Russian Orthodox Church has privileged relations with the federal power, and Muslim leaders simply have to accept this as a fact. Some of the latter are preoccupied with their own ethnic issues; some follow the ideological lead of the Orthodox Church; others invoke Islamic unity; yet others see themselves as defending minority rights. Relations between Orthodox and Muslim leaderships are intimately involved with discourse about identity, and in the context of the ever-increasing signicance of this discourse in Russia their relations are becoming ever more strained. Meanwhile the federal authorities do not seem to be paying serious attention to this phenomenon.

Introduction Interactions between Orthodox Christians and Muslims in Russia today (2008) can be viewed from a number of perspectives. I believe that the most important are those which involve the government as an intermediary. Relations between the government and the main religious organisations are a traditional subject for research, however, and in this article I shall focus exclusively on interactions among key religious organisations at the federal level. Regional-level relations have their own very important specicity, but this is a subject for special research (see, for example, Mitrokhin, 1999). However, it is relations between federal-level religious organisations that create the framework for relations in the regions as well as in some specic spheres which also need to be specially researched (the army, the secret services, international relations and so on). This article may be seen as preliminary research in the eld.1
ISSN 0963-7494 print; ISSN 1465-3974 online/08/040379-14 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/09637490802442983

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I shall begin with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), which obviously occupies the dominant position in Russias religious life. Various groups in the ROC hold diverse views on interactions with Islam and with specic Islamic organisations and leaders, but over the past decade a certain convergence of positions has been observable within the Orthodox community; this appears to be part of its internal consolidation process. The turning point was the Bishops Council of 2000, which formally adopted the ideological position of Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyayev), a position which had been increasingly prominent in public discourse in Russia (Verkhovsky, 2005, pp. 17595; 2006, pp. 16584). Interestingly enough, the 2000 Bishops Council, while approving a concrete statement on relations with other faiths, failed to adopt any decision regarding its attitude to Islam; nor is this issue addressed in the document Osnovy sotsialnoi konseptsii Russkoi Pravoslavnoi Tserkvi (Bases of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church) issued by the Council. Relevant ocial statements by ROC hierarchs have for many years focused on three recurrent themes. First, good neighbour relations should be maintained in and outside the country. Second, proselytism, or the conversion of members of ethnic groups historically associated with particular religions, is unacceptable. And third, Islam should not be linked to extremism, and the phrase Islamic extremism should be outlawed: leaders of the Orthodox hierarchy support the belief that terrorists do not have a religion. In this article I focus on a number of issues involved in the stance of the ROC vis-a`vis Islam as well as in the response of Muslim leaders to that stance. In particular, I show how the asymmetry of OrthodoxMuslim relations complicates the ethnoreligious situation and conicts in Russia and is, in turn, complicated by them. Next I explore the status of formal relationships between the leaderships of Russias two main faiths. Subsequently I address the issues of ethnonational and religious identity construction in the discourse of Orthodox and Muslim organisations and leaders. In conclusion I discuss the sources of complexity of OrthodoxMuslim interactions. Ethno-Religious Conicts The declared unacceptability of proselytism in particular raises various issues. In the past, problems were reported regarding the construction of Orthodox churches in traditionally Muslim regions such as Tatarstan, but such cases are now rare, and none have shown up through our monitoring eorts since 2003.2 Wherever ethnic Russians form an important part of the local community the authorities take care to avoid tensions with the ROC; they thus rarely hinder and often facilitate the construction of new Orthodox churches, but in fact there are no predominantly ethnic Muslim regions in Russia to which ethnic Russians migrate on a large scale. The construction of mosques in regions where Muslim populations are not numerous is eectively described as a form of proselytism, or Islamic expansion. Numerous conicts arise as a result of such construction. A detailed consideration of the complicated circumstances of such conicts is beyond the scope of this paper;3 but in general it can be said that the construction of new mosques seriously mars ROC Muslim relations. An illustrative case is the attempt to build a mosque in Sergiyev Posad, a town in close proximity to the spiritual centre of the ROC, the Holy TrinitySt Sergius Monastery. This incident caused a wave of protests in 2003 (Konikt, 2003), with some people saying that building a mosque in such a location could be balanced only by building an Orthodox church in Mecca. This rhetoric not only emphasises the

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symbolic nature of the conict but also reveals some excessively global thinking. There are clearly people who imagine all Muslims in the world as part of a single structure which would be targeted by the proposed exchange and seem to believe that imposing restrictions on freedom of conscience in their own country can be justied by the lack of such freedom in another country (in this case Saudi Arabia). The idea of the umma is an ideal always present in Islam. Appeals to one umma are natural, as are appeals to the Catholic (sobornaya) unity of the Church; but these are ideal concepts, and when appeals to them migrate from a religious context into public and political discourse they immediately hinder the practical resolution of any given specic issue. Meanwhile it has to be noted that the Muslims who insisted on building a mosque in Sergiyev Posad appeared to be less concerned about meeting the needs of the local community than they were about winning a symbolic victory. In fact, in the summer of 2005 the local imam was about to close the prayer house (opened instead of a mosque) and sell the building because the Muslim community was too small (Musulmanskaya, 2005). In 2007 stormy debates raged over the religious nature of a memorial to children killed in the Beslan hostage crisis (334 hostages, most of them children, lost their lives as a result of hostage-taking by Islamist terrorists in September 2004 and the subsequent storming of the school by the federal security forces). Beslan is a city in North Ossetia, a republic in the North Caucasus with a mixed population adhering to Orthodoxy and Islam. Approximately half the killed children were from Muslim families. Orthodox Christianity is the dominant religion in Ossetia, however, and Bishop Feofan (Ashurkov) of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz insisted that an Orthodox memorial church should be constructed where the destroyed school used to be, while Mufti Ravil Gainutdin and his colleagues argued that a non-religious memorial should be built there (Musulmane, 2007). Proselytism is of course not only about Orthodox churches or Islamic mosques: it is about converting people of other faiths. In the Orthodox tradition this is called missionary work and in Islam it is called dawah; both faiths regard it as an important activity. It is very dicult to obtain reliable statistics on the conversion of people to a faith other than the one regarded as traditional for their ethicity. In many cases, such conversion is driven by mixed marriages. Conversions of this kind have not however been raised as an issue between religious organisations or their leaders. For example, one might think that in Tatarstan numerous conversions of ethnic Tatars to Orthodox Christianity would have caused tensions among religious leaders, but so far they have not (Burdo and Filatov, 2005, pp. 281, 283). There have also been cases of ethnic Orthodox Christians adopting Islam. Conicts arise only where converts actively emphasise the unusual combination of their ethnic and religious identities incidentally, such cases are much more common among ethnic Orthodox adopting Islam than the reverse. The best-known Orthodox gure to adopt Islam is Ali Vyacheslav Polosin, former Orthodox priest and former member of the Duma and a prolic writer on behalf of institutions connected with the Council of Muftis of Russia (Sovet muftiyev Rossii) (CMR). Others who play a prominent role around the Council include Iman Valeriya Porokhova and Dzhannat Sergei Markus. Metropolitan Kirill, head of the External Church Relations Department (Otdel vneshnikh tserkovnykh svyazei) (ECRD) of the Moscow Patriarchate, found it appropriate to criticise Polosins book Yevangeliye glazami musulmanina (The Gospel as Seen through the Eyes of a Muslim) at a meeting of the Inter-religious Council of Russia (Mezhreligiozny sovet Rossii) in February 2006. However, this was probably an attempted symmetrical response to earlier

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criticism of a book about Russian Muslims written by Roman Silantyev, a member of sta in the ECRD (see below), which had triggered a storm of protests in the Muslim community. A leading Orthodox promoter of active proselytism among ethnic Muslims is the Moscow priest Fr Daniil Sysoyev (see Knorre, 2007; Sysoyev, 2006, pp. 5354; Yemelyanov, 2006). Fr Daniil, an ethnic Tatar, is a priest in an ethnically Muslim parish and a member of the editorial board of the journal Blagodatny ogon, the mouthpiece of a conservative Orthodox group in Moscow linked to the Sretensky Monastery; the publication has consistently expressed its resentment that the Orthodox Church hierarchy has abandoned its mission of preaching to nonOrthodox, and particularly Muslim, communities.4 The editorial board explains in the journal that the front cover symbolises the age-long dream of the Russian Orthodox people to plant the Holy Cross on the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople. All the individuals mentioned above, Muslims as well as Orthodox Christians, reject the idea that ethnic identity implies a particular religious identity: they insist on the traditional concept of religion as the sole route to salvation. Their tolerance of other Abrahamic religions is low; the consistent Orthodox activists connected with Blagodatny ogon, for example, explicitly insist that Islam is a hostile anti-Christian teaching. It is not surprising that most conicts arise between the radical groups. For example, in 2007 Mufti Nagulla Ashirov, known for his sharp statements, sued Fr Daniil in court for the latters recent book Brak s musulmaninom (Marrying a Muslim) (Mufti, 2007). Later there were more attempts to take Fr Daniil to court, all of them unsuccessful. Interethnic or Interreligious Relations? There have been many studies of islamophobia in Russia. The general conclusion is that up to 50 per cent of Russians have a suspicious and negative attitude to Islam as a religion and a culture; this seems to bear out the idea of a clash of civilisations. Acts of violence against individuals because of their Islamic faith are much more common than acts of violence against individuals because of their Orthodox faith. However, the vast majority of acts of violence are based on ethnic identity (Otnosheniye, 2003). Hate-crime monitoring reveals that victims are rarely targeted for being Muslims; usually they are targeted for being perceived as natives of the Caucasus or Asia or on other ethnic and racial grounds.5 As to islamophobia in the mass media, Muslim individuals (as opposed to the Islamic faith) are targets of intolerance far less frequently than individuals belonging to ethnic groups which are supposedly Muslim or predominantly Muslim. The degree of islamophobia in the mass media has uctuated over the past decade (see for example Kozhevnikova, 2007), and so far there has been far more clash of civilisations discourse than incitement to actual aggression. Religious intolerance cannot always be separated from ethnic intolerance, however, because Russian society tends to confuse religious and ethnic identity. From time to time the ethnocentric rhetoric of religious leaders becomes explicitly aggressive. Moreover, in a wide range of activist groups Tatar Muslim (Tatarskiye, 2004, 2005), Russian Orthodox (Verkhovsky, 2003b, pp. 11831) and others ethnic and religious components are completely inseparable. Ethnocentrism is found among all Orthodox and Muslim public gures and activists, virtually without exception. Recently ROC

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hierarchs have been wary of displaying their ethnocentrism, but they try to protect the ethnocentrism which is widely institutionalised within society. At a session of the Public Chamber (Obshchestvennaya palata)6 in April 2006, for example, Bishop Feofan (Ashurkov) explicitly opposed a recommendation to delete ethnocentric interpretations from school textbooks, and the Chamber supported the bishop. Muslim leaders have not yet learned to defend their views while remaining within the bounds of political correctness in this way. For example Farid Salman, a high-prole member of the Central Muslim Spiritual Board of Russia (Tsentralnoye dukhovnoye upravleniye musulman Rossii) (CMSBR), described his opponents as people who are ethnically neither Muslim nor Russian, and explicitly insisted that . . . people who have nothing to do with either ethnic Orthodox or Muslims do not have the right to interfere aggressively with issues of ethnic, cultural and religious identity (Obrashcheniye, 2003). Many members of Muslim institutions share such ethnocentric sentiments. Here is an example: Muslims are sincerely puzzled that people who allegedly speak on behalf of Russian Orthodox citizens and claim to be the mouthpiece of the Russian (!) Orthodox Church in making accusations against native Russian citizens are, in fact, representatives of completely dierent circles who have lost their roots (Mr Frolov is a baptised Jew). (Otkuda, 2006) As James Warhola rightly observes in his article in this issue of Religion, State & Society, relations between Orthodox and Muslim believers in Russia are asymmetrical as far as ethnocentricity is concerned. Most Orthodox believers in Russia are ethnic Russians, and their Orthodox identity is strongly associated with their ethnic and cultural identity. Muslim believers, by contrast, are characterised by a diversity of ethnic identities. Like the Orthodox, they tend to confuse ethnic and religious identities (particularly the Volga Tatars, a group that has been the dominant Muslim ethnos in their region for a long time). Although they do not forget that Muslim unity is broader than ethnic unity I would contest the statement that Islam, de facto, serves as a supra-ethnic unifying factor. Indeed, we have not observed any mass-scale manifestations of multiethnic Islamic solidarity in Russia. If we look at trends among the Muslim religious elites we can see that throughout the 1990s traditional Muslim leaders were divided by their ethnicity and location (in addition to a historical conict between old and young muftis), whereas today associations are driven by purely pragmatic considerations. Some Muslim leaders insist that the umma is a supra-ethnic unity, but these leaders are not part of the mainstream. In this respect, we should mention Ali Vyacheslav Polosin and Geidar Dzhemal. The same category includes religious and political radicals commonly described as Wahhabis. The ranks of such activists have been steadily growing, but they have not brought more unity to the Russian umma. The process of ethnic dierentiation in the Muslim community has exhausted itself. The peak of ethno-nationalism among minorities, including historically Islamic minorities, came in the early 1990s, whereas now, in the context of the strengthening of vertical power and the rise of Russian majority ethno-nationalism,7 even radical ethnic and religious leaders speaking on behalf of their ethnic groups tend to assume a defensive stance along the lines of protecting minority rights. Various solidaritydriven mechanisms are used from classic human rights defence (not so popular yet) to advocacy for collective rights (increasingly popular) to Islamic solidarity. This

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latter mechanism is seen more and more as particularly realistic as the Muslim identity grows stronger (in the context of the overall rise of religious identity in the country); but in the long-term perspective rather than in the immediate future. The Status of Formal Relationships Two major interrelated issues the place of religion in society and relations with the government are at the centre of interactions between Orthodox and Muslim religious organisations. Since the rst years of the new century there has been an overall agreement among leaders of major religious organisations in Russia concerning joint advocacy for their interests. This is being done fairly eectively by the Inter-religious Council of Russia (Mezhreligiozny sovet Rossii) (IRC), which was set up in 1998, immediately following the adoption of a new law on freedom of conscience in 1997. The IRC brings together seven organisations which represent the four religions which are semi-ocially considered the traditional religions of Russia: the Russian Orthodox Church, Islam, Buddhism and Judaism. While Orthodoxy is represented by the ROC alone, three umbrella institutions represent Islam: the Central Muslim Spiritual Board of Russia (CMSBR); Ravil Gainutdins Council of Muftis of Russia (CMR); and the Coordination Centre of North Caucasus Muslims (Koordinatsionny tsentr musulman severnogo Kavkaza), established in 1998 led since then by Magomed Albogachiyev. The last-named joined the IRC only at the end of 2001, because it took time for it to separate from the CMR. The two competing muftis, Tadzhuddin and Gainutdin, found it hard to coexist on the IRC from its very beginning. The IRC has proved to be an excellent forum for resolving conicts among its members: the issue of Muslim representation on the IRC itself is one such case. The main purpose of the IRC, however, is to advocate for a special role for the four represented religions before the government and the public. This is a shared concern of all IRC members, and the IRC is very active in its advocacy. Among other things, it has written to various government ministers of education about the regulation of religious instruction in schools, appealed to the public about the Beslan tragedy, promoted a new national holiday the Day of National Unity on 4 November, asked the president to include IRC representatives in the Public Chamber (which was done), and issued statements about the gambling business and the cartoon scandal (the republication in Russia of the Danish cartoons). At the end of 2002, with IRC support, an interparty group advocating traditional spiritual and moral values emerged in the State Duma; the group focused on collaboration with religious institutions and members of the IRC. In March 2003 it was transformed into a commission with the same mandate; its members included members of parliament (MPs) and public activists, and also representatives of the IRC. A similar group of MPs was formed in the next Duma elected in December 2003, but it was far less active (apparently as a result of increasing political alienation between the United Russia Party and any kind of political opposition) and gradually fell into decline. Even indirect political representation of religious organisations was deemed inappropriate in the political system created during Putins second presidential term. If ROC leaders had continued to treat all the four traditional religions as equals (as they did in late 1990s) the relationships between the ROC and its Muslim partners in the IRC would have been almost ideal, but since the rst years of the new decade the ROCs ocial rhetoric has increasingly claimed the church of the majority status for itself based on the premise that Russia is a predominantly Orthodox country with

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some national and religious minorities (Kirill, 2002).8 Whereas the IRCs Jewish and Buddhist members were prepared to accept the ROCs claim, because they had never dreamed of eective equality, Muslim leaders could challenge it by arguing that they represented 20 million Russian nationals (a realistic assessment might be between 12 and 18 million, depending on the methods of counting (Filatov and Lunkin, 2005; Mukomel, 2005). Leaders of the Coordination Center of North Caucasus Muslims rarely get involved in arguments on all-Russian issues; when they do, they tend to support the IRC majority opinion. While representing the most Islamic regions in the country they are more focused on advocacy for regional interests and do not claim a contribution to the overall Russian identity, and in this particular aspect are hardly dierent from the leaders of Russian Buddhists. The only exception is the Muslim Spiritual Board of Dagestan (Dukhovnoye upravleniye musulman Dagestana) (MSBD) which is the patron of Islam.Ru, the most popular Islamic website in Russia. Similarly, most other Muslim leaders seek to act as advocates mainly for their ethno-religious groups, particularly at the regional level. Meanwhile, in general, the CMSBR and the CMR pursue a well-dened (even though sometimes inconsistent) policy with regard to the ROC and its role in the country. This policy clearly goes beyond advocacy for minority interests. The policies pursued by CMSBR and the CMR are dierent in principle, so I shall discuss them separately. Approaches to the Issue of Identity: The Central Muslim Spiritual Board of Russia The CMSBR led by Mufti Tadzhuddin almost always sides with the ROC. This position is largely a result of a realistic understanding, dating back to Soviet times, of the place of the CMSBR in Russian society. Of no less importance is the idea of Tadzhuddin and his associates about the inherent closeness of Orthodoxy and Islam as Abrahamic religions and as the two major religions in Russia. An attempt to rename the CMSBR as the Islamic Central Spiritual Authority of Muslims in Holy Russia (Islamskoye tsentralnoye dukhovnoye upravleniye musulman Svyatoi Rusi) in the spring of 2003 was followed a little over a year later by a proposal by two prominent gures in the CMSBR to give Tadzhuddin the title High Mufti of Holy Russia (Verkhovny mufti Svyatoi Rusi) (Talgata, 2004). Many in the CMSBR see themselves as a specic Muslim component of Russias rebirth as a traditionally Orthodox country. This paradoxical idea appears to be a manifestation of the neoEurasianism prevalent in the CMSBR, which continues to be involved in the political and ideological projects of Aleksandr Dugin, one of the most prominent ultra-right ideologists in Russia and the originator of many concepts which may be described as constituting a radical version of neo-Eurasianism. The writings of neo-Eurasianists, often confused and contradictory, produce the impression that Orthodox Russia is more than just a part of Christian civilisation: it is the oriental (Asian) nature of Russia, including a special role for Islam, that distinguishes it as one of the opposing poles in the contemporary world (Laruel, 2004, 2005, 2006). Neo-Eurasianism is the only theory whereby Russian Orthodoxy and Islam share anything except their patriotic sensitivities and common enemies western liberalism and secularity. A common enemy is an important unifying factor; however, many people would also expect allies to share some sort of positive platform. Civil patriotism is not convincing in this context, because it does not distinguish Orthodox and Muslim believers from secularists or even from atheists or followers of most new faiths. It is for this reason that neo-Eurasianism is so attractive to many (see a strikingly diverse list of members

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of the Supreme Council (Vysshi sovet) of the International Eurasian Movement (Mezhdunarodnoye yevraziiskoye dvizheniye) (Mezhdunarodnoye, n.d.). Neo-Eurasianism, however, is not attractive to all. ROC leaders insist on having nothing to do with Eurasian concepts and limit themselves to more general statements describing Russia as an eastern as well as a western country, refusing however to interpret this dual nature as Muslim as well as Orthodox. Most of the debates about Eurasianism which took place among the Orthodox public (Pravoslavnaya obshchestvennost) in Orthodox journals and newspapers in the 1990s ended in unanimous rejection of all versions of the neo-Eurasian ideology. Metropolitan Kirill has invoked the dual nature of Orthodoxy as Christianity of the East (Vystupleniye, n.d.1; Slovo, n.d.). Russia is perceived by the church leaders as an ethnic Russian and Orthodox civilisation (sic a self-contained civilisation), whereas Russian Islam is its junior ally responsible for dealing with major loyal minorities in the country. Neo-Eurasianism thus underlies very asymmetrical sentiments in the ROC and the CMSBR. However, this partnership, asymmetrical in all respects, appears to suit both sides. Besides, over the past couple of years the visibility of the CMSBR has decreased: for example, CMSBR representatives have not been included in the Public Chamber, although even Protestants have been. Approaches to the Issue of Identity: The Council of Muftis of Russia As to the Council of Muftis of Russia (CMR), we need to enter the caveat that it is not a homogeneous or disciplined group of leaders, so none of its statements, even those issued by its co-chairs, can be considered as a consolidated position. Nevertheless, statements by members of the CMR suggest a policy totally dierent from that of the CMSBR. Neo-Eurasianism is unpopular with the CMR. Whereas the CMSBR proceeds from the Eurasian perspective that Orthodoxy and Islam are the two pillars of Russia, the CMR sees the two faiths as separate, and indeed inevitably in opposition to one another. All organisations which are members of the Inter-religious Council of Russia have supported the ROCs cherished initiative of introducing the Fundamentals of Orthodox Culture (FOC) curriculum into Russian schools. Only Ravil Gainutdin, the chairman of the CMR, has been opposed to the idea. He was not happy either with a compromise solution proposed earlier by the ROC leadership, whereby FOC would be taught in Orthodox regions while Muslim regions would introduce a similar Muslim curriculum (as has already in fact been done in four such regions) (Sovet, 2006b), because this would reduce Islam to a regional phenomenon similar to Russian Buddhism. Indeed, Gainutdin aims to institutionalise Russias bi-religious nature in the future by introducing the position of Russian vice-president, to be held by a Muslim (although only the determined Nizhni Novgorod Muslim Spiritual Board has raised the issue in practical terms, trying to persuade some MPs to table relevant draft legislation) (V Rossii, 2005; Neobkhodimost, 2005). The incremental, but noticeable, process of desecularisation serves the church of the majority more than others, especially in a country with an authoritarian government (although admittedly Islam is helped by authoritarian rule in Muslim regions). According to the CMR, in the foreseeable future Russian Muslims will have to work to promote their equality with the ROC across a broad range of issues. It would hardly be possible to work for an equal status for both religions, as this would be unacceptable for the political elites and for the general public; advocacy is more likely to be eective if it focuses on the principles of secularity and human rights.

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This has been the strategy employed by the CMR on many occasions to challenge the ROCs position, on such issues, for example, as military chaplaincy (Ideyu, 2006; Sovet, 2006a). Certain CMR leaders have particularly referred to the principle of secularity in their protests against Christian symbols on the Russian national coat of arms (causing some heated public debate) (Musulmane, 2005). Challenging his colleagues views, Ravil Gainutdin then also referred to secular arguments: Muslims in a secular state must respect symbols adopted through a democratic process; any attempts at revision might lead to undesirable tension (Pyatunina and Yakovleva, 2005). Many gures close to the CMR and some of their supporters from the CMSBR even joined the open letter from ten academicians protesting against the clericalisation of society (Musulmanskaya, 2007) which triggered large-scale debates in the summer of 2007. Notably, the letter was written from an atheistic, rather than simply secular, perspective. Appeals to a secular approach do not, however, mean that CMR members are indeed advocates of secularism. The CMR is a religious organisation which uses secular arguments in its eorts to protect a minority. In many other instances the CMR makes antisecular statements jointly with other religious organisations, especially with regard to cultural manifestations: it reacted fairly aggressively to the Danish cartoons incident and to the lm The da Vinci Code (Protesty, 2006; Falikov, 2006). In fact, virtually all religious leaders in Russia have made similarly critical statements as far as arts and culture are concerned in a number of confrontations since the Beware! Religion exhibition, including strong and unanimous criticism of The da Vinci Code. Apparently in this sphere religious leaders feel they can urge for restrictions on secularity, while maximising their visibility and minimising the risk of government opposition. It is important to emphasise, however, that the CMSBR and the CMR are not equally radical in their statements. For example, the CMSBR demanded a ban on The da Vinci Code, while Mufti Gainutdin only criticised the lm for a distortion of religious traditions. Conclusion Relations between the ROC and the Muslim organisations in Russia are asymmetrical. This asymmetry is not only one of scale and of proximity to the federal government, even though these dierences are central. Another important factor is the degree of loyalty and manageability of the various organisations a factor which gained in importance as Putins presidency continued. Both Orthodox and Muslim leaders sometimes disagree with authorities and criticise them, most often from conservative, traditionalist perspectives. There is a distinction, however: no matter how conservative the political position of the ROC may be, its leaders have never made radical political statements (see below). Of course, the leaderships of main Muslim organisations are also loyal to the Russian government, and any allegations about links with the radical Islamist underground or foreign Wahhabis are part of the usual mutual accusations amongst muftis. However, their comments on international issues are sometimes very similar to those of radical opponents of the establishment. The best-known incident occurred when Talgat Tadzhuddin called for militant action against the USA and against Americans and their supporters in Russia: the mufti used the term holy war (svyashchennaya voina) rather than jihad, with its multiple meanings (Tadzhuddin, 2003). This statement even triggered an ocial warning that the CMSBR might be prosecuted for extremist activity. Some of the CMR leaders have done similar things for example, Mufti Mukaddas Bibarsov publicly praised

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Sheikh Yassin, the late leader of Hamas (Reaktsiya, 2004). Such statements are the exception rather than the rule, but the Russian government is suspicious, and such exceptions count. The years 2005 and 2006 were a period of escalating tensions in OrthodoxMuslim relations. Some issues in question have been described above. There are many more; but all the conicts share a common feature: very few of them are ever publicised beyond the relatively narrow circle of people concerned. Both Orthodox and Muslim religious leaders are interested in peaceful coexistence as opposed to conict. Admittedly, conict helps to mobilise supporters, but peace helps in building relations with the non-aligned public and the government, which is more important. As a few exceptions to the rule about no publicity, we should mention stormy debates around certain books such as Mechet Parizhskoi Bogomateri (The Mosque of Notre Dame), a best-selling islamophobic anti-utopia work by Yelena Chudinova, and Noveishaya istoriya islamskogo soobshchestva Rossii (A New History of the Russian Islamic Community), an academic paper by Roman Silantyev. People who spoke up in Chudinovas defence included not only activists of the Union of Orthodox Citizens (Soyuz pravoslavnykh grazhdan) and ever-aggressive pro-Kremlin agitator Mikhail Leontyev, but also, among others, Aleksandr Privalov, a respectable, moderately conservative analyst. Even more importantly, Privalovs article in Ekspert magazine was reprinted by Moskovsky tserkovny vestnik, an ocial mouthpiece of the Moscow Patriarchate (Privalov, 2005). Silantyevs book contains plenty of discrediting material about Russian Islamic leaders. Naturally the book triggered a storm of protests, but no rebuttal followed, and it received favourable reviews by a number of scholars of religion (Vedushchiye, 2005). In all these cases of conict nearly all participants in the debate speak in terms of a clash of civilisations. The growing popularity of this discourse appears to aggravate islamophobia and multiply OrthodoxMuslim conicts, because in religious circles Orthodox and Islamic civilisations are often perceived as antagonistic. The reasons for this are not limited to historical tradition, but also include the tendency to discuss Orthodoxy and Islam in general, ignoring the real dierences among actors speaking from either side. In OrthodoxMuslim relations it is the Orthodox commentators who are usually more aggressive, while Muslim authors, aware of their minority position, choose to appeal to generic human values as a convenient defence strategy, but the moment they no longer need to defend themselves for example, when commenting on actions by the USA or Israel they display the same degree of inter-civilisation aggressiveness. One might look, for example, at the expert opinion section dedicated to the cartoon scandal on the CMR website; the experts include Geidar Dzhemal and Maksim Shevchenko, with materials borrowed from the rather radical Islam.Ru website (Mneniye, 2006). Meanwhile the ROC shows a similar tendency: Fr Vsevolod Chaplin, for instance, has said that his main concern is attacks by western secularists on both Christianity and Islam (Pravoslavny, 2005). This statement is consistent with numerous appeals by the ROC to all religiously-dened civilisations to oppose the ideological expansion of the liberal and secular western civilisation (see for example Vystupleniye, n.d.2). Muslim leaders are prepared to support this idea, but they do it in dierent ways at the international level and inside Russia. At the international level, secular enemies are very strong, so the foreign policy assessments of the ROC and of Russian Muslim organisations tend to be similar. Here we may contrast the reactions of the ROC and the Muslim organisations to the events of 11 September 2001, where the secular USA met Islamist aggression. While Metropolitan Kirill spoke about the theological justications of the US counterstrike,

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Russian muftis blamed the whole episode on the USA and even suggested that Zionists were involved (Verkhovsky, 2003a). Within Russia, secularism is weakening, while political dierences are growing. In response, OrthodoxMuslim conict is apparently shifting its focus: from the level of the activists of the Union of Orthodox Citizens on the one hand and Ali Vyacheslav Polosin and Geidar Dzhemal on the other, to a higher, more visible level. On the eve of a high-prole ceremonial event, the World Summit of Religious Leaders (Vsermirny religiozny sammit) in Moscow in early July 2006, Metropolitan Kirill found it appropriate to say that we should move on from the dialogue of political correctness to a substantive dialogue with Islam, raising, in particular, the issues of mission and testimony, and religious freedom (Mineyev, 2006). We should remember, however, that the most important relations in the lives of the various religious organisations in contemporary Russia are their relations with the government, which have not been the subject of this article. Indeed, religions even interact with other religions indirectly, through government structures. Orthodox and Muslim leaders alike always remember to emphasise their loyalty to the current political regime, because in Russia today it is dicult, if not impossible, to manage any large organisation in the absence of a good relationship with the federal government. Moreover, for a good relationship it is not enough to refrain from opposition; one must continuously rearm ones support for Putin.9 In expressions of loyalty of this kind, Muslims seem to be running ahead of the Orthodox (compare their responses to the announcement of the name of Putins successor (Predstaviteli, 2007)). This was particularly noticeable during the parliamentary elections. All religious leaders encouraged voters to go to the polls, and thus helped raise the turnout, which was very important for the Kremlins plans; but those few who explicitly encouraged voting for Putin and the United Russia Party (which they were in fact not legally allowed to do) were mostly Muslim leaders. They were also repeatedly heard asking Putin to stay on unconstitutionally for a third presidential term (Sovet, 2007). The reason for this dierence is obvious: while the ROC can aord to maintain a veneer of political neutrality, Muslim institutions, weaker and, more importantly, competing among themselves, cannot aord to do so. Are they prepared to submit to much heavier government control just to improve their chances vis-a`-vis the ROC? Will the much discussed proposal to recentralise the Russian umma ever become a reality? I have discussed conicting trends in OrthodoxMuslim relations as well as personality factors. It is not only these, however, that make it dicult to forecast further developments in the relations between Orthodox and Muslim leaders. These will also depend on the future policy of the Russian government.

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Notes
1 Even more preliminary, regarding the Russian Federation, was the relevant chapter in Mitrokhin (2004, pp. 44360). 2 A conict around a historical monument in Karachayevo-Cherkessia may be considered an exception (see Karachayevo-Cherkesiya, 2004). 3 The authorities or Orthodox Christian activists are not always responsible for hindering the construction of a mosque. The religious researcher Roman Silantyev points out, for example, that in a number of cases funds allocated for the construction of mosques were misappropriated (Silantyev, 2006, pp. 46263). 4 A similar resource is Yuri Maksimovs website Orthodoxy and Islam, www.pravoslavieislam.ru (last accessed 3 August 2008).

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5 See Appendix 2 in Xenophobia (2008), which consolidates statistics on racist and neo-Nazi attacks from 2004 to 2007 by category. 6 This is a consultative body founded at the beginning of 2006. It comprises public gures (predstaviteli obshchestvennosti) chosen directly or indirectly by the president. 7 For details of this change in the ethno-nationalist vector, see Pain (2004). 8 This declaration should not be interpreted as a radical change of public rhetoric. Since then, the same Metropolitan Kirill has repeatedly described Russia as a multiethnic and multireligious country. 9 By the time this article was nalised Putin was no longer president, but his signicance in political life so far remains unchanged.

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