The award of this year’s King Faisal International Prize for Service to Islam to Tataristan’s President Mintimer Shaymiev has a significance which has probably not lost on the Kremlin. Tataristan is an autonomous republic within Russia which has put aside its very real grievances arising from Moscow’s past treatment of its population and established a successful modus vivendi with the Russian leadership.
In Chechnya, by contrast, old czarist wrongs have been compounded by a continuing Kremlin intransigence and repression. The result is a ruined state within Grozny, a ruined capital and an embittered and polarized population. There are of course differences between the history and experience of the Chechens and the Tartars of Tataristan but the key difference is the way in which the Kremlin has chosen to handle the two predominantly Muslim republics. In some ways, the Tartars have suffered more severely than the Chechens. With the Bashkirs of the Volga-Ural region, they were the first Muslims to suffer from Russian conquest and persecution some 450 years ago. There were wholesale forced conversions to Christianity and by the 19th century, few mosques were left standing in Tataristan and its capital Kazan which had once been the center of a thriving Islamic civilization.
With the advent of communism, religious intolerance was replaced by militant atheism. During World War II some Tartars were deceived by Nazi propaganda into fighting with the Germans. This resulted in the brutal wholesale removal of Tartar communities from their ancestral lands by Stalin’s secret police. Yet in post-Communist Russia, Tataristan has settled down quietly to restoring Tartar identity and culture. The path chosen is one of realism, which avoids confrontation with the Kremlin while being at the same time single-minded and determined. The results have been quite remarkable. In 2005 there was a landmark ceremony attended by 5000 international guests for the opening of an impressive new mosque in Kazan. The Kul Sharif Mosque is a replica of the original building destroyed by Ivan the Terrible in 1552. Russia has more than 23 million Muslims, some 15 percent of its population and the figure is growing fast. This was the fact behind the recent anti-immigration legislation designed to drive immigrants, working primarily in retail trading, from the Russian work force. The Kremlin has caved in to pressure from right-wing nationalists groups who are also notoriously and openly prejudiced against Islam. Yet the success of Tataristan ought to be showing the Putin administration the benefits of an evenhanded policy toward all the peoples who make up Russia today.
In recognition of Russia’s growing Muslim population, Moscow has been granted observer status in the OIC. Speaking subsequently at an OIC summit in Malaysia, Vladimir Putin described his country’s Muslims as an “asset” and part of Russia’s “wealth”. He should therefore be as proud as anyone that President Shaymiev has won the Faisal Prize this year.
