Paul Goble
Vienna, November 13 – Some 20,000 Muscovite women – including more than 13,000 ethnic Russians – are converting to Islam each year, according to Russian demographic specialists. And this has led the local Islamic community to launch a hotline to address their particular needs, despite the opposition of some Muslim leaders.
The hot line was set up last week by a Muslim cultural enlightenment organization less to answer questions about family and marriage – the usual issues dealt with by such channels in the Muslim world – but rather to provide basic information about Islam itself.
That is because, Mikhail Pozdnyaev wrote in Novyye izvestiya yesterday, most of the women to whom it is addressed know relatively little about Islam and the culture of the Muslim community in the Russian capital and thus have many questions about what certain situations mean and how they should act (http://www.newizv.ru/print/79597).
Indeed, he quotes the words of Raisa Mordvinova, president of the Women and Politics Foundation, to the effect that women who have only recently turned to Islam, “need help considering the special features of their [new] religion” because “what is normal” in Islam is not in Christianity and vice versa.
The Moscow hotline, which offers free consultations with doctors, psychologists, and educators, currently operates twelve hours a day five days a week, Pozdnayev said, but its organizer, the Muslim media center “Golobushka,” hopes to be able to expand this service to 24 hours a day seven days a week in the near future.
While this is the first such hotline in the Russian capital, it is not the first effort of the Islamic community there to reach out to new believers. Several mosques in the capital have organized special classes for women like these, and one mosque has had an “ask the imam” page on its website for several years.
But not all Muslim leaders approve of this move into the virtual world. One who is especially opposed is Geydar Dzhemal, the chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia and someone who often speaks out against innovations of all kinds among his fellow Muslims.
Dzhemal told Pozdnyaev that “if in the countries of the Arab world, such ‘hot lines’ are only one of the multitude of instruments for supporting the individual and not the most effective, then with us such services in reality are [only] an imitation of civil society.”
“We should not forget,” he continued, “that in Russia, ‘hot lines’ are associated mainly with the force structures where one calls in order to turn someone in. And the functions of a psychologist (and psychology in our country is the seamy underside of psychiatry) are not the same as the functions of a religious leader.”
Only a mullah or imam is “capable of giving spiritual advice in any situation,” the Islamic Committee head said, and “Muslims in the capital [including recent converts among women] need in the first instance to search for it at home, among friends, and at the mosque.”
But the shear numbers of converts, many of them the product of marriages between ethnic Russian women and Muslim me, is now so great that most of Russia’s Islamic community appears ready to welcome the establishment of such a channel, even if a few conservatives are certain to continue to speak out against it.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Window on Eurasia: Kremlin Using Russian News Agencies to Punish Independent-Minded Post-Soviet States
Paul Goble
Vienna, November 13 – The Kremlin is orchestrating an effort by Russian news agencies to play up “the theme of ethnic minorities in the post-Soviet states” to punish governments there which pursue an independent line, according to the political advisor to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
And that effort, Fuad Akhundov wrote in yesterday’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta – Kur’ier,” has the effect of “destabilizing the entire situation” not only inside these countries but also between them, their immediate neighbors and the Russian Federation (http://www.ng.riu/courier/2007-11-12/15_etnos.html).
Akhundov said that Baku was not surprised when at the beginning of 2007, the media in Armenia, which is locked in a conflict with Azerbaijan over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, began “a major campaign” that was clearly intended at “provoking the national minorities” in Azerbaijan.
But he said that he and his colleagues found it “hard to understand that at the same time, the issue of ‘ethnic minorities in Azerbaijani’ began to appear” in a variety of Russian media outlets generally and in the Rosbalt and REGNUM news agencies in particular.
“The basic tribune for the dissemination of false reports about the so called ‘nationality question’” in Azerbaijan, the Aliyev advisor said, has become “the REGNUM information agency.” Its role, he continued, was somewhat surprising because it is “officially ‘a federal information agency’” of the Russian government.
That prompted him to examine what was going on more closely, Akhundov said, and over one two month period earlier this year, he found that REGNUM carried almost nothing on ethnic issues in Armenia and Georgia but more than 20 extremely tendentious articles on “’the problems’” of various ethnic minorities inside Azerbaijan.
Six of these were devoted to the Avars, five to the Lezgins, four to the Tatars, and three to the Talysh, and these reports, he said, were in many cases picked up by Russian newspapers and journals, thus creating a false impression of the situation in his country and leading some minorities to assume that Russia was backing them against Baku.
That REGNUM should be playing this role, Akhundov said, is not entirely surprising, given its origins and management. Modest Kolerov, the former head of the Russian President’s department for international ties with CIS countries and promoting Moscow’s interests there, created the agency in 2002.
Although Kolerov is no longer there, Akhundov said, many of his proteges and even “one of his close relatives continues to work” there, almost certainly guaranteeing that the Russian leadership can use that agency now in much the same way that it clearly did during him time.
But one need not engage in that kind of investigative reporting to demonstrate that Russian news agencies are being used by the Kremlin to portray those governments in the region that do not follow Moscow’s dictates but instead adopt an independent line, Akhundov continued.
Sergei Markov, a Russian commentator known for his close ties to the security services and the Kremlin, “openly admitted” during an interview with the Azerbaijani news agency Day.AZ that the appearance of negative articles about ethnic relations in Azerbaijan reflected Russia’s displeasure with Baku’s independence in foreign affairs.
Because Azerbaijan continues to play an active role in GUAM, an alliance of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova that Moscow does not approve of, Markov said, no one in Baku should be surprised that this has led to “anti-Azerbaijani” attitudes in the Moscow elite and those have been “directly translated into the mass media.
And Markov’s acknowledgement of this represents “a sensation,” Akhundov said. Hereafter all is “a member of the Social Chamber of Russia openly declaring that the Russian elite decides whether or not to promote ethnic separatism in Azerbaijan via the [ostensibly independent] media depends on the policies Baku adopts!”
Akhundov’s article appeared in “Nezavisimaya gazeta – Kur’ier” because he had requested from its editors the chance to respond to several articles that paper had carried earlier this year sharply criticizing Azerbaijan for its treatment of the Talysh minority and to explain why Baku had expelled that paper’s correspondent.
(The article that Akhundov specifically complained of appeared on September 10 (http://www.ng.ru/courier/2007-09-10/18_talshi.html; the reason the Azerbaijani authorities expelled the paper’s reporter was that she had crossed into a portion of Azerbaijan that is currently occupied by Armenia without Baku’s permission.)
Given the way in which the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin has been intervening in the domestic media, it should perhaps come as no surprise that Moscow would be doing the same thing in Russian news agencies that focus on developments in other parts of the former Soviet space.
But Akhundov’s article, by virtue of the care with which he makes his argument and the detailed evidence he offers, provides both confirmation of suspicions on this point and serve as a cautionary tale to all those inside the region and beyond who rely on Russian outlets for information on non-Russian parts of the former Soviet space.
Whilte these agencies may provide extremely useful information concerning Moscow’s intentions and policies, they are, as Akhundov suggests, not always the best guide to what is happening in the countries that they are purportedly covering as news agencies.
Vienna, November 13 – The Kremlin is orchestrating an effort by Russian news agencies to play up “the theme of ethnic minorities in the post-Soviet states” to punish governments there which pursue an independent line, according to the political advisor to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
And that effort, Fuad Akhundov wrote in yesterday’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta – Kur’ier,” has the effect of “destabilizing the entire situation” not only inside these countries but also between them, their immediate neighbors and the Russian Federation (http://www.ng.riu/courier/2007-11-12/15_etnos.html).
Akhundov said that Baku was not surprised when at the beginning of 2007, the media in Armenia, which is locked in a conflict with Azerbaijan over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, began “a major campaign” that was clearly intended at “provoking the national minorities” in Azerbaijan.
But he said that he and his colleagues found it “hard to understand that at the same time, the issue of ‘ethnic minorities in Azerbaijani’ began to appear” in a variety of Russian media outlets generally and in the Rosbalt and REGNUM news agencies in particular.
“The basic tribune for the dissemination of false reports about the so called ‘nationality question’” in Azerbaijan, the Aliyev advisor said, has become “the REGNUM information agency.” Its role, he continued, was somewhat surprising because it is “officially ‘a federal information agency’” of the Russian government.
That prompted him to examine what was going on more closely, Akhundov said, and over one two month period earlier this year, he found that REGNUM carried almost nothing on ethnic issues in Armenia and Georgia but more than 20 extremely tendentious articles on “’the problems’” of various ethnic minorities inside Azerbaijan.
Six of these were devoted to the Avars, five to the Lezgins, four to the Tatars, and three to the Talysh, and these reports, he said, were in many cases picked up by Russian newspapers and journals, thus creating a false impression of the situation in his country and leading some minorities to assume that Russia was backing them against Baku.
That REGNUM should be playing this role, Akhundov said, is not entirely surprising, given its origins and management. Modest Kolerov, the former head of the Russian President’s department for international ties with CIS countries and promoting Moscow’s interests there, created the agency in 2002.
Although Kolerov is no longer there, Akhundov said, many of his proteges and even “one of his close relatives continues to work” there, almost certainly guaranteeing that the Russian leadership can use that agency now in much the same way that it clearly did during him time.
But one need not engage in that kind of investigative reporting to demonstrate that Russian news agencies are being used by the Kremlin to portray those governments in the region that do not follow Moscow’s dictates but instead adopt an independent line, Akhundov continued.
Sergei Markov, a Russian commentator known for his close ties to the security services and the Kremlin, “openly admitted” during an interview with the Azerbaijani news agency Day.AZ that the appearance of negative articles about ethnic relations in Azerbaijan reflected Russia’s displeasure with Baku’s independence in foreign affairs.
Because Azerbaijan continues to play an active role in GUAM, an alliance of Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova that Moscow does not approve of, Markov said, no one in Baku should be surprised that this has led to “anti-Azerbaijani” attitudes in the Moscow elite and those have been “directly translated into the mass media.
And Markov’s acknowledgement of this represents “a sensation,” Akhundov said. Hereafter all is “a member of the Social Chamber of Russia openly declaring that the Russian elite decides whether or not to promote ethnic separatism in Azerbaijan via the [ostensibly independent] media depends on the policies Baku adopts!”
Akhundov’s article appeared in “Nezavisimaya gazeta – Kur’ier” because he had requested from its editors the chance to respond to several articles that paper had carried earlier this year sharply criticizing Azerbaijan for its treatment of the Talysh minority and to explain why Baku had expelled that paper’s correspondent.
(The article that Akhundov specifically complained of appeared on September 10 (http://www.ng.ru/courier/2007-09-10/18_talshi.html; the reason the Azerbaijani authorities expelled the paper’s reporter was that she had crossed into a portion of Azerbaijan that is currently occupied by Armenia without Baku’s permission.)
Given the way in which the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin has been intervening in the domestic media, it should perhaps come as no surprise that Moscow would be doing the same thing in Russian news agencies that focus on developments in other parts of the former Soviet space.
But Akhundov’s article, by virtue of the care with which he makes his argument and the detailed evidence he offers, provides both confirmation of suspicions on this point and serve as a cautionary tale to all those inside the region and beyond who rely on Russian outlets for information on non-Russian parts of the former Soviet space.
Whilte these agencies may provide extremely useful information concerning Moscow’s intentions and policies, they are, as Akhundov suggests, not always the best guide to what is happening in the countries that they are purportedly covering as news agencies.
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