A world Without Islam pdfdrive com

The Jadidists
Muslims in Russia always pursued the goal of maximum cultural autonomy, but
they also lived inside a Russia that was itself undergoing intense intellectual and
political ferment. Muslims could not remain immune to the fierce debates on
issues of importance to them. It was toward the middle of the nineteenth century
that the first serious reform movement emerged among the Muslims of Russia—
the Jadidist movement (from the Arabic jadid, or new) that sought renewal of
Muslim society. The Jadidists were, in fact, one of the most important early
Muslim reform movements anywhere in the Muslim world, reflecting perhaps
crosscultural stimulus with Russian society.
The Jadidists emphasized the importance of education and the inclusion of
practical subjects such as mathematics and the sciences into the curriculum.
Schools spread, newspapers sprang up, books began to be translated into the
local languages. But Russian imperial authorities greeted this movement with
ambivalence, fearing the emergence of possible subversive, separatist, or pan-
Islamic ideals, even as they were linked with liberal elements of Russian society.
Opposition to Jadidists came also from old Muslim elites, often feudal in
outlook, who feared any movement that might educate, inform, and empower a
new elite and change the ossified social order. And that was exactly the Jadidist
goal, but without recourse to revolution or violence. The Jadidists did not even
promote a separatist agenda, but sought to strengthen their position within the
broader Russian political framework.
One of the leading Jadidists, the Crimean Tatar Ismail Gaspirali, clearly
envisaged Muslim activism within a reforming Russian political order and, in
turn, urged Russia to work with the Muslim world:
… If Russia could have good relations with Turkey and Persia, she
would become kindred to the entire Muslim east, and would certainly
stand at the head of Muslim nations and their civilizations, which England
is attempting so persistently to do.
In short, Gaspirali saw Russia as potentially a great Muslim nation as well as a
Christian one. At the same time, this was one of the first and greatest
integrationist experiments between Muslim and Christian cultures. Religion, in
this case, seemed to facilitate rather than hinder a grand vision of Russia’s place
in the world. But even without religious differences, without Islam, Russia

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would still have faced the serious problem of integrating large Turkic
populations.
The Muslim movement for education, reform, and political participation in
Russia accelerated dramatically as the nineteenth century drew to a close. Elites
engaged in fierce debate over identity in a new political age that emphasized
ethnicity. Even Russians themselves were unsure whether they belonged to “the
West,” or to a distinct Orthodox world, or even to Asia in some sense. Muslims
asked similar questions: Were they primarily Muslims, or Russian citizens, or
Turks, or Tatars, and in which order? Did they “belong” in Russia?
After the 1905 revolution in Russia, Tsar Nikolai II was forced to make major
political concessions toward liberalization, which included the opening of a
parliament, or Duma. Russian Muslims organized their own political movement,
on the basis of religion rather than ideology, in convening the First Congress of
the Union of Russian Muslims in 1905 to discuss strategy. Their two key goals
were greater religious and cultural autonomy and equality of status with the
Russian population. We should remember that a key reason the Russian Muslims
—primarily Turkic—chose Islam as the unifying element was because religion,
and not ethnicity, had been the organizing principle of the Russian Empire.
This movement’s policies were moderate and centrist. It sought the
unification of all Russian Muslims for common goals that included fair
distribution of land; an end to state expropriation of Muslim land; freedom of the
press, congregation, and religion; and a constitutional monarchy. The party’s
leadership sought a place on the Russian political scene and promised the
Minister of Interior that the party was not anti-Russian or separatist, and was
loyal to the Tsar. The union succeeded in winning between thirty to forty seats in
the Duma over several elections. In the religious sphere, the union interestingly
called for radical reform of the Muslim hierarchy of ‘ulama and for the direct
election of a grand mufti by the population—a dramatic first in any Muslim
country. These measures helped break the hold of traditional and conservative
ranks in the ‘ulama. Within a few years, however, the Muslim Union began to
fracture, partly along ethnic and regional lines, and partly ideological in the face
of some delegates who adopted a more leftist stance in keeping with the Russian
Socialists. In short, Islam was no longer adequately functioning as the social
glue, and Russia’s Muslims were behaving along more expected lines of ethnic,
regional, class, and ideological differences. The Islamic identity no longer
predominated under conditions where Muslims could operate freely across a
broad political spectrum. More than a million Russian Muslims joined the
Russian Army in World War I, many of whom fought against Ottoman forces in
the south—and this despite Ottoman fatwas calling on all Muslims to support the

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Ottoman Empire against Christian aggressors in its hour of need.
The key features, then, of this Tsarist imperial period were the relatively
successful integration of Muslims into a Christian empire, Muslim ambivalence
between an ethnic or religious basis for political organization, and a relative
sense of loyalty to the Russian political order. Their politics were relatively
mainstream, later described as “bourgeois nationalist,” with few leftist or strong
religious parties. Above all, there was no “bloody border” at work. Here is a
leading case where Muslims, given a chance to participate as a minority within a
reasonably acceptable political order, will do so. They will even support broader
political parties that are political/ideological and not simply Muslim blocs. But
they will also not generally yield up their religious identity as a key feature of
their communal identity. The Soviet period would put all this to the ultimate test
—to the breaking point.

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