This is an interview by Galina M. Yemelianova, author of Islamic Leadership and the State in Eurasia
Q1: Why did you write this book now?
Answer: Since the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, Islam and Islamism have been at the centre of media, political and academic debate in the West. This debate has been dominated by a decontextualised approach which portrays Islam and Islam-related activism and radicalism as a homeless global force, largely disconnected from real people, places and histories. However, Islam developed in different geographical, historical and cultural contexts, which account for its special place in societies and states and its distinctive responses to modernity and globalisation. My many years of research into Islam in the lands corresponding to the former Soviet Union convinced me of the existence of a ‘Eurasian Islam’ which defines distinctive forms of relationship between Islamic authorities, the state and Islamic communities. This ‘Eurasian-ness’ accounts for the particular ways in which Eurasian Muslim polities and communities have been responding to contemporary societal and political challenges.
Q2: How do you define Eurasia?
Answer: I use the term ‘Eurasia’ to describe contemporary Central Asia, the Caucasus, Russia and adjacent parts of Eastern Europe. Arguably, this more narrowly interpreted understanding of Eurasia represents an integrated socio-cultural area with its specific historical, social, economic and political characteristics, which significantly distinguish it from the other parts of wider Eurasia stretching from the Arctic Ocean in the north, the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean in the south, the Atlantic Ocean in the west, and the Pacific Ocean in the east. Among the key characteristics of ‘narrow Eurasianism’ are:
- A common geographical habitat centred on the Eurasian Steppe and lacking defining physical barriers such as oceans, seas and mountains;
- The region’s lengthy domination by Turkic and Turco-Mongol nomads and the ensuing sedentary-nomadic dualism which hampered the emergence of nation-states, leading to state-formation along the lines of polyethnic and poly-confessional empires with ill-defined borders (unlike in post-Westphalian Europe). The region largely missed out on the European Renaissance and Enlightenment, both of which laid the foundations for the concepts of reason, individual freedom, civic liberties and civil society;
- The region’s early Islamisation, that is in the 7th to 10th centuries CE and its formative impact on local communities, including those of Rus, which converted to Orthodox Christianity in the late 10th century. By comparison, in ‘wider Eurasia’, with the exception of southern Spain (Andalusia) and parts of the Balkans, Islam was largely associated with Muslim labour migrants from the Middle East and South-East Asia who began to settle in Western Europe from the late 19th century, with Muslim immigration intensifying after the Second World War and resulting in the emergence of sizeable Muslim communities in the United Kingdom, France and Germany and elsewhere in Western Europe.
- A major structural impact was the inclusion of most of the region, between the 13th and 15th centuries, in the trans-continental Islamised Genghizid (Mongol) Empire – a multiethnic and poly-confessional polity with a high level of religious tolerance compared to contemporary Western Europe, which witnessed ruthless oppression of non-Catholics, as well as a series of crusades to the Middle East with the aim of ‘liberating’ Jerusalem from Islamic rule. Among the implications of this common Genghizid past were the extreme concentration of power at the centre and the supremacy of political power over religious authority; the merger of the ruling clan/family with the state; the predominantly tribute-redistributory centre–periphery relationship and preference for state ownership linked to common ownership of pastures and private ownership of horses and cattle; the substantial detachment of local kinship- or neighbourhood-based communities from the centre; the indivisibility of individual and community (commune, mahallah, etc.); and the relative insignificance of ethnicity and religion compared to communal, clan- and locality-based allegiances.
- Thus, in this book, as well as in my other books and publications, I use the term ‘Eurasian Islam’ to refer to Islam and Muslims who historically inhabited the parts of the Eurasian continent described above.
Q3: How do you distinguish between Islamic authority and Islamic leadership and their representation?
Answer: I approach Islamic authority as being of a moral, religious and legal nature, and Islamic leadership as combining the above characteristics with political engagement. Islamic authority was represented by knowledgeable Islamic scholars (‘ulama’) and Islamic Sufi sheikhs. Within the Eurasian context, Islamic leadership often took precedence over Islamic authority, though they often overlapped, and Islamic authority often legitimised the state. From the late 18th century, the Muslim Tatar-dominated Islamic administration (muftiate) acted as the main agency of state–Muslim relations in the Orthodox Christian Russian Empire, which by the late nineteenth century included most of the Eurasian lands. Under the muftiate system, the empire’s Muslims preserved their religious autonomy which enabled them to retain mosques, shariah courts, Islamic confessional education and Islamic endowments (waqfs). This contrasted with, for example, the situation in Andalusia and other areas of Iberia which, like parts of ‘narrow Eurasia’, were Islamised in the early 8th century CE. There, following the conquest by Christian Catholics in the late 15th century, Muslims, alongside Jews, were forced either to convert to Catholicism or to flee the country while their exquisite culture and Islamic scholarly heritage were largely destroyed, while their distinguished Moorish architecture was vandalised by being remodelled into Catholic cathedrals and churches. As a result, the Islamic presence in modern Spain and elsewhere in Europe has been mainly associated with Moslem labour immigration from Morocco and other countries of the Middle East.
Q4: What was the impact of Soviet rule on Eurasian Islam and Muslims?
Answer: Over seventy years of Soviet rule, characterised by state atheism and the political, economic and societal, Sovietisation of all peoples within the USSR’s borders, irrespective of their ethnic and religious background, had major implications for Eurasian Islam. Many bearers of Islamic authority, especially Sufis, were either eliminated or significantly weakened, although the muftiate-centred model of state–Muslim relations persisted albeit in a modified form. It became embodied in four regional muftiates, based in Tashkent, Baku, Buynaksk and Ufa, who were put under the tight control of the state apparatus and security services. Soviet muftis, however, managed to balance their adherence to Islam and to the Soviet state by skilfully applying the principle of theological innovation (ijtihad) so as to reconcile Islamic requirements with the Soviet reality. Overall, the regional Islamic traditions, despite being significantly weakened, were able to persist, especially in Central Asia and the North Caucasus, with the Mir-i-Arab madrasah in Bukhara and the Islamic Institute in Tashkent acting as the official providers of ‘Eurasian’ Islamic secondary and higher Islamic education. Although the interaction between Soviet Muslims and their co-religionists abroad became minimal, with hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina) being conducted by only a small number of thoroughly screened Muslims, the Soviet Islamic leaders maintained links with their counterparts in Al-Azhar and other major centres of Islamic learning. At the grassroots level, however, Islamic beliefs and customs of various Soviet Muslims became dissolved within national cultures.
Q5: What were the implications of the end of the USSR for Eurasian Islam and Muslims?
Answer: The disintegration of the Soviet state and the ensuing physical and ideational reconnection of ex-Soviet and other ex-Communist Eurasian Muslims with the wider ummah undermined the centuries-long model of state–Muslim relations and accounted for the increased influence of non-Eurasian Islamic authorities, especially of Salafi orientation. However, from the 2000s, after a decade of relatively liberal religious legislation, the governments of the Muslim-majority Central Asian republics as well as Azerbaijan and Russia, which opted for a Eurasian, that is, authoritarian political system, have reverted to the imperial Russian/Soviet model of state–Muslim relations based on the institution of state-controlled muftiates, which theologically have drawn on particular regional versions of Islam dubbed ‘traditional Islam’ in opposition to territorially and culturally decontextualised Salafi Islam. In contrast, in the case of ex-Soviet Lithuania, Georgia and Ukraine, the Eurasian model has been fully or at least partially replaced by the so-called European model, which widely characterises state–Muslim relations in Western Europe, albeit with significant nuances in particular countries. Among the implications of the model change have been the advancing Churchification of Islam in Lithuania, the advance of ‘Turkish Islam’ in Georgia’s Adzharia and the Salafization of the Islamic space in Ukraine.
Q6: How sustainable is Eurasian Islam given the advance of digitalised Salafi Islam worldwide?
Answer: So far, due to the continuing resilience of local Islamic traditions as well as cultural and language barriers, the role of global digital authorities such as the late Yusuf al-Qaradawi (d. 2022) in Muslim Eurasia has remained minimal. In the longer run, however, the sustainability of the distinctly Eurasian type of Islamic leadership and state–Muslim relations will depend on the ability of Eurasian countries to safeguard their distinct Eurasian culture defined by intrinsic poly-ethnicity, poly-confessionalism and social solidarity in the face of the global commodification of values, beliefs and politics enhanced by the widespread influence of social media.