theguardian: by Giles Fraser —
Kazakhstan is at a decisive moment between a Soviet atheist past and an increasingly Islamic future
United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon and Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev at the Fifth Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions in Astana, Kazakhstan.
It might feel a little more convincingly like a Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, commissioned perhaps as a celebration of religious plurality, were it not for the seven tonnes of Russian-made BRDM-2 armoured personnel carrier stationed outside. By contrast, within a preposterous Norman Foster glass pyramid – decorated with the kitschest white doves you have ever seen – the Fifth Congress of the Leaders of World and Traditional Religions meets, and the talk is of harmony and concord – even a condemnation of global arms spending by the Zoroastrian representative. Observing this, a Martian could be forgiven for assuming that religion is the number one force for good in the world. Here the Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel sits next to the head of the World Forum for Proximity of Islamic Schools of Thought next to the president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue next to some other terribly important religious dignitary. If I gave them their full titles that would be half the word count of this article. Just as effusive greetings take up half the speeches of the delegates.
Welcome to Astana, Kazakhstan. Set amid thousands of miles of the central Asian steppe, once a place of exile and hellish punishment for the likes of Dostoyevsky and Solzhenitsyn, religious leaders now fly into this Canary Wharf of a city, with its oil-boom show-off architecture, to talk nice and stay in nice hotels. Surely Tony Blair has to be here somewhere. But the peace-loving speechifying is massively out of kilter with the global reality.
On Thursday morning an uncomfortable-looking Church of England bishop chaired a meeting with Indian cleric, Sheik Salman Al-Husaini Al-Nadwi, who publicly spoke airy words about interreligious harmony. But this same cleric has been a vocal supporter of Islamic State, last year sending effusive greetings to Isis leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. “You are standing bravely as a rock,” he wrote to him. Again last year he penned a controversial letter to Saudi Arabia inviting them to fund Indian jihadis to fight Shias in Iraq. He dismissed the newspapers that exposed all of this as “the chatterings of an old village hag”. But such was the outrage in India that he was forced to issue a retraction. Nonetheless, his organisation, Jamiat Al-Shabab, still describes its mission statement thus:
“It is unfortunate for Muslim Ummah that with the decline of its political and military grip on the world many great ordeals surfaced their ugly heads and threatened its very being. The flag-bearers of Disbelief: Jews, Christians and Polytheists, concentrated all their efforts to detract the Muslim youth from main stream of Islam.”
Of course, he didn’t say any of this at the conference for peace and reconciliation. But little wonder the bishop of Bedford looked nervous. The C of E doesn’t usually get this up close and personal with full-on Islamic extremism. But if inter-religious dialogue has a purpose, it must include the bad guys too.
Not that Kazakhstan is out to encourage jihadism. Quite the opposite. With a population that is 70% Muslim, Kazakhstan looks nervously at the religious violence in Iraq and Syria. On its southern border, Uzbekistan has seen a growing presence of radical Islam. And earlier this year, Isis released a video of a Kazakh boy murdering Russian “agents”.
There isn’t one Islam, of course. There are many Islams. And some would say the Kazakh version is so moderate as to be virtually undetectable. Young women wear short skirts and big sunglasses. Kazakh wine is omnipresent (but undrinkable). And there’s not a head covering in sight. Decades of Soviet state-sponsored atheism diminished Islam to little more than a vague marker of cultural identity. Religious scholars were imprisoned and waqf properties confiscated. It was all of a piece with the rational, Enlightenment-inspired, central planning approach to government. The same approach that turned the area around the Aral sea into a vast cotton plantation, flooding the land with chemicals, and draining the sea of its water, thus creating one of the greatest environmental disasters on earth. Rusting hulks of ships keep the company of camels, set in open desert, miles from the shrunken coastline. Many used to argue that Kazakh Islam had suffered a similar fate at Soviet hands, good for weddings and funerals but little else. There were only 60 or so mosques left after the Soviet period. Now there are more than 2,500. Under the influence of Arab money and missionaries, often from Saudi Arabia, more young people are going to the mosque and on the Hajj and eating halal. Islam is on the up.
And maybe they are right to do all this. For Kazakhstan has, within its own set limits, developed a properly deserved reputation for religious toleration. For instance, a huge blue synagogue has been built on the outskirts of town, one of many. Forget all that rubbishy racist stuff about Borat and “The Running of the Jew” – this is a place of genuine diversity, where different faiths rub along remarkably well. Despite all the off-putting pomposity of the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation, it’s not a totally unrealistic reflection of how things are here. Maybe there is something for that tank to protect.Which is why there’s also an increasing anxiety that a less repressive approach to religion might open the door to radicalisation. So only state-authorised religions are allowed here. Missionaries are regulated. Religious political parties are banned. And the president of Kazakhstan, an old-style ex-Soviet politician – who received a comedy 97.75% of the vote at his re-re-re-election back in April – presides over this gathering of well-meaning religious flannel. It’s also why I have minders from the ministry of foreign affairs “guiding” my trip.
Origional Post here: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2015/jun/12/tolerant-islam-worth-protecting-kazakhstan
Categories: Asia, Islam, Kazakhstan