Sergei Gradirovsky explains some provisions of “Russian Islam”

On May 27, the site "Religion and Media" published Sergei Gradirovsky's speech at the round table "What Islam means for Russia", which was held by the Russian Cultural Foundation on May 22, 2003 (A more detailed article on the same topic was published in the online magazine " State and Anthropoflow" in July 2003)

In it, he again explained the main provisions of the concept of "Russian Islam" he defended.

In his opinion, "Russian Islam" is a phenomenon that lies at the junction of Islamic and Russian cultures, including cultures of thinking. "The state is certainly interested in dialogue, but the processes taking place in this area, in his opinion, are objective and due to the current ethnographic and demographic situation in the country.

First of all, he touched upon the language problem.

In his opinion, the formation of the Russian language as the language of communication of Russian Muslims is not a state policy, but an objective process.

First, now Russia is going through a process of mixing Russian Muslims, their loss of mono-ethnicity. For example, if earlier in the Volga-Ural region the language of communication of Muslims was Tatar, now, with the appearance of immigrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus, Muslims cease to understand each other.

Secondly, the publication of Muslim literature in Russian also depends not on the state, but on the business strategies of the publishing houses that publish this literature. This, in his opinion, is a spontaneously emerging process, to which the state has practically nothing to do.

Thirdly, the need for the adoption of the State Standard on Islamic Theology in Russian is due, in his opinion, to concern for the teaching of Islam in Russia, for the creation of a Russian school of Islamic theology: "... If Sharia and fiqh are not abstract knowledge, but knowledge that claims to influence, to participate, including in the constitutional process - they will be formed in Russian." The same goes for the Islamic media - if they are interested in spreading their ideas more widely, they will address Russians in Russian rather than in any other language.

Sergei Gradirovsky emphasizes that the concept of "Russian", which he uses, in his understanding does not carry any national or confessional (Orthodox) meaning. He emphasizes the importance of interpreting the concept of "Russian" in a multicultural sense, since it is the cultural dialogue - in the given context of Russian and Islamic cultures - that will create the preconditions for civil, national, confessional peace, much deeper than any legal acts adopted at the state level.

Sources

• Gradirovsky S. "Russian Islam" as a Phenomenon and as a Subject of Research // Religion and Mass Media. 2003. May 27.
• Gradirovsky S. Cultural Borderland: Russian Islam // State and anthropoflow. 2003. July.