10. Russian Islam Comes Out into the Open

By Aleksandr Soldatov, Oleg Lastochkin (photos)The Moscow News

Against the backdrop of the "cartoon war," Russia's converted Muslims are closing ranks

In early February, the Milli-Shura (National Council) of the National Organization of Russian Muslims (NORM) took a decisive step to come out of the closet. It reached an association agreement with the Moscow community of converted Muslims, Pryamoi Put (Straight Path), which is led by Dr. Ali Vyacheslav Polosin, a former Russian Orthodox priest and deputy of the Supreme Soviet (Soviet parliament), a high-profile figure in Russian Islam. This reporter learned about the merger at the Turgenev Library, where NORM activists participated in a theological debate with members of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). The ROC was represented by Dr. Ali's former colleagues Father Daniil Sysoev and Father Oleg Stenyaev.

While Western embassies are being torched in Islamic countries and priests are being killed amid threats of a new world war, Russian Islam is emerging as a form of "alternative" culture. The Russian variety of Islam is being embraced with a neophyte's zeal by radicals from Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party while liberal intellectuals, who feel stifled in the bearish hug of "state Orthodoxy," are reading the Koran with a kind of enlightened self-interest.

Allah Akbar - Christ Is Risen

Friday evening, February 3, the library in downtown Moscow was packed to capacity. Throughout a three-hour-long debate, "ethnic" Muslims and Christian Orthodox believers bore little resemblance to academic theologians. Whereas the former drew an unequivocal conclusion from the debate - "Allah akbar," the Orthodox demonstrated their deep conviction that "Christ is risen." It was not difficult to distinguish between the Orthodox and Muslim "factions." The front rows were mainly occupied by bearded men and women wearing headscarves. The Muslims sat in the back rows and along the walls; the women were wearing hijabs but with plenty of makeup.

The first attempt to hold such a debate two years ago all but ended in a scuffle. At that time, the energetic and self-assured priest Daniil Sysoev stated in no uncertain terms that he considered Mohammad a false prophet who had taken dictation of the Koran from Satan. Metropolitan Kirill (Gundyaev) even had to call Moscow Mufti Ravil Gainutdin to explain that the ROC did not regard Mohammad as a false prophet. The February debate was more PC, even though Father Daniil never missed an opportunity to hint that Orthodox Christians believed the Koran was inspired by "an utterly different spirit."

Priest Oleg Stenyaev, director of the Center for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Nontraditional Religions, on the contrary, went out of his way to court his opponents. He referred to God as Allah, used the term "shirk" (which in Islam applies to polytheism and other deadly sins), and cited the Koran in broken Arabic. The two priests presented the classic "good cop/bad cop" model. They were opposed by Dr. Ali Vyacheslav Polosin - neither bad nor good, but impartial and cool as a rock.

The subject of the debate was the understanding of God in the two religions. Dr. Ali Polosin attacked Christianity's "hidden polytheism" as manifested in the idea of the Trinity. He suggested that the Christians had turned God's attributes - Word and Spirit - into separate Divine Beings, equating them with God the Father. The main thrust of his Orthodox opponents, tinged with a heavy dose of moralizing, was that the Muslim God was extremely remote from man, had never made an appearance on earth, and man could not unite with Him. In Christianity, they argued, "Word has been embodied in flesh, living with us," while God could be worshipped in the image of Christ so as to become his Son, not a slave.

The Patriarch of Russian Islam

An elderly man with a thick graying beard and a white fez on his head stood out conspicuously in the back, "Muslim" rows. At first I took him for a guest from sunny Tajikistan, but the elder turned out to be the amir of NORM - that is to say, the Russian Muslim chief - Abu Talib (whose lay name is Anatoly Stepchenko). In his home town of Omsk, in central Siberia, the media portrayed him as a formidable and sinister "Russian Taliban" figure. In reality, Abu Talib turned out to be an outgoing and kindly man with a happy sparkle in this eyes: two days before the meeting, the 52-year old leader of Russian Muslims had been married.

Abu Talib adopted Islam in 1990 in Tajikistan where he served as a warrant officer on the border with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. One of the enlisted men under his command was a devout Tajik who spent long winter evenings with the warrant officer talking about faith. By that time Stepchenko had taken an interest in religion (he was baptized at age 28) and started reading Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu literature. He did not think about Islam as a serious religion, but when he started reading the Koran, the NCO decided to change his life. He adopted Islam when visiting his former subordinate, where Stepchenko was struck by the remarkable cleanliness and hospitality of Tajik Muslims. Over time, Abu Talib was followed by his son and daughter, but not his first wife, who was unable to overcome her antipathy toward the "Kyrgyz faith," and so they had to divorce.

In the early 1990s, Stepchenko was kind of an oddity for the Muslim umma in the FSU. It took him some time and quite a bit of effort to start living an Islamic lifestyle - performing five namaz (prayers) five times a day in the Arab style, following a special diet, and making special body movements during the mosque prayer. When he was discharged to the reserves, Stepchenko became the head of the Omsk jamaat, a brotherhood of Muslim activists promoting and teaching about Islam. Jamaat members even worked at penitentiaries, but there were no mass conversions to Islam among ethnic Russians. Talking about Russia's "native" Muslims, Stepchenko stresses that these peoples are in a spiritually and culturally deplorable situation, so Russian Muslims have to rely on their own resources.

NORM was established two years ago, but not on Abu Talib's initiative. It was founded by a group of young Moscow-based Muslims led by Kharun ar-Rusi (Vadim Sidorov). They found Abu Talib and asked him to lead the movement, seeing him as the most experienced co-religionist. Despite his advanced age, Stepchenko was inspired by the idea and went looking for Russian Muslims in Siberian villages.

As a result, about 50 activists of the National Islamic Movement joined the new organization. NORM members believe that Russian Orthodoxy, let alone secular liberalism, have failed to stop the moral and physical degradation of ethnic Russians, so the only way for the people to survive is to adopt Islamic values.