TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/041089/04108900.012

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 6.9 KB | 133 lines

                -                                                              RELIGION, Page 98

ISLAM REGAINS ITS VOICE


Nurtured by a growing official tolerance, the country's 55
million Muslims enjoy a flowering of freedom

By Richard N. Ostling


    Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar!" The call to
prayer echoes forth from a minaret in Tashkent, as it has from
mosques throughout the 13 centuries of Islam. "Was it loud
enough?" asks the mullah who will lead the prayers. That is an
eminently reasonable question, since in the Soviet Union no
muezzin is allowed to use a loudspeaker. The inquiry is also
metaphorical. In the U.S.S.R.'s fourth largest city and leading
Islamic center, as elsewhere across the nation, believers are
cautiously regaining their public voice after an oppressively
enforced silence.

    All faiths are affected by a growing accommodation between
church and state in the officially atheistic nation. Last
year's 1,000th-anniversary celebrations greatly enhanced the
privileges of the Russian Orthodox Church. This year the
long-suffering Jewish community opened its first school for
rabbis in 60 years, and Lithuania's Roman Catholics got their
first full lineup of bishops in 40 years. A similar renewal is
taking place among the 55 million Muslims, who constitute the
world's fifth largest Islamic population (after Indonesia,
Pakistan, Bangladesh and India). By some estimates, Muslims will
make up one-fourth of Soviet citizens by the turn of the
century.

    At the Tashkent-based Muslim board for Central Asia, the
most important of the four government-imposed bureaucracies for
Soviet Islam, Deputy Chairman Abdulgani Abdulla recalls that
"almost nobody was interested in religion" in the 1960s. Now,
he reports, large numbers are becoming active believers, many
of them young people. "None of the philosophies except the
religious ones are able to satisfy men's needs," he maintains.
The leader of the Muslim board for Transcaucasia, Allahshukur
Pasha-zada, declares that until recently "freedom of conscience
was on paper only." The pre-Gorbachev regimes, he says,
"destroyed all the values of the people." Just a few years ago,
no officials would have dared utter such words except in
intimate conversations with friends.

    As they learn to speak out more freely, Muslims are trying
to regain some control of religious affairs. Popular pressures
led to last month's installation, with great fanfare, of a new
leader for the Central Asia board. The previous head, reputed
to be more adept at drinking (forbidden by Islam) and politics
than study of the Koran, was ousted after an unprecedented
protest march in Tashkent. His successor is Mukhammadsadyk
Mamayusupov, 36, a modest and dignified scholar. At the same
time as Mamayusupov's elevation, the Uzbek Republic gave his
board a precious Koran dictated by Caliph Osman, one of
Muhammad's earliest followers. Thousands cheered and wept as the
invaluable holy book was moved from a museum to the new
headquarters mosque, which has just been returned to the board.

    Only weeks after the Communists took over in 1917, Lenin
soothingly announced to the nation's Muslims, "Your religion
and customs, your national and cultural institutions are
proclaimed free and inviolable." But the Communists' suspicion
of religion quickly made a mockery of Lenin's promises.
Eventually, most of the country's 26,000 mosques and 24,000
religious schools were shut down. The vast majority of Islamic
teachers were either killed or imprisoned. During World War II,
Stalin forcibly deported to Siberia entire populations of
Muslims who were suspected of disloyalty. "Those were difficult
years for the believers," recalls Achin-Oka Akhmedov, who as a
farm worker outside Tashkent lived through the worst of it.

    By most accounts, religious marriages, funerals and
circumcisions remain near universal practices in Muslim
regions, even among Communist functionaries. Yet only a small
proportion of the Muslim population attends services at
government-authorized mosques. This is partly because there are
so few official mosques in relation to the Muslim population and
partly because interruptions in the Soviet workday are frowned
upon. Another reason, perhaps the most important, is that many
believers frequent the estimated 1,800 unregistered mosques,
some led by secretive Sufi mystics.

    Despite its resurgence, Islam still faces obstacles. The
country has perhaps 1,400 legal mosques, a sizable increase
since Gorbachev came to power but still only 5% of the number
that existed before the revolution. The major Muslim cities of
Baku and Samarkand have just two functioning mosques apiece. The
U.S.S.R. has only one secondary and one higher-level school,
which can accommodate just 300 students each year. Both are
reportedly scheduled to expand, however, and a third institute
to serve Transcaucasia is due to open in September.

    Since the mosques are still not allowed to teach Arabic,
few believers are able to read the language of the Koran. No
translation of the holy book is available in the modern script
of any Soviet Muslim nationality. Such handicaps foster the
underground network and force believers to listen to broadcasts
from Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia for religious instruction.
A mere 25 to 30 Muslims a year manage to make the obligatory
pilgrimage to Mecca, and the regime continually propagandizes
against the month-long Ramadan fast as a threat to health and
worker efficiency.

    One area of conflict is Soviet concern for the status of
women. The regime long ago outlawed polygamy and veil wearing.
It also frowns upon such practices in Muslim areas as assigning
women the most difficult labors, giving daughters away to
suitors who offer the highest price, and self-immolation of
women distressed over such treatment (270 took their lives or
attempted to in 1986 and 1987). These old Asian folkways are not
part of Islam as such and are regularly denounced by Muslim
officialdom.

    Yet the government is more tolerant of Islam these days.
Besides opening new mosques, the regime has virtually ended
official anti-Muslim propaganda. What accounts for the
turnabout? Reasons include the need for cooperation from Muslim
countries and for popular support along the potentially
troublesome southern Asia flank. (In Azerbaidzhan, a few Muslims
have been waving photos of the Ayatullah Khomeini or sprouting
Iranian-style beards. However, there is sparse evidence of
religious fanaticism, either inspired by neighboring Iran and
Afghanistan or encouraged by the Soviets' own tolerance.) The
crucial factor is awareness inside the Kremlin that economic and
cultural stagnation stems largely from the Communists' dogged
policy of repressing religion and other forms of independent
thought. Islam, like the country's other religions, is a major
beneficiary of "new thinking."