Can you imagine the bottomless depths of disappointment the Danish groups must be feeling at not being allowed into Chechnya? Maybe they'll get to go someplace nicer, like the Sudan or Somalia.
Peaceful Protest
Since the beginning of the recent wave of 'caricature protest' about two weeks ago, after the center-right Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper republished caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad (the first publication was in September 2005), not a single demonstration of the Muslims was registered in Russia. Nonetheless, this does not mean that the Russian Muslims remained indifferent to their brothers' protest in the Muslim states. Violent attack in the center of Moscow is not the only evidence of this. Various Muslim organizations published their reaction, accusing the European governments of enkindling religious hatred. Muslim clerics in the Russian North Caucasian republic of Dagestan – the spiritual center of the Sunni Islam in this region - issued a call for boycotting goods from Denmark, Norway, France, and other European countries where the caricatures were published. This call was voiced during the Friday prayer in the Central Mosque of Makhachkala (the capital of Dagestan) that was attended by some six thousand people. The Imam also stressed the necessity of a relevant address to the embassies of these countries to demand the official apology, as well as the punishment of the caricatures' authors and their editors. "They cannot prevent Islam's expansion; they see that they are losing to us, so they find no other outlet rather than to cowardly insult us," – Mukhammadvakil Sultanmagomedov, the Deputy Chairman of the Spiritual Board of Dagestan’s Muslims (SADM) told the local press. Similar voices could be heard during the Friday prayer in the Central Mosque in Moscow as well. Chairman of the Russian Mufti Council, Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin, voiced the "indignant protest" of the Russian Muslims against the publication of caricatures, and read the announcement of the Council concerning this issue. "Russia's Muslims support the outrage and irreconcilability of the one-and-a-half billion Muslim world with regard of the caricatures against the Prophet Muhammad. (…) Behind the publication of these caricatures, there stand the ideologists of enkindling the war between civilizations, who strengthened their activity after September 11, 2001, events in the USA," – the statement says, as cited by the Islam.ru website.
Similar statements were made in the city of Saratov (Volga region), and in Karelia – another republic within the Russian Federation having a considerable Muslim community. The only spiritual leader that reacted in a moderate manner was Talgat Tadzhuddin, the Chairman of the Central Spiritual Directorate of the Muslims of Russia (the authorities-oriented nominal body, having no real influence among the Russian Muslims). "Reaction of a certain part of the Muslim world towards caricatures' publications was excessive," – he told the Russian Interfax news agency, adding that it is "ineligible" to threaten the whole state. "In civilized society one should be a civilized person. If the reaction is full of hatred and anger, then the back reaction might also be hatred and anger. A pious person should never get that far," – Mufti Tadzhuddin said.
Official Silence
Moscow's official reaction on the issue remains an enigma. Website of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is systematically updated, posting news that are far less important than the news about yet another Danish embassy being attacked in yet another Muslim country. However, not a single word about it could be seen among the news of the Russian MFA website till yesterday's evening, when the further abstention became impossible, given the scale of the phenomenon. This reaction can be summarized as follows: Moscow is most seriously concerned about the negative consequences of caricature publication in a number of Western mass media; these caricatures openly insult religious feelings of the pious Muslims; the outrageous reaction of the Islamic world is totally comprehensible.
The only official, whose reaction could be heard before the MFA publication, was the Russian Ambassador at Large in charge of liaison with the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Veniamin Popov. Attending the round table discussion on the topic "The Role of Religion in Political Life of the Middle and Near Eastern States" in the Institute of Oriental Studies, he said that "Russia can play a role of conciliator, in order not to allow a confrontation between the West and the Islamic world." According to Popov, given its status of observer in OIC, Russia has a whole program for strengthening ties with the Islamic world, the Russian RIAN news agency reports. Reaction of the Russian Muslims, and the fact that the official Moscow preferred for a long time not to react on the caricatures' publication, as well as on its aftermath, actually reveal the whole issue in a different dimension. Taking into account the present demographic situation in Russia, and its geopolitical state of affairs, its position on the caricatures issue might seem the only possible one. The Muslims constitute a considerable part of Russia's population (Russian official figures vary from 14.5 to 24 million, while the CIA figure is 26 million). Most part of them are the indigenous inhabitants of the regions they live in (and these regions in total make a considerable part of Russia's territory). Until now the Russian Government could not ignore the local Muslims' position as far as the Middle East and the Muslim states were concerned, but it never went farther than that, to Russia's relations with the European Union, which is one of Russia's main partners. However, in present conditions, when the confrontation was enkindled between the Old Europe and the Muslim world, Moscow found itself bound to listen what the local Muslims have to say on the issue. If this confrontation persists, their voice will be more and more attentively heard in the Kremlin, with all the political and economic consequences that this may imply for the Russia-EU relations.