Modernised Muslims turn from the Kremlin

Press, 25 August 1983, Page 30

Modernised Muslims turn from the Kremlin

NZPA-Reuter Soviet Kirghizia Sipping tea on a carpeted bench outside their tiny* mosque, a knot of wizened .mullahs and their followers shook their heads in puzzlement when the talk turned to Afghanistan. “I can’t imagine why the Afghans keep on fighting. They should let the Russians build the place up for them as they have done here,” said Makhmed Abdelboyee, aged 45, a baggage handler at this ancient trading city’s modern airport. His comments inspired nods of approval and suggested that Moscow has little reason to fear that the turmoil just across the mountainous frontier will whip up Islamic fervour in the Soviet Union’s Central Asian region. That attitude is perhaps surprising, considering the history of Kirghizia and its neighbouring Soviet republics.

As in Afghanistan, the advent of Communist rule provoked an uprising by rural Muslim peasants, the Basmatchi, who fought a bitter war of attrition against Soviet troops until their defeat and annihilation in the early 19305. The worshippers at Osh’s Mosque of the Sacred Scroll, a dozen of whom parked shiny new saloon cars in the courtyard at evening prayers, evidently saw little reason for nostalgia.

Soviet rule has turned Kirghizia, which 60 years ago was a feudal backwater with a 98 per cent illiteracy rate, into a thriving semiindustrial community, with urban living standards comparable with those df European Russia. Even practising Muslims, who make up less than 10 per cent of Kirghizia’s 3.8 million people, generally consider the benefits outweigh the ideological restrictions of rule from Moscow. The legacy they inherited is bitter. In the 1920 s the Soviet authorities closed mosques and imprisoned mullahs in a drive to stamp out the Islamic faith. Today the government is

considerably more tolerant. But in Osh, a town peopled predominantly by Turkishspeaking Kirghiz and Uzbeks, there are only three places of worship. Uzbek believers gained permission to build the Sacred Scroll mosque only last year. As it lacks a minaret, the faithful are summoned to prayer from a rough wooden platform slung across a crumbling brick wall.

Despite the difficulties, the assembled believers showed no trace of bitterness and, with an eye to the much more primitive Afghan society to the south, most were quick to point to the material benefits they enjoyed. “I don’t have any problemss because of my faith, either,” said Gulam Aliyev, aged 24, a civil servant. “I cannot get time off work for prayers, but I get here in my lunch hour, so it’s not so bad.”

A long process of instilling Russian language, culture, and values has helped create the Europeanised outlook of the peoples who inhabit modernised, treelined Asian cities like Osh. But there is evidence that older Muslim traditions still exert a strong influence on the 60 per cent of the population which lives in the country, and every sign that Moscow cannot afford to be complacent about the Central Asian region. A recent newspaper report revealed that bridestealing, by which a man simply kidnaps the girl of his choice, is still rampant throughout Kirghizia, and is even practised by members of the Communist Party. Kirghizia also has a bad record for high-level corruption, and its reputation was muddied further by the assassination of the republic’s president, Sultan Ibraimov, in 1980, apparently as the result of a private feud. But probably far more worrying for the Kremlin are signals that the gratitude and admiration for the Russians might be starting to wear off. Kirghizian literature now frequently comes under at-

tack in the official press for focusing on legendary national heroes and “distorting history” about how the country was annexed by Russia in the nineteenth century. Local people in Osh said the practice of calling Kirghiz children Vladimir or Volodya had now all but died out and parents had switched back from Russian to traditional names.

Coupled with that is a 'continuing awareness of the country’s Muslim past.

Although few may visit the mosque regularly, most people, including young children, readily say they believe in Allah when asked. One mullah put the number of passive believers at more than 80 per cent. With birth rates among the Central Asian peoples now four times higher than in European Russia, the Kremlin has further reason to be sensitive about developments in the region. In statistical terms, this means that the number of people of Muslim background in the Soviet Union, now 45 million, will more than double by the turn of the century while the number of Russians will rise only slightly to 150 million. Western demographic experts believe that that expansion, linked with a growing national and cultural awareness, could add up to a nightmare for the Soviet Union’s largely Russian leaders in two or three decades.

Visiting Western diplomats and journalists in the Central Asian republics often believe that they see the roots of tension in what appears to be a slightly paternalistic attitude to: wards the local people by the Soviet authorities.

Although natives always occupy senior Government and party posts, their deputies are almost invariably Russians and it is they who appear to wield the real power. Local Kirghiz in Osh cracked jokes about this phenomenon but without any evident ill-feeling. The Kremlin must hope their sons and grandsons continue to see the funny side.