A Russian Muslim Patriot

Interview by Andrei Zolotov, Jr. - Russia Profile
Monday, May 22, 2006

Duma deputy Shamil Sultanov, 54, a member of the State
Duma’s Foreign Relations Committee, also heads the
coalition of Muslim deputies and has traveled the
Islamic world trying to establish contacts with
parliaments, governments and businesses in Muslim
countries. Ironically, he is a deputy from the
nationalist Rodina party. Russia Profile Editor Andrei
Zolotov Jr. spoke to Sultanov on the origins of his
faith, his view of the world and what it is like to be
a practicing Muslim integrated into the Russian
establishment.

R.P.: Were you brought up in the Islamic faith, or did
you come to it yourself?

S.S.: I came to it myself. Although I am from a Muslim
background ethnically, my parents did not observe any
rituals. My grandparents did perform salat (daily
Islamic ritual prayer), but in the strict Soviet times
it was all kept secret. I embraced the faith when I
was 25, at the end of the 1970s. That was the time
when our country entered a systemic crisis that
continues to this day. The ideologies on which we were
educated crumbled before our eyes. It was only natural
that many people began their search for alternative
values then. Some people looked to the West, others to
culture and yet others to the past. For me, the
Islamic past of my family was one of the options.

I started to study Islamic metaphysics. In 1986, I
published a biography of [medieval Persian scholar and
poet] Omar Khayyam. He was a special representative of
Sufism who was also connected to Neoplatonic
rationalists. So, in a way, I came to Islam through
Sufism and through Neoplatonic philosophers,
particularly Plotin, whom I consider to be a Muslim
because he rationally came to monotheism and
influenced Khayyam.

My biggest interest is in the metaphysics and
epistemology of Islam. You know, there is Islam and
there are present-day Muslims. Some 90 percent of
Muslims have no idea of Islam, its real spiritual
treasures.

R.P.: Where did you work at the time? Can you tell me
about your career?

S.S.: I was a senior research fellow at the Moscow
Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). There I
worked on theories of decision-making and political
forecasting, wrote papers for the Politburo and the
Foreign Affairs Ministry. A lot of my papers were
thrown out because my supervisors thought that what I
wrote was too complicated. In the late 1980s, there
was a failed attempt to create an Islamic Revival
Party of the Soviet Union. But then the Soviet Union
fell apart, and there was nothing left of the party.

At one point, I worked at the Institute of Foreign
Economic Relations, where together with several other
romantics I created a department of concept modeling.
It was clear that what was happening to the Soviet
Union was part of a strategic game, but our
gerontocracy had no strategy. We cherished the dream
of developing a strategy for our country, around which
a new elite could eventually consolidate. But nothing
ever came of it.

In 1990, it became pointless, everything was
crumbling, and I left for the newspaper that later
became known as Zavtra. I helped found the paper and
served as deputy to Alexander Prokhanov. Of all the
labels I have been called - a fascist, aÊMuslim
fundamentalist - I most like the label “intellectual
provocateur,” which Literaturnaya Gazeta once called
me. All of the ideas which later developed in Russia -
geopolitics, Eurasianism, the New Right, you name it -
all were born on the pages of Zavtra, which was always
quietly read in every Kremlin office.

In 1996, I left Zavtra, because Prokhanov forged an
alliance with the Communists. I told him “Sasha,
Communists have been dead since 1993, when they were
unable to draw even 5000 people into the streets. To
bet on Communists today is like digging up a coffin
and running around with it, happy that the
long-suffering bones are rattling around inside.”

I went to Yury Skokov’s Center for the Study of
Inter-Regional and Inter-Ethnic Economic Problems,
because I am convinced that the key problem for Russia
- always - is the relationship between the center and
the regions. In 1919, the country splintered into 120
pieces, and a strict dictatorship was necessary to put
it back together. By the mid-1990s, we were once again
facing a stark choice - either a terrible, stupid
dictatorship, or smart authoritarianism. Not a
democracy! Forget it!

Together with Skokov we created the Party of Russian
Regions, which eventually joined Rodina.

R.P.: Do you not sense a conflict between being a
Russian Muslim and being part of the leadership of
Rodina, which is perceived as a nationalist,
xenophobic party, and was even banned from running for
Moscow City Duma elections because of the now famous
campaign video deemed xenophobic?

S.S.: In our party, I am in charge of Dagestan,
Bashkortostan, Tatarstan and other predominantly
Muslim regions. Our party has about 150,000 members
today, among them about 20,000 Muslims. When I speak
to a Muslim audience and people ask me how I can be a
member of a Russian nationalist party, I answer that a
true Muslim would never need to ask such a question.

Everything that happens is determined by the niyat, or
intention of the Almighty. If this video came out,
there must have been a niyat behind it. Every niyat is
aimed at the good, at justice one way or the other.
Where is the good with this video? Look at the
consequences. About a year ago, there were from
300,000 to 500,000 people working as slaves in Moscow
- with no rights whatsoever. These people escape from
poverty, from civil war at home, and they come to
Moscow because there is money here. And I guess that
they give between $2.5 and 3 billion annually in
bribes to Moscow bureaucracy. Now, you can be offended
by being called this or that in the video. But is
there a real improvement? It caused a scandal,
attention was attracted to the treatment of migrants,
the State Duma adopted a law on the absorption of
these immigrants. These people gained some rights. The
Koran says that if people think that something’s good,
in reality it’s bad. Likewise if people think
something is bad, in reality it’s good. Only the
Almighty is all-knowing.

R.P.: Does the Russian state system adequately
accommodate the needs of Muslims?

S.S.: Of course not. It does not understand any
religious people, including Muslims. There are many
reasons for this - our society was atheistic, all
official religious figures were government-controlled.
But things are changing. According to the Justice
Ministry, we have about 3,000 registered jamaats
[Islamic associations], and I’d say there are more
than 3,000 unregistered ones. People say there are 20
million Muslims in Russia. I think there are 1.5
million real Muslims at most. Some 9 to 11 million are
those who I call hypocrites. They say they are Muslims
but, in reality, they do nothing. And among the 1.5
million there are some 30,000 to 40,000 radicals,
Wahhabis.

R.P.: Is it hard to be an observant Muslim believer
integrated in Russian society?

S.S.: It is hard to be a believer. Unfortunately, we
have today a widespread light, hypocritical attitude
towards religion. We have Christians who think that
wearing a cross makes them Christians, Muslims who
just proclaim shahada (the Muslim confession of faith)
and think they are Muslims.

Believing is a supreme way of life that consumes all
your energy. I observe all the rituals and not only
that - I also think. The main problem of Islam today
is that people just do things automatically.