What place does religion have in our daily lives? How can one successfully combine secular and spiritual education? How important is the role of mass media in the formation of spiritual and moral values? This is just a small part of the questions, which the participants of the V All-Russian scientific conference “The Place of Religion in Secular Society” tried to discuss in detail.
The organizer of the conference was the Centre for Studies of the Holy Quran and the Pure Sunnah of the Tatarstan Republic together with the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Tatarstan Republic. The event itself became a part of the activity plan implementation of the Strategic Vision Group “Russia – Islamic World”.
Director of the Centre for Studies of the Holy Quran and the Pure Sunnah Farid Hazrat Salman
“Global challenges of our times, the growth of technologies, the emergence of the existing virtual world in reality, attempts to introduce artificial intelligence in all possible spheres of public life, unstoppable wave of migration, international conflicts of all the possible formats and much more raise a question among intellectual circles about the place of religion in modern human society”, Farid Hazrat Salman, the director of the Centre for Studies of the Holy Quran and the Pure Sunnah highlighted in his speech. “Any society lives either in accordance with religious canons or declares itself as a secular state. Secular society treats religion as one of the components of this construction. In general, nowadays only the secular character of society, with all its advantages and disadvantages, is able not only to proclaim but also to implement the universal package of rights and freedoms both of an individual and the whole community. Equal treatment of every person in multi-national and multi-confessional environment is the guarantee of preserving integrity of such states and societies”.
According to Hazrat, the slogan “Unity in Diversity” still remains relevant but requires significant rethinking in the sphere of modernization and significant transformation of modern society.
Senior Advisor to the State and Religious Relations Division of the Department of the President of the Republic of Tatarstan Albert Dirzizov
Albert Dirzizov, Senior Advisor to the State and Religious Relations Division of the Department of the President of the Republic of Tatarstan on internal policy issues pointed out that the topic of the meeting was more relevant than ever.
“One should understand that lately the place and role of religion in the life of society on the whole and of individuals in particular has been growing up. The development of the society and our welfare depends on what values will be defined and set before the society”.
First Deputy Mufti of the Tatarstan Republic, Imam Khatib of the Quddus Mosque Rustam Hazrat Valiulin
The baton of greeting words and warm wishes to the participants of the conference was intercepted by Rustam Hazrat Valiulin, first Deputy Mufti of the Tatarstan Republic, Imam Khatib of the Quddus Mosque. In his speech, Hazrat drew attention to the fact that our society had covered an uneasy path.
“In this way, the Almighty has let us understand the peculiarity of those processes, which we are observing now. Unfortunately, we have become too secular and our religiousness has been somewhere far away. The majority of people naively think that we can easily build our lives without the religious component. But real life has shown the necessity of the presence of spirituality, which throughout the existence of mankind has been supporting it in every endeavor, in every difficult period of history. Unfortunately, due to the fact that we have distanced ourselves from our origins, over the past twenty years many of us have had to make certain mistakes in order to understand how wise our ancestors in their religious consciousness were. Therefore, it is extremely important for us to preserve in all the subtleties and details those spiritual values, which our ancestors passed on to us, study them and pass them on to the next generation. Keep reading the books, which were written hundred and even more years ago”.
Besides, Rustan Hazrat in more detail highlighted the fact of returning of the rich theological heritage of the Tatar people. He said that now one could find religious works and treatises by the world’s famous Tatar scholars on specialized Internet resources. All this will let us not only touch and study in more detail separate aspects of our doctrine but also learn the prominent theologians’ perspective. Many students (including those who are the students of the Bulgarian Islamic Academy) write their scientific works, defend their Master’s and Doctoral’s theses based on these works.
Farid Hazrat Salman added that Kazan still remained one of the book printing centers for the Islamic world and especially he noted the work of “Khuzur” publishing house.
Vice Rector of the Russian Islamic Institute Rafis Zakirov
Rafis Zakirov, Vice Rector of the Russian Islamic Institute, stressed that religion was one of the factors in the development of any society.
“Even in secular society religion plays an important role because it provides a moral pivot, moral guidelines for all members of society. Our life requires not only moral behavior and corresponding actions but also that people respect each other, including representatives of different religious worldviews and nationalities. I hope that this conference will serve as a powerful impetus for the study of religion in our region where the leading centers of Islamic studies operate and train religious figures and Muslim leaders”.
Vice Rector for Educational Activity of the Bulgarian Islamic Academy Aleksey Petrov
Aleksey Petrov, Vice Rector for Educational Activity of the Bulgarian Islamic Academy, also supported the importance of acquiring relevant knowledge about religion.
“Despite the separation of religion from the state, we can see that the system of education, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education also supported the idea of religious education and gave due consideration to the emergence of theology, which is now being implemented in all secular universities, even in technical educational institutions. It shows that we have come to understand that society simply cannot develop and fully function without spiritual development and spirituals values. A vivid example of this is European society where the first place is occupied by those values and foundations, which were originally alien to human nature. Any religious and spiritual education is initially aimed at preserving a full-fledged, high-quality, healthy society”.
The conference was attended by religious and secular specialists from Kazan, Moscow, Ufa, Makhachkala, Derbent, Sevastopol and other regions of Russia. The conference agenda comprised such issues as detailed consideration of the place of religion in secular society and state of modern times; disclosure of the difference between the position of religion in secular society, the state in modern society and its position in the recent past; analysis of objective reasons that led to a change in the place of religion in modern secular society and assessment of the causes of conflicts of religious nature arising in modern secular society and ways to solve them. The main goal of the conference was to develop recommendations for the Muslim community as an integral part of the modern global society in the process of its incorporation as a component of a multi-component secular society and its functioning.
Ilmira Gafiyatullina