Speech of the President of Chamber of Commerce of Russia E.M. Primakov at the first meeting of the Group of strategic vision “Russia – Islamic world” that took place in Moscow on March, 27-28, 2006.
The first reason, which unites us all is the understanding one of the main dangers in the world today – the partition along religious and civilizational lines. To be more precise, in two parts, Muslim and non Muslim. Behind such attempts, and this increases the danger, are not only the writers of articles in newspapers and magazines, but some scientists and even politicians. Russia is one of the great powers, which has influence on international affairs, and as such, it can and is already doing everything possible to prevent the development of such a trend threatening the whole of mankind.
The second reason for the creation of our Group is a dialogue between the Russian and leading foreign Islamic representatives, in particular ethno-religious situation in Russia. It is home to millions of Muslims. And they are not immigrants, as in many Western countries, but an organic part of the indigenous population. Perhaps no other country, the indigenous population of which is composed of the Christian majority and Muslim minority, cannot be a model of peaceful coexistence and interpenetration of cultures and create a kind of community like Russia. At the same time the position of Russia as a “bridge” between Europe and Asia is unique.
Only recently the world was divided along ideological lines. Mankind has been able to cope with it. But now there is a new threat, I would say, no less dangerous. Because the division of the world along religious and civilizational principle today is considered as a result of the appearance on the world stage of international terrorism, which is allegedly associated with Islam as a religion. This is not just an error. It’s a deliberate slander of Islam. I will not go into the details on the evidence against such incompetence because only the ignorant or malicious detractors of Islam may say that this is one of the world’s oldest religions professed by a significant portion of the world’s population, generates terrorism.
However, today’s reality is that many terrorist organizations, first of all “Al-Qaeda”, are dressed in Islamic clothing. “Al-Qaeda” puts forward as its main objective the creation of a unified caliphate on the territory of all states with Muslim populations. But what happens as a result? The immediate targets of terrorist attacks of “al-Qaeda” are Muslim states with moderate or secular regimes.
It is a fact that the number of terrorist attacks carried out by “Al-Qaeda” and its branches in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, far exceed the number of terrorist attacks in Western countries.
In such circumstances, it is very important for all of us to set a goal of an explanation for the general population of Muslim and non-Muslim countries the differences between Islamic fundamentalism and Islamic extremism. Islamic fundamentalism, exactly the same as fundamentalism in any other religion, it is safe for the society. It is the building of mosques, the performance of Islamic ceremonies, mutual help among believers, and so on. But when Islamic fundamentalism takes an aggressive, extremist form, this translates into the imposition of the Islamic model of governance the state and society by power. History has known stages, when Christian fundamentalism grew into Christian-Catholic extremism. This was done by the Jesuits, it was during the Crusades. And today we are facing the manifestations of Islamic extremism.
What is the reason for this? Of course, not in the fact that Islam itself as a religion is fraught with extremism. Some see as a reason the fact of growing gulf between the increasingly wealthy “golden billion” (US, Canada, Europe, Australia, New Zealand) and the rest of the world, which in large part consists of countries with Muslim populations. This is only a partial answer. The thing is that the leaders of terrorist organizations and groups, as a rule, people from rich families. I think that the rise of Islamic extremism, which we are experiencing now, is related to several factors. But the most important is the relationship between different civilizations. I stress – the relation. It seems inappropriate to talk about the confrontation of civilizations, as some authors present it, for example in the United States. There are processes of globalization, which covered the entire world community. Countries with a Muslim population are not beyond the technical and technological component of world civilization and they have a huge, albeit uneven impact on all aspects of the development of all mankind.
But global civilization is not only the technical and technological innovation. It consists of various cultural, religious and political currents. It is composed from a variety approaching to each other and preserving their own identity civilizations. It develops through their dialogue. And this dialogue is going through a crisis today.
The first indication of this crisis is a mindless pursuit of the most powerful in economic and military capabilities representative of “Western civilization” to export its model of democracy to other countries. It so happened that this state exports its democratic model in countries with a Muslim population by force. Iraq has become, Syria and Iran may become the subjects of this “export”. The United States has still does not consider the historical experience of these countries or the ratio of the internal forces, or established traditions.
The result of export democracy by force, like Iraq has shown, is spread of terrorism, internecine clashes on religious grounds. It must be said that under the former Iraqi regime, for example, there was the Shiite community, which led the fight against the regime, not the Sunnis, but now the country is on the verge of Shiite-Sunni civil war. United States announced its operation in Iraq as an important step in combating international terrorism; as a result, Iraq has become the main area of “Al-Qaeda”, there now operates probably the most powerful branch of the terrorist organization. Extremism is also enhanced as a result of failure to resolve the Middle East crisis. Today, the target of criticism and accusations of braking settlement process has become Hamas. Israel, supported by the United States, says it will not contact with Hamas, despite the fact that it came to power in the Palestinian Authority on the crest of democratic elections. They say it is a terrorist organization. Meanwhile, we can remember that Begin and Shamir, two Israeli prime minister in the past were real terrorists, the British mandatory authorities put up a great reward for their heads. And when they got power through the election, no one doubted the legitimacy of contact with them. Of course, Hamas must enter into negotiations and to renounce terrorist acts against the civilian population. I think that, if nothing prevents, Hamas will go along this path. However, the main obstacle to the settlement process will be, and it is clear from today’s statements of Acting Prime Minister Olmert, Israel’s position aimed to moving away from the agreed “road map”.
The first meeting of Group of strategic vision “Russia – Islamic world” may become an important forum in which measures to combat extremism and intolerance will be worked out. Both of these symptoms feed each other. This vicious circle must be interrupted. And we, judging by the very representative composition of our congregation, we can help to influence on public opinion by our experience, by our ideas, by our abilities.