A Reply On “The
Impact of the Hajj Pilgrimage in the North Caucasus”
The following PONARS Eurasia publication in the title of “The Impact
of the Hajj Pilgrimage in the North Caucasus” for Mikhail A. Alexseev, was
published by School of Foreign Service / Georgetown University as one of PONARS Eurasia Policy Memos,
which got strange ideas that the author tried to implicate with unfounded ideas
about Muslims and their religious warship in the North Caucasus.
The original statements were kept the way they are in blue color, the
comments and remarks were added in green color to distinguish between the article
that got fallacies
probably due to not trying to understand the others in a proper manor,
and the Qur’an Verse is made in red color.
The Impact of the Hajj Pilgrimage in the
North Caucasus
PONARS Eurasia Policy Memo No. 74
Mikhail A. Alexseev
San Diego State University
September 2009
An article was published under “PONARS Eurasia Policy No. 74”,
dated September 2009, by Mr. Mikhail Alexseev from the San Diego State
University in the title of “The Impact of the Hajj Pilgrimage in the North
Caucasus”, which allowed himself to be sarcastically tackling the subject of
Hajj in Islam, which is the title of the article.
With all respect, when analyzing the main idea that was pointed
out through certain points of interest for the author, that were the subject of
highlights and attention, it shows lack of understanding or the unwillingness
of trying to understand the others, and in this case the Muslim’s practice of
their beliefs of Islam religion!
He started with a wrong statement as saying “The
Hajj, a pilgrimage to the holy sites of Islam in Mecca and Medina”, which should state that Hajj, is annual pilgrimage to the
holly city of Mecca, which each Muslim must undertake at least once in a
lifetime if he or she has the health and the wealth to practice so.
He said that it is “increasingly common practice among Russia’s
Muslims”, and added that according to various estimates since 2007, at least
200,000 Russian Muslims have officially performed the Hajj since the collapse
of the Soviet Union under an annual quota set by Saudi Arabia and allotted
within Russia”, which is strange to watch some one throwing figures and
building statistics that do not mean any thing in regard to the purpose of
connecting Hajj with dreams and assumptions of devaluating the spiritual sense
of one of Islam’s Five Pillars, which are the foundation of the Muslim’s life,
that are cited in the following:
- Faith or belief in the Oneness of God and the finality of the prophet-hood
of Muhammad;
- Establishment of the daily prayers;
- Concern for and almsgiving to the needy;
- Self-purification through fasting; and
- The pilgrimage to Mecca for those who are able.
It is important
to mention though, that counting 200, 000 as described of Russian Muslims who
had performed the Hajj Pillar of Islam between 1992 to 2007, which is 15 years
period, to show a significant number would mean meaningless if proper
statistics were to be followed, and it is known that 13, 333 Muslims had
performed Hajj every year. As per the official statistics, Muslims count more
than 20% of the present Russian Federation’s population, and let us suppose
that the total population of the Russian Federation is 145 million, it means
that the Muslim’s population of the Russian Federation is more that 29 million
people, which means that the percentage of Muslim Hajjis is .05%!, which means
5 out of every 10, 000 Muslims perform Hajj every year. Is that too
many or too much?
The article
continues that “Most of these pilgrims come from the Muslim regions of
the North Caucasus. Despite frequent media coverage and much speculative
debate, the impacts of the Hajj pilgrimage on these societies have not been
studied systematically”, what kind of impact the writer is trying
to impose, or what calamity is he trying to create, because if there is any problem
in that subject, it should be the consequences of the social and life
difficulties that the majority in the North Caucasus face due to the economical
problems, and not what the writer is trying to inflict, noting that most of
those pilgrims are old men and women, and/or retirees who are worried only
about their spiritual contacts with their religion.
The respected author who
declared that he is from San Diego State University, stated that “Two views guide the debate on the significance of the
Hajj pilgrimage in Russia. The first emphasizes the power of ideas, while the
second highlights the prevalence of material interest in human behavior. Each
has distinct implications for the North Caucasus”! It is obvious that such a debate project he is talking
about is available in the imagination of certain people who always daydream of
creating the problems in order to show that they can analyze and find solutions
for! So, what he meant by the change of the human behavior for people practice
one of the 5 pillars of their faith, which comes only once in life time for
only those who can afford so, both physically and financially, who become after
such hardship more patient, merciful, compassionate, kind and concerned towards
others, which are considered human conduct with all people whether they are
Muslims or not, and the author’s recitation about material interest in human
behavior, which is meaningless in the direction the whole article is driving
for, which at the end a statement is added in regard to different insinuations
for the region of the North Caucasus, but it is reassured that such
exaggeration is baseless and empty of
content.
It
is worth telling that the Pillars of Hajj are four:
(1)
'Ihram.
(2)
Going and standing at 'Arafat (Mount ‘Arafat).
(3)
Tawaf of the Ka'ba (circumambulating
around Ka’aba),
(4)
Sa'iy or running between the hills of Safa and Marwa.
"... and take a provision (with you) for the journey (to Hajj),
but the best of provisions is right conduct. So fear Me, o ye that are wise.
" Qur'an 2:197
Meanwhile, it is appropriate in this aspect to list the important
etiquettes of hajj, which are:
* Requite all wrongdoings and satisfy all adversaries.
* Make provision for hajj from one's lawful wealth.
* Learn the pillars of hajj and its ceremonies.
* Be kind and forbearing with others, lest the reward be
nullified.
* Observe the obligations of prayers and its statutes.
* Be open-handed, maintain the poor and spend as much as he/she
is able to.
* At the station of 'Arafat, remember the Day of Judgment.
* After return from hajj, one should turn toward (Hereafter) in
regard to worship and maintaining religious duties.
* One should remember his parents and other close relatives who
have passed away with pious prayers and make-up for them if they could not
fulfill their obligations for hajj.
All
the above mentioned, show all of those who got common sense and are aware of the facts and truth, but at
the same time they are free of any propagandistic predetermination agendas,
that Muslims, being 1200 million people around the world got the right to
practice their worship duties and at the same time the right to explain to others
without suspicious mediators about there clear religious teachings.
It is worth explaining that the
annual hajj begins in the twelfth month of the Islamic year (which is a lunar
year, and not the normal solar one, so that hajj and Ramadan fall sometimes
in summer time and sometimes in winter time). Pilgrims wear special clothes:
simple garments that strip away distinctions of class and culture, so that all
stand equal before Almighty God.
In addition the rites of the
hajj, which are derived from Abraham origin, including going around the Ka'aba
seven times, and going seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa as did
Hagar (Hajir, Abraham's wife) during her search for water. The pilgrims later
stand together on the wide plains of 'Arafat (a large expanse of desert outside
Mecca) and join in prayer for God's forgiveness, in what is often thought to
be as a preview of the Day of Judgment.
A
sub-title within the article, “An “Islamic Renaissance”: Security
Concerns”, details what Mairbek Vachagaev had contributed to Jamestown
Foundation, as saying that, “the Hajj is predominantly a
charismatic religious experience in the North Caucasus”, which
he continued that, “it reinforces an individual commitment
to the values and norms of Islam and increases the desire to live according to
Islamic law and norms. Such “Islamization” of society can lead to the
Islamization of laws and governments by serving as a social basis for new
mainstream opposition movements to those local governments widely perceived as
ineffective and corrupt”, which is categorically no true, but it seems that there is
something wrong in understanding the whole issue, even though if both the
author or the quoted writer had a bad example to take in to consideration to
bring up as a replica for all!
At
the same sub-paragraph, the writer has pretended as if possessing the truth
when he wrote, “Also plausibly empower radical jihadist
movements seeking to liberate the North Caucasus from Moscow's “infidel” rule.
The brutal Chechen conflict followed a trajectory from a war for national
independence to a radical Islamist insurgency. Radical Islamists, locally
termed Wahhabis, perpetuate a war against infidels (murtady) and apostates
(kafiry) when they claim responsibility for their violent attacks”, which he
connected Jijad to Hajj, that is categorically not true in this case, because
he will not be able to find a single example to connect the Chechen Freedom
fighters who were after liberating their Homeland from the Imperial Russian
occupation in accordance with their beliefs. The Chechen independence movement
was not a religious issue as such, but a pure national movement to get rid of
foreign imperial occupation that had used all kinds of oppression and brutal
policies to keep holding the Chechen nation as a Russian entity. If the
foregoing claims were true, or even partially reliable, then where is the
description that features a radical Islamic agenda? Logically speaking, the
same description should be used for the Abkazian and South Ossetian independence
from Georgia and the liberation and independence of the three Baltic republics,
Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbijan, Georgia, and seven others from the Russian/Soviet
imperial domination. On the contrary he used alluring, and attractive names and logos such as “jihadist”, “Wahhabis”, “(murtady)”, “(kafiry)”, and “Jijad”, that would
please the ones who ride the waves of fiction and hostility toward others, but
at the same time there was no connection what so ever between the two Russian
wars on Chechnya within 15 years period, and Hajj as such… The coincidence of
having Muslim Chechens in the freedom struggle does not mean in any way to
frame certain conditions or situations as per personal and mean descriptions.
The national struggle for national independence would include all elements of
the nation and/or society.
The
writer continued: “Underlying this argument is a concern
that Wahhabism, Saudi Arabia's state religion, may evoke positive and
overwhelming emotions associated with the Hajj, making Wahhabism more socially
acceptable. As Evgeni Satanovsky, president of the Institute of Middle Eastern
Studies in Moscow pointed out in late 2007”, “We know that Saudi Arabia invests
in the propaganda of Saudi Arabian-style Islam, Wahhabi-style Islam, much more
than the Soviet Union spent throughout all Soviet history propagandizing
Communist ideology”. According to Satanovsky, the Russian government supports
the Hajj because it wants to keep track of the pilgrims!” Why all of this talk of claptrap and nonsense, which gives a
clear idea and impression about the intentions of those who wrote for the sake
of ignoring and covering up the truth and facts to mix up matters in such a way
that would mislead the audience and/or the readers, to drag them out from the
real problems, while more than 100 nations under Russian occupation face all
kinds of subjugation, repression, and tyranny? Those who assume the ignorance
of others, try to mix between the policies of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (not
being a defender of the Saudis’ policies myself) as a moderate Islamic state
that happened to be located within the Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Medina,
which is a well-known fact that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia itself is a victim
of fanatic religious groups, who do not distinguish between religions, origins,
or human considerations when committing their crimes, the way that some “so-called”
states implement their criminal policies against the oppressed and colonized
nations and peoples the way that Tsarist Russia had committed its crimes against
North Caucasian nations such as Circassians, Chechens, Dagestanis, and others,
that lead to genocide, wiping out entire nations en masse, ethnic cleansing,
forced deportation, and brutal occupation of the entire North Caucasus Region
and other regions in the present territories of the so-called Federal Republic
of Russia. The strange thing though, we find a reference to Evgeni
Satanovsky, president of the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies in Moscow, as
giving estimates that do not seem to be logically true! The truth of the matter
is that the Soviet Union had spent for Communist propaganda much more than the
referenced author mentioned, because the Soviet budget was mainly used for the
Communist Party’s benefits that include their most important factor,
PROPAGANDA. It doesn’t seem that this referenced author has or had worked in
managing the budget or the finance resources of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia!
In the article’s paragraph that was entitled, “Pragmatic Motivations for the Hajj: Status and
Interests”, shows that the respected writer is deviating from what he declared previously,
(“it reinforces an individual commitment
to the values and norms of Islam and increases the desire to live according to
Islamic law and norms. Such “Islamization” of society can lead to the
Islamization of laws and governments by serving as a social basis for new
mainstream opposition movements to those local governments widely perceived as
ineffective and corrupt”), to the extent that he
contradicted the whole issue by saying in this paragraph: (“This view is indirectly supported by survey research
showing that adherence to basic Islamic norms remains weak among self-declared
Russian Muslims. Since the early 1990s, survey research has found that
adherence to Islam in Russia, including in the North Caucasus, has been
predominantly symbolic rather than substantive. In a 1998 survey of 617 college
students in Makhachkala by a local sociologist, K. Khanbabaev, 83 percent of
respondents said they were Muslims, yet none could explain the notion that
there is only one God (tawhid) or almsgiving to the poor (zakat), two of
the five major obligations (arkan al-din) of a Muslim. Ten years later, a
Gallup survey in Tatarstan and Dagestan found that about half of respondents
who declared themselves Muslims said they never performed namaz (prayers) and
were not observing most of the other Islamic practices.”). This
contradiction didn’t prevent mentioning normal human behavior that people may
conduct in regard to selling or buying merchandise, or tourism, which are not
illegal or forbidden whether by the religious or the state laws, because since
the Hajj started approximately 1500 years ago, different people from different
regions and countries were exchanging merchandize and supplies as an acceptable
practice.
In one of the paragraphs that was entitled, (“Islamic Renaissance”: A Complex but Mostly Benign
Interpretation), it was mentioned that a research on the religious, social, and political impacts
of the Hajj outside of Russia challenges both the radical religious and
materialist interpretations of the Hajj. In a 2008 Harvard University working
paper, “Estimating the Impact of the Hajj,” David Clingingsmith, Asim Ijaz
Khwaja, and Michael Kremer assessed the effects of the Hajj on Pakistanis using
a 2006 survey of more than 1,600 Sunni Muslim applicants to Pakistan’s Hajj
visa allocation lottery. Such a research strategy allowed them to control for
initial motivation to perform the Hajj. They then compared the views of successful
and unsuccessful applicants five to eight months after the pilgrimage. While
confined to Pakistan, their findings contain insights on the impact of the Hajj
that may be applicable in the North Caucasus.
On one hand, they uphold a number of concerns about the
impact of the Hajj on regional security:
• Universal Muslim practices spread. The
Pakistan Hajj study found that performing the Hajj almost doubled the
likelihood of nonobligatory fasting and increased by more than a quarter the
likelihood of praying regularly in a mosque. Hajjis were also more likely to
engage in supererogatory (optional) prayers.
• Local (“ethnic”) Muslim practices decline. In
Pakistan, those who returned from the Hajj were less likely to use amulets,
insist on giving dowry, believe that widows had a higher marriage priority than
unmarried women, visit tombs of saints, perform the 40-day death ceremony
(chaleeswan), or wear a cap during prayer. In the North Caucasus, similar
localized practices have also been challenged.
• Faith-based social values become reinforced.
Pakistani Hajjis retained their adherence to Islamic doctrine, including
unequal inheritance laws for men and women, male authority within the
household, and the incorrectness of a woman divorcing her husband. In the North
Caucasus, such values run counter to Russian constitutional rights and law. The
spread or entrenchment of these views can thus help make more plausible
jihadist claims that the Russian government is “infidel” and alien to North
Caucasian societies. This lends credence to those in Russia who are concerned
that the “Islamic Renaissance” in the North Caucasus is politically
destabilizing.
At the same time, research in Pakistan has also shown
that the spread of universal Islamic beliefs and practices may instead benefit
peace and stability in the North Caucasus. The following five effects of the
Hajj, established by the authors of the Harvard study, are notable in this
respect:
• Religious intolerance declines. Hajjis
returned with more positive views of not only Muslims from other countries, but
also religious believers beyond the Islamic world. They were more likely to
believe that various Pakistani ethnic and sectarian Muslim groups, as well as
Muslims and adherents of other religions, were equal and could live in harmony.
• Support for non-violent conflict resolution increases.
Pakistani Hajjis were almost twice as likely as other Muslims to condemn the
goals of Osama bin Laden. Hajjis were also more supportive of peace with India
and less supportive of physical punishment in general.
• Support for Islamization of government decreases.
According to the Pakistan survey, local Hajjis were less inclined to demand
that the state should enforce religious injunctions and that religious leaders
should have the right to act as judges. Hajjis were about as likely as others
to feel that religious leaders should influence government decisions or that
the religious beliefs of politicians were important.
• Social activism fails to increase. Hajjis
paid and received social visits; advised friends and relatives on family,
business, or religion; and joined religious, professional, or educational
organizations about as often or as much as others.
• Younger pilgrims are no more likely to become radicalized
than others. The younger Hajjis in the Pakistan survey were about
as tolerant as others—and even more inclined to peaceful conflict resolution
than older pilgrims.
These findings point to positive impacts of the Hajj
that could be relevant in the North Caucasus as well. At the very least, the
view that the Hajj pilgrimage automatically increases political instability in
the region should be critically re-examined.
Comments
on this part are within the comments on conclusion below.
Voices from the North Caucasus:
Islamization with Tolerance
Focused interviews that I conducted with five local Hajjis in Adygea and
Kabardino-Balkaria in June 2009 suggest that the immediate impacts of the Hajj
on pilgrims in the North Caucasus are largely similar to those recorded in
Pakistan, albeit with local nuances.
First, universal Islamist practices were strengthened.
One interviewee noted that he started to do the optional early morning prayer
more often after the Hajj. Another said the Hajj gave him more authority to
purify local ethnic traditions and to publicly confront local religious elders
(effendi) who distort holy texts at funerals.
Tolerance, too, got a boost. All those interviewed
referenced exposure to the diverse cultures of Muslims from around the world.
Hajjis expressed amazement at this diversity, as well as a strong emotional
sense of unity with these diverse representatives of the Muslim world. Some
also reported excellent relations with local Christians. A Kabardinian Hajji
said this experience promoted his sense that Allah commanded him to do more
good and to be compassionate to others. The Adygean Hajji said that the Hajj
made him set self-restraint and tolerance as his primary objectives for
personal development.
Religion was presented first and foremost as a deeply
personal experience and a means of individual self-improvement and empowerment.
None of the interviewees insisted on changing government leaders or federal or
local laws in order to promote Islamic norms and values.
Additionally, socioeconomic experiences made lasting
impressions. When asked about the most vivid memories of their pilgrimage, two
Hajjis talked primarily about the bargains they got at local stores, the
quality of infrastructure, and the provision of free food and drinks. Others
also devoted significant, though not necessarily exclusive, attention to these
factors. Some interviewees complained that a significant number of other
Russian Hajjis were more interested in shopping and treated holy rituals and
visits to holy sites as sightseeing.
The interviews were also consistent with the Harvard study’s insight that prior
experiences also had an impact on pilgrims, and, therefore, changes in Hajji
views and behavior after the Hajj may not exclusively reflect its impact.
Support for replacing local “ethnic Muslim” customs with “classic” or universal
Islamic rituals, for example, was expressed most strongly by the interviewee
who was taught correct Arabic readings of prayers in childhood, whose
grandfather completed the Hajj, and who had studied Islam in Egypt.
National
issues should not be mixed with religious depictions that reached the degree of
accusations against tens of Muslims of tiny nations of the occupied North
Caucasus that decide to perform their religious duty that approximately 2
million Muslims perform every year (Muslims population of the world is
estimated to be 1.57 Billion) in order to change the quagmire that colonized
nations are subjected to! When someone who is considered to be part of the
occupation and at the same time he got a predetermined conclusion to say, is
conducting personal interviews with “five local Hajjis in Adygea and
Kabardino-Balkaria in June 2009”, who are considering themselves of the
occupied oppressed nation…
Conclusion
For the North Caucasus, these preliminary
findings suggest that a more important question than how the Hajj affects
individual beliefs and practices is how the spread of universal Islamic values
affects the politics of Russian federalism and the motivations of extremist
groups. After all, Pakistan is not necessarily the best model of sectarian
peace and tolerance. Additionally, Pakistani pilgrims cannot experience the
feeling that most North Caucasian pilgrims have experienced, namely that their
individual Hajj pilgrimages are partial atonement (and compensation) for years
of prohibition under the Soviet government of this fundamental Islamic ritual.
Finally, Pakistani Hajjis come from a country that is overwhelmingly Muslim and
with Muslim leaders, whereas Russia’s Muslim population remains a minority in a
state whose leaders are predominantly non-Muslim. For all these reasons, the
politically stabilizing and destabilizing impacts of the Hajj in the North
Caucasus are less clear cut, particularly if social and political grievances
increase among local Muslims. One way or another, the spread of “classical
Islam” in the region is a new reality that calls for rethinking the old
dichotomy between “traditional” and “radical” Islam.
How
could the following be taken as reference of a “study paper” that gets significant
information, which is mentioned as follows: “In
a 2008 Harvard University working paper, “Estimating the Impact of the Hajj,”
David Clingingsmith, Asim Ijaz Khwaja, and Michael Kremer assessed the effects
of the Hajj on Pakistanis using a 2006 survey of more than 1,600 Sunni Muslim
applicants to Pakistan’s Hajj visa allocation lottery. Such a research strategy
allowed them to control for initial motivation to perform the Hajj. Then they
compared the views of successful and unsuccessful applicants five to eight
months after the pilgrimage. While confined to Pakistan, their findings contain
insights on the impact of the Hajj that may be applicable in the North Caucasus.” How 1600
people could (may live in only one neighborhood) that have been described in a
country that got a population of 172 million people, give an indication or
represents an opinion about such a subject?
Such
a choosy, biased and one-way direction conclusion which does not belong to what
the author had called as unrefined comparison
between irrelevant two cases which do not have similar elements to be considered
for such a conjunction. There is no way to compare the conditions between Pakistanis
living in their homeland with a national government is ruling their fait and
destiny, while the people who live in the North Caucasus under a foreign
occupation that came after a series of brutal wars against the nations or the indigenous
peoples of the North Caucasus, which had kept a national situation that kept
the circumstances as unsolved problems with the colonial power that is
controlling their future, and prevent them from restoring their right of
freedom, self-determination and independence.
10, October, 2009
Eagle
Justice For North Caucasus Group
