SPEAKING
FREELY Eid
al-Adha, a Russian holiday? By
Chris Monday
Speaking Freely is an
Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
'Tis the season of
mangled Russian holidays. "National Unity Day"
(November 4) pretends to honor Russia's
sixteenth-century struggle against 'Poland.'
Professional historians agree that this 'Time of
Troubles' is best described as a civil war and not
as 'foreign intervention.' The holiday is a
pastiche of such Stalinist myth-making, as Viktor
Pudovkin's movie "Minin and Pozarsky"
(1939).
Today 'Unity Day' ferments
adolescent xenophobia, while the
demoted "Day of the
Great October Socialist Revolution" caters to some
seniors' nostalgia for the darker elements of the
Soviet utopia. The festivities culminate with a
"New Year's" celebrations(January 1 to 5)
specifically crafted to thwart Orthodox fasting.
To this day, Orthodox Christmas (January 7)
remains a hung-over afterthought. Even the powers
of the Russian satirist Mikhail Zadornov fail to
explain this postmodern melange. The majority of
Russians loath the administrated mirth: many
hamlets, in fact, have returned to traditional
Christian and even pre-Christian celebrations.
It is not only Russia that is confounded
by state-created memorials. In the US, political
correctness clashes with tradition, creating
unease on "President's Day" and the largely
defunct "Columbus Day." The South Korean state
doggedly imposes "the Day of Tangun," which would
be equivalent to the worship of the proto-Slavic
Perun. As the anthropologist James Frazer
predicted, mass psycho-sexual cleansing rituals,
such as Halloween (Samhain, Lemuria) still reign
supreme.
In distinction to the Christian
world's pandemonium, this October witnessed the
hallowed rites of Muslims. An increasing number of
Russian citizens and guest workers perform these
rites, which entail significant personal cost and
sacrifice. Contrasting the artificiality of the
top-down, mandated holidays with Muslim popular
celebrations and taking into account the rising
importance of Muslims, Russia would be well served
to replace "National Unity Day" or "Independence
Day" with a Muslim festival, such as Eid al-Adha
or Eid-ul-Fitr, commemorating the end of Ramadan,
as a public holiday. This would bring several
concrete benefits.
Firstly, it would unify
the peoples of Russia, creating the opportunity
for non-Muslim to broaden their minds. I worked as
a US Peace Corps volunteer in a Catholic school in
Kenya, a predominantly Christian nation, which
nonetheless makes a point of celebrating
Eid-ul-Fitr. The holiday gave us teachers a chance
to talk about the contributions of Muslim culture.
In the same way, Martin Luther King Day in the
United States affords an opportunity for
schoolchildren to appreciate the contributions of
African-Americans.
Recognizing an Islamic
holiday is especially important in Russia where
Muslims maintain a tenuous public presence. Even
within liberal bastions, such as the radio station
Ekho Moskvy, let alone on the state networks,
there are few Muslim voices. Rather pundits talk
about Islam. Russian culture, moreover, is
beholden to powerful, negative stereotypes created
by Orientalist works: unfortunately, the genius of
Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Soviet movie-making has
turned the Russian mind into a "Captive of the
Caucasus."
The extremely crude caricatures
of Muslims found in Russian news can only remind
historians of the anti-Semitism of such infamous
nineteenth-century works as the play
"Contrabandists." The alienation of Muslims from
Russian national life impoverishes civic culture.
As a result, even progressives are skeptical of
supporting democratic movements because they dread
unleashing wild prejudice.
In fact today's
"Muslim question" echoes the so-called Jewish
question of a bygone age. On the eve of the
Russian Revolution, sensible voices (Simon Dubnov
and Yuli Gessen) called for a certain level of
autonomy and official recognition of Jewish
culture. Instead, these moderates were repressed.
As a consequence, Russia received Trotsky, while
one of Russia's most productive ethnic groups
emigrated. Political scientist Paul Collier has
calculated the costs of such policies,
demonstrating that regimes which repress their
minorities experience low economic growth.
Viewed from a more cynical, geopolitical
standpoint, Russia would receive other gains from
officially recognizing a Muslim holiday. Such a
move would showcase an enlightened policy to the
Islamic world, which would win friends in the
Caucuses and Central Asia. In these regions,
Russia must exploit every advantage it can muster
against such formidable competitors as China,
Turkey, and India. Instituting a Muslim holiday
would highlight the problems each of these nations
face with their own minorities. Russia would also
earn kudos from the European community, showing
Europe that it is in the vanguard. Finally, this
move would mobilize a traditional Russian
advantage. A peculiarity of the Russian
ideological constellation is that conservatives
traditionally subordinate ethnic-Russian interests
to empire. As shown by historian Dominic Lieven,
this made the Orthodox Tsarist Empire highly
competitive.
According to historians
Robert Crews and John Armstrong, the Tsars and
Soviets cunningly fostered the spread of Islam to
further their own ends. Today's leading
nationalists, Alexander Prokhanov, Alexander
Dugin, and Nikita Mikhailkov, call for a "Fifth
Empire" and a "symphony of peoples."
For
these reasons, Russia would be wise to learn from
its past mistakes - and from its past triumphs -
by sanctioning a day of rest for the Muslim hands
that will soon dominate trade, construction,
schools, and the armed forces.
Chris
Monday is an assistant professor at Dongseo
University, South Korea
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say.Please
click hereif you are interested in
contributing. Articles submitted for this section
allow our readers to express their opinions and do
not necessarily meet the same editorial standards
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