TALLINN, Estonia, Nov. 20 (UPI) -- Islam.ru, the most visited Russian-language Internet portal devoted to news about Muslims in Russia, received an email from a visitor asking why Muslims have left countries where they form a majority for Europe where they form only a small portion of the population.
The site's response, which took the form of an essay by Anastasia Yezhova that was posted on Tuesday, provides an intriguing glimpse into the ways many Muslims in the Russian Federation view both Muslim countries and Muslim minorities abroad -- attitudes that may gain in significance if the violence in France continues.
Yezhova, who writes frequently and sympathetically on a wide variety of Islamic issues, begins by observing something that many in the West increasingly point to but that few in Russia regularly note: Muslims are often freer to practice their faith in the secular West than in their Muslim homelands.
In fact, Yezhova says, "the majority of states of Asia and Africa with traditionally Islamic populations conduct repressive police policies toward Islam and Islamic movements. They throw convinced, politically active Muslims into jail, they torture them, and they restrict their daily activities" in a variety of ways.
She surveys conditions in Turkey, in the Palestinian authority, and in Saudi Arabia and concludes that "as a result of pressure at all levels -- from the every day to the political-ideological -- Muslim activists are actively emigrating to Europe with its softer political climate."
Of course, she adds, economic factors play a role in emigration -- grinding poverty is also driving Muslims out of these countries -- but the anti-Islamic policies of nominally Muslim states, she insists, explain far more of the departures than most ordinary people and even many experts have assumed.
According to Yezhova, Muslims who do go to Europe only seek to be treated fairly and to be allowed to practice their own religion in peace. They are not there as missionaries or agents seeking to impose their religion on Europeans because as the Koran insists, religion cannot be imposed but only accepted.
That does not mean that Muslims in Europe do not have strongly-held positions on many social and political issues or that their views on these questions do not reflect Islam. On the contrary, many of them speak out on the basis of their faith "against the current harsh neo-liberal and imperialist polices" of Western countries.
But Yezhova says that it is important not to equate ethnic diasporas and Muslim movements. Many of those demonstrating in France are doing so because they are convinced they have been mistreated because of their ethnicity or their race rather than because of their faith.
Islamic parishes are not organized along ethnic lines, and consequently, they seldom defend the interests of a single ethnic diaspora. Their goals, Yezhova adds, include "the defense of Muslims regardless of their ethnic membership" and also promoting "social-political activity based on the observance of Muslim principles."
Summing up, Yezhova suggests that Islamic communities regardless of their ethnic composition are committed to fighting oppression and promoting social, economic and political justice. As a result, they often find themselves in close alliance with predominantly Muslim ethnic diasporas and with non-Muslim groups as well.
Yezhova's article was not the only posting on this site this week that provides clues about what Muslims in the Russian Federation are thinking not only about the events in France but also more generally about the Muslim world and its relations with non-Muslim societies and states.
Another essay, carried the same day as Yezhova's, provided an intriguing discussion of just how people out to view what is going on in Paris. It cited the conclusions reached two generations ago by Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse concerning what he saw as the revolutionary potential of diaspora groups.
Indeed, the article noted, the American Marxist concluded that diasporas, like those now rioting in French cities, could serve as a kind of surrogate proletariat that might provide new energy for the revolutionary movement he hoped would ultimately overthrow existing regimes.
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(Paul Goble teaches at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia.)
