The editorial board of the Voice of Islam will not conclude the outgoing year of 2018 according to the Gregorian calendar with a «hit parade» of top news, best articles, authors, etc. However, not in the spirit of celebration, which we do not have, but in the spirit of responsibility, we will try to highlight the main media and socio-political trends that emerged in 2018 regarding Muslims in Russia.
Muslims in Russia and their problems are finally being noticed. Of course, not by state and pro-government media and politicians, who continue to promote not only anti-Islamic views in the country, but also spread Islamophobia worldwide, as channels like Russia Today do. But both qualitatively and quantitatively, much more attention is being paid to the problems of Muslims by serious media and public platforms opposed to the existing government.
This year, there was a breakthrough regarding the persecution of Muslims on the MediaZona website. Coverage of regular arrests of Muslims, attacks on mosques, serious investigations into abductions and extrajudicial killings of Muslims in the Caucasus — everything we have known and written about for years in the Islamic media space, largely thanks to this website, has recently entered the agenda of independent Russian media. Since MediaZona is actively read in journalistic circles, this news began to appear on other prominent platforms such as Dozhd, Snob, MBH Media and others. In this context, attention was also drawn to the persecution of Muslims by the Memorial Human Rights Center, which created an information base around it. On one of the leading opposition platforms — Free Russia Forum in Vilnius, human rights activist Ruslan Kambiev spoke about the repression against Muslims. This is a small breakthrough not only in terms of media, but also in terms of socio-political nature, as many Russian public figures, who previously perceived Muslims as supporters of the existing regime, now had an opportunity to learn about their real situation and to look at this issue differently.
Regional projects became powerful «hotspots» that created significant resonance around the problems of Muslims. Radio Svoboda’s Crimean Reality, Caucasus Reality, and the newly launched Idel Reality website — these secular media outlets today actively discuss the problems of Muslims in Russia, about which the majority of Russian Islamic media remain silent. All this vividly demonstrates that the realization of the importance of the Islamic factor is beginning to reach the most active part of Russian society, which until recently tended to ignore or deliberately silence it.
But what about the Islamic factor itself? It turns out that at the moment it serves as an object of close attention of external forces, not without the active participation of their agents of influence in the form of Muslims working within these forces. And this is undoubtedly better than nothing, than complete silence and beatings behind closed doors, which has been the case until recently. But are Muslims ready to formulate their aspirations clearly and in a politically adequate language, both for themselves and for their partners in the public and media space? Does the nominally liberal opposition segment have a vision not only of the country in which its supporters do not want to live, but also of what they aspire to instead? And what about Muslims? Let’s face it — some of them are afraid to ask these questions themselves. Many of those who have answered them for themselves have an answer that is completely incompatible with coexistence on new principles with potential allies. As a result, many of the Muslim victims of current repressions can only be «patients» of non-Islamic human rights activists and the media, whom they regard as «useful idiots,» when in fact the opposite is true…
Against this background, the «Voice of Islam» remains, without false modesty, the only independent and politically adequate media platform for Islamic civil society. Its survival this year has been questioned not only by the opposition of external enemies, but also by the uncertainty whether such a site is really needed by Russian Muslims and their associates. In the end, however, the website managed to survive, and the fact that such a platform exists is an important result of 2018 not only for us, but also for the emerging Islamic civil society, which has its own platform and voice.
At the same time, we are realistic about our capabilities. Compared to well-funded projects such as MediaZona, MBH Media, Crimea.Reality, CaucasusReality, IdelReality, etc., we do not have the resources to produce an intensive news product. On the other hand, in the viral spread of information through social networks, this may not be so critical, although it certainly indicates the imbalance of resources and the development of the Islamic and liberal segments of the media and public space…
In these conditions, the mission of «Voice of Islam» is to express the Islamic perspective, the perspective from within the Islamic space, on the events taking place both inside and outside it. And in this respect it has much more potential than Muslims or their friends working in non-Islamic projects. However, we should not rest on our laurels — it is not so much the «Voice of Islam» that benefits, but rather Islamic civil society, whose voice it almost single-handedly represents in the visible media. If it wants to go beyond being a client or patient of the opposition liberal media and human rights activists, whose attention to our problems we welcome, then this society, through its authorities, must articulate its vision of the role of Muslims in the country’s future. It is clear that the authority of a few «sharp pens» is completely insufficient here — this requires a collective political declaration by people with significant authority among Muslims of the main regions and nationalities of Russia. Will they be ready for it at least in 2019?