Just yesterday we wrote about the «hype» surrounding polygamy and how Muslims should approach such «hypes» wisely (https://golosislama.com/news.php?id=37259). We had intended to close the topic on our own, but the involvement of another prominent public figure in the discussion does not allow us to do so.
Therefore, the Russian Orthodox Church, through its Deputy Head of the Department for Public Relations, Vakhtang Kipshidze, decided to comment on the initiative of the Head of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Ravil Gainutdin, and the Head of its Moscow branch, Ildar Alyautdinov, regarding the legalization of polygamy in Russia.
Mr. Kipshidze disputed the claims of his Muslim colleagues that the non-recognition of polygamy leads to problems with illegitimate children, stating that the cause of such problems is the «lack of responsibility of spouses and fathers of illegitimate children». Regarding the latter, he suggested «strengthening the legal responsibility of their biological fathers.
This is an amusing exchange of views, considering that for Muslims there is no problem with «illegitimate children» due to the non-recognition by the state of Islamic marriages with a second, third, or fourth wife — if such a marriage is contracted in accordance with the requirements of the Sharia, it is recognized by Muslims as a marriage (nikah), and children from it are considered «legitimate» or lawfully born.
The same cannot be said with certainty about Mr. Kipshidze’s proposed «responsibility of biological fathers» — while the state can legally recognize such paternity and grant him full rights, it remains a big question whether he would be recognized as such by Muslims if there were no Islamic marriage, and by Orthodox Christians if there were no church marriage. At least classical Islamic law (fiqh) answers this question in the negative, although it is possible to consider the fact that new circumstances, such as DNA testing, have emerged in our time that require a new ijtihad (legal judgment).
Therefore, there is a clash between the religious Islamic, the religious Orthodox Christian and the secular logic, and in this case the representative of the Russian Orthodox Church insists that the latter should correspond to the Christian approach, but not to the Muslim one. In his opinion, it is necessary to adhere to the understanding of the «traditional family» as a «strong union of a man and a woman».
Mr. Kipshidze is unaware that for Muslims a «traditional family» can be both monogamous and polygamous, and that until the Communist regime came to power, which the Russian Orthodox Church does not like, polygamy was a widespread and normal phenomenon among the Muslim peoples of the Russian Empire, including Tatars and Bashkirs, who are convinced otherwise by liars and ignoramuses.
Perhaps this is because Mr. Kipshidze does not know our country well enough, where dozens of indigenous peoples live on their own land, not immigrant diasporas? Hardly — as his biography shows, he was born in Moscow and graduated from MGIMO, so he should have a good understanding of the country he lives in. In this case, his approach seems to be a deliberate attempt to exclude Islam and Muslims from the «traditional» scope of Russia and to equate them with the views of Christian churches and peoples.
But the most interesting part is different. As far as we could understand from their words, representatives of the Council of Muftis of Russia proposed to legalize polygamy specifically for Muslims. Of course, how to distinguish Muslims from non-Muslims in a secular state is a question, and with logical development such a proposal requires recognition of Sharia jurisdiction, as is the case in some countries, such as Greece and its Western Thrace, or as it was in pre-revolutionary Russia.
However, the essence of the idea was precisely the recognition of polygamy for Muslims, and even Kipshidze’s former colleague from his church agency, Vsevolod Chaplin, understood it in this way, stating that «Muslims should decide for themselves».
So why doesn’t the current leadership of the Department of Public Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church take the same position out of elementary respect for another «traditional» confession? After all, we all understand perfectly well that this idea has no chance of even being considered in the State Duma, let alone being passed.
In such a situation, the Russian Orthodox Church could easily ignore this proposal and limit itself to a neutral comment that the Church follows the Christian concept of marriage and that national family legislation is the prerogative of the state, not religious organizations.
But instead, a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church hastened to declare that the Christian view of the family should be the traditional one for all of Russia, and that Muslims should also adhere only to it. In other words, once again the Russian Orthodox Church decided to tell the representatives of the «brotherly» «traditional» confession their place in «united» Russia.
(In the photo — an Orthodox priest presents an icon for kissing to the «Mufti of Holy Russia» (his self-designation) Talgat Tadzhuddin)