Our readers continue to ask us to respond to the propaganda of the Kremlin’s servants among the «Muslim bloggers,» and we cannot refuse such persistent requests. So let’s talk again about our Ruslan Kurbanov, whose speech we provide the link to below, so that no one can say that we distort his words or are afraid to quote his ideas in full. (Link to the speech: [insert link])
Let’s leave aside the grotesque apologia of subservience to the state for the Russians of our «new Russians» in brackets, which needs no comment, because commenting on it would only spoil it. Let’s focus on two theses of this message, addressed to Muslims and his fellow interpreters (link to their channel: [insert link]).
The first thesis is about freedom, which the West appeals to and which exists in the West, but is hypocritical and does not correspond to the understanding of Islam. First of all, for many years, including when commenting on the confrontation between the Putin regime and the Russian opposition, we have always said and continue to repeat that Muslims should have their own agenda and that the goal of Muslims in this whole story should be to regain their subjectivity.
Now let’s look at it from this point of view — with whom can Muslims potentially have a chance to achieve this, and with whom can they not, even in theory? Obviously, with the current government, there is no chance and there cannot be. And while commenting on the speeches of all these pro-Kremlin «Muslim public figures», we repeatedly state that they understand this very well. Because they started when there were at least illusory hopes for something else. But they continued even when it became clear to them and their principled allies that Muslims cannot have any subjectivity under the Kremlin. Then their allies gave up these illusions. And they, too, gave them up and simply started working for the Kremlin, without any hope of achieving their own subjectivity.
That is why in Ruslan’s argumentation you will no longer hear what he wrote about in his best years — about the prospects of the Islamic project. It has simply disappeared from the agenda of pro-Kremlin «Muslim bloggers,» who only appeal to the idea that the West is bad and that everything is not so bad in Putin’s Russia.
But even if the West is so bad, Muslim lands and peoples in Russia are not under Western occupation, and it is not Western power that prevents them from gaining their Muslim subjectivity. So why do you focus on the problems of freedom in the West instead of thinking about how to overthrow the power that does not allow Muslims to achieve their own subjectivity? The answer is simple — because you have already given up this subjectivity and become servants of the Kremlin.
Secondly, it is precisely against this background that it becomes clear why, despite all the problems with freedom in the West that we know and write about, when it is not overshadowed by more urgent and important news, the Western Rumskaya model is preferable to the Eastern Pharaoh model for Muslims. This is because, despite all the shortcomings of the Western concept of freedom, especially in its modern form, the social concept of individual rights allows a believing individual to maintain his identity by using his rights and defending his rights against the pressure of the environment.
By the way, if we talk about such resistance in the context of war, a good example is the action of Muhammad Ali in the United States during the Vietnam War. Moreover, it was against American imperialism, which should please the pro-Kremlin bloggers. Muhammad Ali, like many black Americans at that time, refused to join the army and fight in the war, and he called on others to do the same. He was under great pressure, and many of those who fought for the rights of the black minority at that time were repressed and terrorized, and leaders like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King were even killed. This is a question of the limits of freedom in the West. But even in those circumstances, such struggle and subjectivity of minorities, including Muslims, were possible in such an American, Western system, unlike in China or Putin’s Russia, to which the pro-Kremlin «Muslim bloggers» call us.
As for China or Putin’s Russia, it is impossible there. And that is why Ruslan, unlike Muhammad Ali or Malcolm X, does not call on Muslims in Russia not to take part in a meaningless, haram war that contradicts Islam, thus sacrificing their worldly and eternal life. Otherwise he would have been killed, arrested or forced to leave the country like many of his former allies. Although, as we constantly warn, the experience of many of them shows that this often happened even with their demonstrative loyalty to the authorities.
The second thesis is that Muslims do not have to leave the «Sinicized» Putin’s Russia, where life will be difficult but POSSIBLE because their ancestors are buried there.
First of all, we never said that everyone should leave, as we are often accused of doing. And it is clear that it is impossible and unnecessary for the millions of Muslims living in Russia to leave. The question is always different: «Should you leave or not, and if so, what and at what cost?»
If you can stay and contribute to Islam and Muslims according to your abilities without causing more harm, please do so. If you can avoid conscription and mobilization for a criminal war by hiding somewhere in the desert and helping your relatives there, or by translating books and recording neutral Islamic lectures, please do so. But if you have no choice and you will be drafted or imprisoned for your activities, or worse, if you will be forced to urge Muslims to go to such a war, or to justify Pharaoh’s policies, including claiming that somewhere in Canada gays are teaching children, and the only alternative to all this is to leave, then you should leave.
As for the ancestral tombs, this is a serious and painful question. Moreover, we can add another card to the pro-Kremlin «Muslim bloggers» — abroad you will not only not be buried next to your ancestors, but there is no certainty that you will be buried properly as a Muslim. And of course, you have to think about this in advance and try to prepare yourself during your lifetime to ensure that this issue is properly resolved after your death.
But let’s ask ourselves — should the main motive of a Muslim’s life, which justifies all his actions, be to be buried next to his ancestors or in a Muslim cemetery in his place of residence? After all, thousands of Sahabah dispersed from Medina to spread Islam throughout the world and were buried abroad, where they died — some in wars for the faith, others in travels for the sake of its propagation. Most of their graves are unknown and have long since been overgrown, desecrated, etc. And who will be resurrected in a better position — the inhabitants of such graves or those buried in Muslim cemeteries next to their ancestors, but at the cost of betraying Islam and the interests of Muslims?
No, we are not saying that those who left their homeland, even for principled reasons, are guaranteed resurrection with the Sahabah, and those who stayed and were buried with their ancestors are not. The point is that the desire to live next to one’s ancestors and to be buried next to them should not turn a person into someone who is buried alive and does not want to admit it to himself…