Russia: Authorities Seek To Convert Beslan's Muslims
rferl ^ | September 7, 2005
In the year
since the Beslan tragedy, North Ossetian security officials
have sought to close down all independent Muslim organizations
there, a campaign that has caused at least some members of
historically Islamic nationalities to announce their conversion
to Orthodox Christianity.
Tartu,
6 September -- Prior to the terrorist attack, 70 percent of
the residents of Beslan considered themselves Muslims,
according to a report in "Nasha versiya" this week.
This report is somewhat anomalous because Ossetians are traditionally
Christians and they account for 60 percent of the republic's total population of some
710,000.
But
now, the number of Muslims in Beslan has declined significantly
as officials have indicated that they view anyone who "actively
practices" Islam as "an enemy," according to
religare.ru on 30 August.
Earlier this
year, Taymuraz Kasaev, the North Ossetian minister for nationality
affairs, said officials had decided they must take steps in
order to ensure complete "transparency in the work of
every social organization [and maintain] closer contacts with
all religious and national communities."
The meaning behind
Kasaev’s words quickly became clear. A local paper indicated
that the authorities planned to shut down the activities of
all Muslim groups that were not prepared to subordinate themselves
to the government-financed and controlled Muslim Spiritual
Directorate, a body that in North Ossetia is headed by a former
police officer.
Over the next
months, the authorities in Beslan and across North Ossetia
arrested numerous independent Muslim leaders, sometimes even
planting evidence on them and sentencing them to confinement
in prison camps. And fearing arrest, other Muslim leaders
either stopped preaching in public or fled the republic, "Nasha
versiya" reports.
But this police
campaign against "unofficial" Islam -- which had
been the more dynamic part of the Muslim scene in Beslan as
it has been elsewhere -- intentionally or not has had the
effect of undermining the position of the official Islamic
establishment and its followers as well.
On the one hand,
this campaign led the local authorities to take an even harder
line against official mosques. Plans to build a mosque in
Beslan appear to have been put on permanent hold. Moreover,
republic officials reportedly are considering closing down
the main mosque of North Ossetia in Vladikavkaz and converting
it into a museum of some kind.
And on the other,
many members of historically Muslim nationalities are having
themselves baptized, either as a result of their horror at
what the Islamic radicals did at the school or, what is more
likely in today’s climate, their recognition that being identified
as a practicing Muslim in Beslan is potentially dangerous.
According to
"Nasha versiya": "Many children who survived
the terrorist act and the parents of those who did not have
been baptized, despite the fact that earlier they considered
themselves Muslims. And those residents of Beslan who died
-- including Muslims -- have been buried according to Orthodox
custom, and none of their relatives has complained.”
Russian
Orthodox priests in Beslan have confirmed this development,
Russian news agencies reported this week, with one priest
reportedly saying that the number of people seeking baptisms
in his parish alone had gone up 500 percent over the year
before and in the republic as a whole risen by at least one-third.
Father Vladimir
attributed these conversions -- which he said involved many
who had been hostages -- to the activities of Bishop Feofan
of Stavropol and Vladikavkaz, who took an active role in the
hostage crisis and in the treatment of the bereaved and wounded
after the authorities ended the standoff.
But
such conversions, however welcome they may be to the Orthodox
Church, are not the end of the story. Many of these newly
baptized may quickly fall away from their new faith. And at
least some of those who had been the followers of unofficial
or official Islam may now be driven to listen to underground
Muslim activists with a more active and more radical message.
To the extent
that happens -- and the experience of Muslims in both Soviet
and post-Soviet times suggests this is the most likely outcome
-- the efforts against Islam in Beslan over the past year
may set the stage for more, rather than less, Islamist radicalism
not only there but across the north Caucasus in the future.
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2005/09/8295114F-9A3D-4ED9-97C7-5A15A0D66FA4.html
There are a number of things that
I think that are remarkable about this story.
First who would have ever thought
that (Godless) Russia especially under the former communist
and KGB agent Putin would have ever embraced Christianity?
This is a historic opportunity
for biblical Christainity to go door to door in a city of
700,000 and preach Christ, the love of God and Love of one's
neighbor -- not conversion by the edge of the sword
How would it be in a country
that has lived in the shadow of death under communism and
now under the cult of death that is in muslimism?
This is the time for anyone that
has a true desire to preach the Gospel rather than reaching
a denomination or one's own ministry to hit the beaches in
this country
And if this country were turned
into a christian nation amid the sea of darkness around it
how glorious would that be?
This is a time to pray that God would send laborers into that harvest.