The following interviews are another attempt to get answers to questions about what is happening in Islam and the Islamic world in modern conditions. Variants of answers were presented by the authors of articles in this issue, and similar problems were discussed at a round table. The peculiarity of these interviews is that they were conducted not just with people who study Islam in one way or another and are trying to understand what is happening. Our interlocutors are Muslims, and Muslims whose religious beliefs differ to a certain extent. That is, it is a view of the problem not from the outside, but from the inside, and from different ideological positions.

To make it easier for the reader to compare these positions, the interviews were conducted in approximately the same way, with a similar set of questions. But at the same time, we did not force our interlocutors into a rigid format, they had the opportunity to deviate from the topic, to dwell in more detail on what seemed to them the most important and interesting.

Our interlocutors were:

Tawfiq Ibrahim - Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, Chief Researcher of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He is engaged in the history of Muslim thought, a supporter of the reformist trend in Islam.

Orhan Cemal is a journalist, one of the founders of the Muslim Union of Journalists of Russia, and a supporter of political Islam.

The main idea that Orkhan Jemal expresses in his interview is that the current stage of Islamic revival is not the desire to move back to the past or denial of progress. But as a result of social progress leading to the marginalization of a huge portion of the Islamic religious community due to the loss of political representation after the Islamic caliphate was destroyed, the search for the new forms of such representation is in progress. This search takes place in different forms, and it is accompanied by violence as it presupposes radical political shifts. The same thing occurred in the other similar situations, for example in the course of the Protestant Reformation, and in implementation of the communist project. Orkhan did not connect the current situation in Islam with migration from Muslim states to the West (he explained the problems that arose here by the crisis of Europe itself). At the same time, he thinks that one of the forms of Islamic expansion should be the development of a model of life for everyone (including non-Muslims) that is characterized by serious moral superiority compared to the current Western way of life.

Keywords: Islamism, caliphate, political representation, Islamic way of development, Arabic spring, Islamic terrorism.

Recently, more and more news, and the top news is connected in one way or another either with the Islamic world, or with Islam as a religion, or even in some situations with Islamic eschatology. That is, something like this is happening with Islam,

Jemal O. Islamskoe vozrozhdenie kak poisk novykh formov politicheskogo predstavleniya (interview) [Islamic Revival as a search for new forms of political representation (interview)]. 2017. N 3. pp. 318-331.

Jemal, Orkhan (2017) "Islamic Revival as a Search for New Forms of Political Representation" (interview), Gosudarstvo. religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 35(3): 318-331.

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whether in Islamic countries, which always produces a stream of news. I don't remember much about Africa or Latin America, but I hear about the Middle East all the time. But what exactly is going on? Why is that?

Orhan Cemal: You know, the Chinese have a saying: God forbid we live in an era of change. We live in an era of change. There is just such a heavy historical step, we just got to the time of changes, the time of big events, the time when the overall picture, the overall outline of the world is at the bifurcation point and will change. And this point of bifurcation, it is located just at the junction of the Islamic and Christian worlds. This is not to suggest that Huntington and Toynbee were right about their clash of civilizations. No, that's not the point. Just now there is a situation that the world has logically come to.

We must admit that all this goes back to the turn of the XIX and XX centuries, when the world was still old, it still had certain archaic features and in some respects it was comparable to the world of the Crusades or even the Battle of Pavia. At this time, there was a huge Ottoman Empire. It was sick, it was rotten, outdated, archaic. There were huge internal problems, internal contradictions of the Ottoman Porte: Egypt was already separated there, they were already being knocked out of the Balkans, Turkey itself was bursting at the seams, the Arabs were rebelling. But, nevertheless, it was the very subject that claimed a central position in the Islamic Ummah, such a political subjectivity.

All this nightmare was put to an end during the First World War, when this very decrepit Ottoman Empire got involved, along with Germany, in a huge war and was defeated. The Islamic world, on the one hand, breathed a sigh of relief, because there is no longer this sick man of Europe, there is no longer this archaism, which, in addition to the archaism of the mother country, Turkey itself, still preserved much more archaism on its periphery, did not allow these territories to develop and live. And then you can absorb everything and everything: both Western innovations and non-Western innovations. This was done, and very specific trends emerged in the Arab world: the Ba'athist doctrine, Arab national socialism flourished. Si issues occurred-

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government systems such as the Libyan Jamahiriya. There were certain processes, but subjectivity disappeared.

Here the proletariat of the whole world in the XX century had such a head - it was the USSR. Those who did not really like the USSR specifically, they had small alternative heads in the form of Beijing or in the form of Havana, but in principle a certain class political subjectivity-it remained. The head had a place to be. And in principle, not only proletarians from all parts of the world could appeal to it, but also people fighting for their independence, and for many other things, for example, for the environment. But the Muslims did not have such a thing. At first it seemed that it was not so important - develop, master innovations, see how great it is in Britain there, I don't know, in America, in France - how civilized and progressive they are, how much they surpass us.

The key event of the 20th century, which showed that everything is not so, everything is more complicated, was 1947, the formation of the State of Israel. In the XX century, they did what was already not customary in the XIX century, how the issue with the Indians was resolved. At that moment, the realization came that there was no one to intercede. There is absolutely no one to intercede. And a conglomerate of political entities like, say, monarchies or Ba'athist regimes, it is very changeable, each pulls in its own direction.

Against this background, a completely different process developed, which, in fact, formed the current emphasis. This is a party that originated in Egypt, it is called the Muslim Brotherhood, 1 the Ikhwans. They said that the Western path is not ours, we are the defeated party in this process. But we have an alternative. Moreover, we do not completely abandon any Western innovations. We are quite ready to use something from their experience. But in general, we have an alternative. And this theme of our Islamic path has led to mass disillusionment and understanding that for the West we are just defeated savages.

Then the Ikhvans had their own story. Various groups have sprung up from them, some of them we consider terrorist, some not. On the one hand, those Ikhwans who are against violence, on the other hand, let us never forget that al-Qaeda 2

1. Prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.

2. Prohibited in the Russian Federation by the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation, dated 14.02.2003 N GKPI 03 116, entered into force on 04.03.2003.

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it was also formed on the basis of Ikhvanists. That is, it led to the idea of a radical struggle. And what we have and what gives rise to such a flow of events is the Arab Spring, the Syrian events, and to a certain extent the Afghan events-this is precisely what is happening in the world for a certain such a large political subjectivity among Muslims. Naturally, there are completely deadlocked attempts: let's try networks like Al-Qaeda; and let's try to be based on the territory of Russia, like the Islamic State.3 But in general, this is just the process when these huge billions, the thinking class, the radical class among them, realized that the loss of political subjectivity is evil for one and a half billion people. For them, this is evil, and it needs to be somehow restored, the issue needs to be resolved. And we are in such a phase, and the struggle for this political subjectivity is underway. The kingdom of God is taken by force 4.

And why exactly is the idea of going back to its roots in order to once again become a leading force in the world so widespread? As I understand it, many people see the reason that Islam has lost its leading role and the West has made such a breakthrough in moving away from the correct Islam.

First, the idea that we have moved away and that's why everything is crooked, oblique, and if we fought with swords and bows, as in the time of the Prophet, then everything would be fine - we can not say that it is completely absent. But this is very deeply marginal.

Why swords and bows? Chop your hands down there, stone them?

Once again, the idea of going back to the Stone Age, driving yourself into it, because it's better that way, is quite a marginal idea. This is well understood in the Islamic world. Naturally, there are such street passionaries who-yes, chop hands, yes!

3. Prohibited on the territory of the Russian Federation.

4. "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven is taken by force, and those who use effort take it away" (Matthew 11: 12).

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But in principle, the idea itself is marginal. We simply recall the events that gave rise to this subject - the Caliphate, gave rise to it despite all the circumstances. Otherwise, it is not perceived as a historical miracle. It gave birth to us.

And the struggle is, in fact, for a return to a political role, to political weight. When the caliph is obliged to stand up for anyone and anywhere, that is, his power is partly extraterritorial in nature. Caliph of all Muslims, not just there square kilometers. And Salafism itself, which actively exploits this idea, because it was born whenever it was about external oppression. In fact, the history of the formation of this movement can go even further than Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who is a byword for everyone, and already there go down to Ibn Taymiyyah. What kind of ideology was it? It was an ideology that emerged as resistance to the attacking Mongols, who seized the Abbasid caliphate, enslaved everything around them. The terrible Mongol campaign swept away the Abbasid caliphate, and at that moment the ideology of resistance emerged, it was precisely Ibn Taymiyyah who clearly formulated it. Like Ibn Abd al-Wahhab, he was also an ideologue of resistance, he fought for Arab independence against Turkish hegemony. That is, and in this case it was the case. And the resuscitation of this trend on the eve of the First World War-this was also the undermining of Turkish influence in the Arabian Peninsula. That is, in principle, when we say that we need to go back, of course, there are people who will talk about the archaic. And there are people who understand this as a return to what was lost.

Why should we go back instead of going forward?

And what does it mean to go forward?

Well, to something new. The idea of progress, is it denied?

And why progress is denied, if progress is present, is obvious, it is ridiculous to deny it. Both as technical progress, and as information progress, and as a social complication of the system. There is progress. Simply, when we say-to follow the path of progress-what is meant? That's historically so

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it turned out that this huge religious community, in fact, was to some extent marginalized. Yes, this is historically objective, and certain reasons and prerequisites have led to this. But this does not mean that historical objectivity cannot be overcome. In fact, history is a cycle of such extremes that overcome historical prerequisites.

As far as one can understand, the current stage of such a movement-it still began with the Arab Spring. Well, anyway, I've been hearing about Islam every day since the Arab Spring.

The process began, in my opinion, in the late 20s, very soon after the disappearance of the Caliphate and the emergence of the Ikhwans. It smouldered, lasted and rotted, it entered a clinch with Ba'athist entities, with pro-American regimes like Sadat or Mubarak. It spilled out into such a big cauldron of the world and became significant not only for the regions, went beyond the scale of domestic cuisine with the beginning of the Afghan war. This has already become a serious factor. And then the situation only got worse and worse, went through different phases. When, for example, in Algeria at the turn of the 80-90s, it became quite obvious that, as Mao said, a rifle gives birth to power. In other words, simple democratic processes ensure only the transit of power within the political consensus. Any figure who is outside this consensus will be swept away, and no one cares about the results of the vote. Algeria has shown that you can vote any way you want, but there will be a military junta, not Islamists.

I understand that the phenomenon of the Arab Spring does not fully fit into your logic, because it was not a purely Islamic phenomenon. There were also a lot of very different forces.

You know, there is an Islamic parable. In my opinion, it belongs almost to the time of Ja'far al-Sadiq. They came to him and asked: where should we look for true, pure Islam, and where should we look for pure Muslims, true Muslims? He said, " Look for chi-

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True Islam is in the Koran, and true Muslims are in their graves. This was Ja'far al-Sadiq, who was only six generations away from Hazrat Ali, one of the Prophet's closest companions. Even then, this was the wording. There is no such thing as pure Islam. We don't operate in some kind of sterile, laboratory environment, there is everything everywhere. Complex situational conjunctions are possible. In general, it is very wrong to believe that everywhere there was an Arab Spring, everything was the same. The only thing that unites the Arab Spring is, first of all, that it is Arab, that is, that a general media field has been created for it - this is Al-Jazeera. The second thing that united us was the Islamic countries that were ruled by secular authoritarian or totalitarian regimes, that is, the overthrow of tyranny in an Islamic country. And the fact that there were not only Muslims, but also democrats (by the way, one does not contradict the other completely), that there could be people for whom Islam is not a super-important thing, well, they just existentially want to take a sip of freedom - another question. That is, of course, there is no sterility. This isn't an operating room.

But pay attention - is this the first time that these outbursts, this anger, this resistance has taken place in these countries? Has there never been an uprising in Syria? Never had an uprising in Egypt? Has there never been an uprising in Libya? They were, but at some point they really invested in it. In Egypt, it was obviously an Ikhwan force. Yes, the first time the Democrats came out. They were Muslims, these Democrats. But it was when the Muslim Brotherhood invested in these protests, bringing discipline, organization experience, and resistance experience, that it became irreversible.

Well, people came out against the dictatorship, but everything ended, in the words of Timur Shaov, unintelligently. Everywhere it ended quite sadly.

Well, first of all, I don't think it's sad enough everywhere. I understand that a huge number of ordinary people, including ordinary Muslims, looking at, say, Libya, will say: there was order, everything was clean and tidy, there was some kind of social program, there was work. And in general, everything was fine. These questions are already somewhat ideological. Yes, there is less of an order of magnitude now, and there are a lot of conflicts right now. But now there is freedom.

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not exactly the European guaranteed freedom that is usually discussed. Freedom guaranteed by an even greater dictate, only soft and veiled. But it is freedom nonetheless.

And there is no freedom in Egypt.

And there was a military coup in Egypt. This is by the way that there is a watershed, there are situations when a simple vote does not solve anything. But it is simply solved by force, here is this example.

But there was a serious split in Egypt, and against the ikhvans, performances began. before the military coup.

Well, yes, the performances began. This is actually a revolution happening. In principle, when the vote was held there, it was in favor of the Ikhvans. This does not mean that everyone is ready to join their banner. But this means at least that they are not a marginal group that has seized power by force of arms. These are not invaders of power against the general will. And if you'll excuse me, Sisi is already a military junta. This is a military dictatorship. And where is the democratic approach?

So for you, the Arab Spring fits into the logic of seeking political representation? Because I have a feeling that even though it was an all-Arab movement, it was still a national one in every country. It was a struggle against local repressive regimes, it was not such a global search.

Yes, it didn't go out on the global search. But just make an analogy with Marxism. Before Trotsky's concept of permanent revolution appeared, there was a lot of struggle against oppression, which could be veiled in various forms: in the form of the national liberation struggle, in the form of anti-colonial movements, and in the form, I don't know, of the Paris Commune. This could all happen in many different forms, and it didn't seem to be universal. It became universal.

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In other words, the Arab Spring is the phase that preceded the universalization of the movement. Yes, these were national outbursts against regimes that were perfectly integrated into the world system or were heading for it. Not all of them had social problems, and Gaddafi did not have any special social problems that could not be completely solved. But nevertheless, these outbreaks occurred. But what happened next? The Arab Spring began in 2011 and affected Syria. Syria has already flared up in 2012, and this national theme has ended with Syria. It became a universe. It has become a space in which everyone is interested, and all Muslims are closely watching it: who will take it, whose will take it. People go there and interfere absolutely from the outside, people who are new converts. The new converts did not go to fight in Libya, did not go to resist Sisi. None of this happened. But this is a completely different story. That is, it has already ceased to be a narrow-national struggle of one national group against another national group.

So the Ikhvans ' idea failed?

It didn't fail. First, there is no clear general idea of the Ikhwans. This is the current, this river that drains new streams, new branches. Moreover, groups that have dissociated themselves from the Ikhwans may curse and even taqfiri their daughter-mother structure, but genetics is genetics. And the Ikhwans themselves have modernized in their mainstream, ranging from terror to taking power democratically using European institutions. Of course, the idea of the ikhvans did not fail, because it is not one specific idea that may or may not show its effectiveness. This is a certain trend, within which there are disputes, squabbles, conflicts. In fact, when we study the history of twentieth-century politics, the lion's share is the history of factional struggles within the left. It's the same here. This is a general trend that will probably at least be the main theme of the next century. I think that if you had lived somewhere in America a century earlier, you would have wondered why there is so much news from Russia, for example.

But the form in which the project has become global, it is not to say that it is too simple.-

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attractive. And why was the global Muslim project implemented in such a terrible, bloody, monstrous form?

Do you know in what bloody form the project of building socialism was implemented? You should know this, you live in this country, you have studied its history. Do you know in what terrible and bloody form the anti-monarchist project of Republicanism was implemented? Well, look at the form in which the absolutely religious reformist process was implemented. Germany lay in ruins, covered in blood. One of the sources of this era wrote that you can go for three days and not meet a single living village. These are peasant reformist wars. In general, I think that there was not a single phase project that could not be said: My God, what a horror! And not just horror, but horror-horror-horror.

That is, the way it all began in Egypt: voting, peaceful coming to power, a referendum on the constitution - in any way?

Once again, I tell you my point of view. By voting, in general, the procedural system is not the coming to power, but its transit within a certain political continuum, where there is a consensus of all players. Even when a figure comes to power not from the central block of this continuum, but from its margins, this continuum distorts, as, for example, America from Trump. And this is not about the fact that the person from the outside, who said: now everything will be different, from and to. We are talking about quite serious system players who are simply not at the center of this system. And when it comes to a player who is outside of it, then, excuse me, there are no procedures, no voting, just like this. Those who survived survived.

So what's next?

And then, as it were, the story goes.

Where to? Your forecast.

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Well, as a Muslim, I assume that the story itself is final, it ends, the final will be a terrible battle, Armageddon, universal death, resurrection, the Last Judgment.

Let's return to the current situation. Now another very serious process that affects the modern world is mass migration to the West, to Europe primarily from Islamic countries. What are the consequences of this process for the West and for Islam?

Well, I don't think the migration process is that important or that fundamental. This is a fairly clear story: in school, in geography class, they taught that air moves from a high-pressure zone to a low-pressure zone. Similarly, people move from high economic pressure zones to low pressure zones. The average person moves from bad conditions to better conditions, taking advantage of any opportunities for this. We are also talking about purely economic migration: there's more money and better stores. And about fleeing the war. And it's about running for a better social system, when it's not really about such coarse matters as just having a job, eating sausage, but it's about better education, better medicine. That is, people migrate to better conditions. It is clear that the second and third generation of the average person easily turns into lumpens under certain conditions. That is, it's like peasants who came to the city, tied up in some kind of production, in some kind of artisan business. They are tumbleweeds from which you can expect all sorts of excesses, which is the environment for crime. What Russian classics described so delightfully about the everyday life of St. Petersburg at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, what we read in Krestovsky's "Petersburg Slums". This process, scaled up to the level of continents, is now taking place. And then the capital's merchants, the capital's inhabitants did not really like the fact that hopots of different kinds came from the villages. But, nevertheless, this process is underway.

Naturally, it can cause some internal European reactions, it is exploited by the right. But we must understand that, by and large, what we call a certain European crisis is not a consequence of the arrival of migrants.-

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grants. Migrants are one of the elements that make up this crisis. After all, these migrants were initially invited as cheap labor, they were specially imported there: Turks to Germany, Algerians to France. That is, it was a stimulated process. There is a certain civilizational crisis in Europe, and Europe is responding to it in some way. But it is not Arab migrants who will destroy Europe, if that is to be the case.

Good. After all, more and more Muslims are starting to live in Europe and somehow fit in or out of the European context. Will this have any impact on Islam, on Islamic movements?

We are now at a stage where Islam, and I will even allow myself to say this-a Great Islam that transcends some liturgical boundaries, Islam as a comprehensive doctrine-is just in a state of phase transition of its self-understanding about itself. In principle, we are standing with our feet in a space that believed that there is a liturgy, we need to observe fasting, we need to read namaz 5 times a day, pay zakat, perform hajj if possible, and take on a bunch of completely understandable and completely universal ethical restrictions. And everything will be fine for you, in principle, this is enough to be enough for Paradise at the Last Judgment, in the absence of any other serious sins. This is where our feet are, and our head is already in another space and says: yes, yes, all this is true. But the task before us is different. The task before us is much broader: this is expansion, this is development, this is life.

And this development is not just that we are now going to grab another piece. There was a writer who liked to write horror stories about what would happen if the Muslims invaded Paris, and in Paris such a terrible medieval obscurantism, where a bunch of unfinished liberals from the underground are trying to resist. That's not the point here. The expansion will also consist in the fact that a model for all, which will have a serious moral superiority, should finally be offered.

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After all, when it came to the great expansion of Islam, how many people fought there at all? I somehow started to figure out this issue. And I came across a curious figure: at that moment, in the era of the Prophet and the era of the righteous caliphs, the Muslims never put up troops more than 30 thousand people on all fronts, and never could concentrate more than 10 thousand sabres on any front. It was quite a ridiculous force compared to what they were facing. They were opposed by Sasanian Iran, a super-empire that goes back to the dark ages. They were opposed by Byzantium, the heir to the great Rome, from which all mankind trembled for thousands of years.

And these people, who could not put up more than 10 thousand bayonets on one front, have swept all over the world in a hundred years. It couldn't have been done with a weapon. Such things are not done with weapons. Naturally, there were also enforcement processes. But in order to bring about such a qualitative change in such a short time, there had to be a certain moral superiority. If this understanding of Islam as something morally superior to everything around us is offered to everyone, then probably the task of Muslims will be fulfilled.

Does the phrase "Islamic terrorism" make any sense to you?

Sure. When terrorists carry out terrorist attacks, being Islamists, Muslims, solving their Islamist ideological tasks - this is Islamic terrorism, just as terrorism can be Catholic, leftist, ultra-right. We have already discussed the liberal Great French Revolution, the socialist Russian Revolution, and the Reformation Revolution. By the way, we can also recall the Ba'athist revolution - revolutions are also taking place within the Islamic world. There was no terror anywhere.

But at some point it was exhausted.

Well, at some point, the movement is exhausted. Everything is exhausted, nothing is eternal. You can't make some changes with the utmost effort and say that once and for all the changes are over. Did Marxists change the world? Changed it. Radically? Radically. Did they change it forever? Nothing like that. Over the course of a century, they have become exhausted and transformed-

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they were reduced to nothing. In general, we all understand that the world has changed so that they are not relevant. You can't do something once and for all. All the same, then others will come and redo what you did when it loses its meaning.

So the Islamist project will also run out of steam?

In the form in which it exists now-yes, of course it will run out of steam. It will run out of steam in order to give impetus to a new project. Islam is part of history, so it's not something you can do once and for all. I have a mystical perception of history, history is the language in which God speaks to people. And you can't agree once and for all, you will be tested, tested, tested and tested. You will go through these trials every time until they tell us about everyone, all of humanity: well, you have experienced enough, the end.

Interviewed by Irina Starodubrovskaya

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