Soviet promises of Muslim freedom concealed campaigns of suppression
Evidence
In 1917 the Bolshevik regime issued a decree guaranteeing freedom of conscience for Muslims. According to a proclamation of the Scientific Association of Russian Orientalists in 1921, ‘Moscow is the new Mecca; it is the Medina of all repressed peoples.’ Yet, despite the fair-seeming promises, Islam was pilloried in the Soviet museums of atheism and Soviet Orientalists were enlisted to combat Islamic superstition. There was also a fierce campaign against the use of the Arabic script. It was described as the script of the reactionary mullahs and Sufis and as not being particularly well adapted to rendering the Turkic languages. Possession of books in the Arabic script could lead to the death sentence: Islamic culture and social structures were things that the Muslim peoples had to be weaned away from. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 417
Categorization
- XREF: Echoes the rhetoric-vs-reality gap in the reader’s knowledge of Soviet nationality policy and of Soviet anti-religious museums; also parallels the class-basis of moral panic claims taught elsewhere.