Shaikh Said Ismagilov, Mufti of Religious Administration of Muslims of Ukraine “Umma”, took part in International Conference “Third World Countries In A Context Of Development And Global Challenges of XXI” facilitated by the the Institute for World’s History of the Ukrainian National Academy of Science on June 10 at the Institute of World Economy And International Relations senatus academicus conference hall.

Mufti’s report was “Islamic Factor In Arabo-Islamic World’s Life”. It said that Islam is the basic factor of both Arab and Muslim civilisation, and for that reason different Islamic parties and projects are determined to certain success in represented by worthy people.

“In my opinion, irregular support of all the other projects, be it communist, socialist, nationalist, dictatorship, is determined by the factor that all of them position themselves as secular and sometimes and sometimes even hostile towards Islam, which conflicts with the believers’ interests. Today the Arab Spring demonstrate that the movements declaring goals correlating with islamic values can get an impressive support and win the elections convincingly, as we can see in terms of Egypt. And then again, speaking of Egypt — their fail, determined by the military coup, speaks of a great resistance of different forces not willing to allow any Islamic project develop in the Arab countries.”

At the end of his speech Mr. Ismagilov questioned the reasonability of world community’s distrust for any Islamic projects at all, as there’s still no example of a state where such project would be fully implemented without outer intrusion. “That would be even a scientific interest if the global community allowed moderate Muslims to come to power in any of the Arab states. All world now condemns Islamic parties and tends to distrust them — but at the same time we see no state ran by the political forces with an ideology based in Islamic teaching. What would this state be like — successful or not, archaic or modern? Right now, in terms of absence of any fully implemented Islamic state project, criticism for those projects at the very least sound. It became a sort of a boogieman story they tell to scare people.”

Answering the audience’s questions on the movement of “Taliban” and Islamic Republic of Iran, Shaikh Said noted that the Talibs do not represent Islam, but rather archaic Afghan traditions foreign for the rest of the Muslim peoples.Their influence for that reason is inconspicuous even in the neighbouring Pakistan, where they’re supported rather by the guerillas that by the consent of local people with their ideas.

As for Iran, despite the fact it indicates “Islamic Republic” in its title, it represents Shia model of rule. That was the exact reason why the Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979 wasn’t supported in the other countries mostly populated by Muslims, as the Shia ideology is foreign and unacceptable for Sunni Muslims who make a overwhelming majority in the world’s Ummah.

Staff reporter