News agency Tatar-inform reported about the all-Russian conference “Islam-Online” that took place on the 4th of April in the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan. Approximately 100 representatives of electronic media from different regions of Russia gathered in this conference.
The Spiritual Board of Muslims of Tatarstan that organized this activity dominated the aim of this conference as consolidation of Muslim journalists to propagate the values of so-called “traditional Islam”.
Acting Mufti of Tatarstan, Kamil Samigullin, during the conference requested to create the Association of Islamic electronic media and to adopt a “Lawbook of Muslim Journalism”.
The Muslim ministry once again became a tool, which is used by authorities to manage the minds of Muslims. To reach such an aim they decided to recruit journalists to directly influence the consciences of people.
In this case the conference is organized within the framework of the large-scale campaign against Islamic web activity. Putin set this course on the 14th of February at the extended board of the FSB, stating: “You must act strong to neutralize different extremist structures. You must block attempts of radicals to use abilities of information technologies, internet resources and social networks for propaganda.”
He confirmed this direction of law enforcement authorities on the 7th of March at the extended board of the General prosecutor’s office. He said, “A number of radical groups act defiantly today… They organize public activities, spread criminal ideas using the Internet, recruit public supporters.”
These statements demonstrate, that the leadership of the country worries about uncontrollable information centers for Muslims. Muslims naturally began to seek non-official, independent Islamic resources, because authorities took control of all the print media, and forced the imams of the mosques to coordinate their khutbas with the FSB.
The authorities are afraid of the uncontrollable Internet. Internet activities nearly erupted in a revolution in Russia a year ago, when hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Moscow, demanding Putin’s resignation. Naturally, the danger of the power of uncontrollable Internet resources increases through political activism of Muslims, which is prescribed by the religion. This is why in the “Islamic Internet” Putin views it as a threat as well as the nearly 20-million Muslim population in his country.
The greatest concern is the scale of influence of the Internet on society. So, the chairman of committee of the State Duma in information politics, information technologies and communication, Aleksey Mitrofanov said during the conference on the 19th of March: “The era of free Internet has ended. It was not a factor of politics, or economics, when there were only 2 million Internet users. But now there are 45 million users in the country, so it became a factor and we must to control it.”
This conference and all Putin’s harsh statements about the work of Islamic activists indicate the real ideological breakthrough among Muslims of Russia. The main intellectual activity of the Islamic Ummah was transferred to the uncontrollable virtual areas in the last few years, and Muslims in Russia were not outside of this wave. It is not a secret, that the key role in revolutions in the Arab countries played a part on the activists using the Web, where they could reach wide audiences, after blocking the ordinary mass media for them.
With the permission of Allah, the abilities of the Internet will play a similar role on the Russian-speaking media area, that covers all countries of CIS, where almost 100 million Muslims live.