Almaty Dialogue - February 2003
In February 2003, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, including NCSJ, visited Almaty and attended the "International Conference on Peace and Harmony" with Central Asian and Caspian leaders, and an international gathering of Jewish and Muslim representatives.
NCSJ Chairman Robert J. Meth and Executive Director Mark B. Levin at International Conference on Peace and Harmony (photos: Conference of Presidents)
Outside Almaty: Mark Levin, Rabbi David Hill, NCSJ Chairman Robert J. Meth, NCSJ Founding Executive Director Jerry Goodman
At Feb. 14 Torah presentation to Jewish community of Kazakhstan in Almaty: Mark Levin with Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
Media Coverage:
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Ha'aretz
Jerusalem Post
Washington Times
McLaughlin Group
Related items:
Embassy of Kazakhstan coverage
Congressional Letter
NCSJ and EAJC delegation meeting with officials at U.S. Department of State
Euro-Asian Jewish Congress (EAJC) January 29 Visit to Washington, DC
NCSJ, EAJC and New York Jewish Community Relations Council meeting on Capitol Hill with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
NCSJ Executive Director Mark Levin with Ambassador Shavkat Khamrakulov of Uzbekistan, EAJC President Alexander Mashkevich, and Ambassador Kanat Saudabayev of Kazakhstan (photo: Ron Sachs/CNP)
Central Asian, Jewish Leaders Meet
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, Feb. 13 — Leaders of six Muslim nations in Central Asia and the Caucasus adopted a declaration that stresses the importance of inter-religious dialogue among nations and rejects the misuse of religion by terrorist groups. The accord reached Thursday in Kazakhstan also affirms the right of every individual to freely practice their religion and calls on the international community to join efforts to promote tolerance and fight extremism and terrorism. Among those present Thursday were the presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and top officials from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Turkey. They met in the Kazakh capital of Almaty with a delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress.
Peace and Harmony Conference
Establishes Permanent Forum for Peace and StabilityPresident Bush Says U.S. "Strongly Supports" Objectives; U.S. Senators, Congressmen Consider Event "Critical to Worldwide Efforts to Counter Extremism"
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, Feb. 13 — The International Conference on Peace and Harmony in Kazakhstan on Feb. 13, coming just the day before the critical report by the UN weapons inspectors on Iraq in New York and on the penultimate day of Muslim hajj pilgrimage, became an important milestone in the international affairs, and drew strong international attention.
Leaders of several Muslim-majority nations of Central Asia and elsewhere, representatives of Islam, Christianity, and Jewish leaders from throughout the world met in Almaty today calling for dialogue among cultures, religions and civilizations during a time of great global uncertainty.
Presidents of Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Tajikistan, senior officials from Azerbaijan, Afghanistan and Turkey, Muslim and Christian religious leaders and more than 70 leaders of international Jewish organizations agreed that religions must not be viewed as a factor of conflict, rather as a source for and way to pacification. They pledged to work toward peaceful coexistence and cooperation both on regional and the international levels.
President George W. Bush and several other leaders said they support the conference's goals.
"The United States strongly supports the Conference's objective of fostering peace and stability through dialogue among people of different nationalities and faiths," President Bush said in a February 12 letter to President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan and participants of the conference. "All peace-loving people share a deep interest in advancing religious liberty and tolerance, stemming hatred, and eliminating the threat of terrorism."
In their letters to President Nursultan Nazarbayev, U.S. Senators and Representatives said the Conference was "critical to worldwide efforts to counter extremism." It sent "a strong signal that the present and future course of the Muslim world will not be controlled by those that would propagate hate, fear and murder, such as Al Qaeda, but by those nations and people who respect and promote peace, tolerance and democracy."
Senators Sam Brownback, Orrin Hatch, Mary Landrieu, Representatives Robert Wexler, Gary Ackerman, Henry Waxman, Joseph Pitts and others signed separate letters of support for the conference.
At the event the participants adopted the declaration and established the permanent Forum for Peace and Stability with headquarters in Kazakhstan.
"By establishing the Forum we lay down the foundation for creating a mechanism for permanent dialogue in the name of stability, security and peace in the 21st century," President Nazarbayev said at the conference Thursday. He said, "new realities require new approaches to thinking of new principles of solving the problems."
"The basis for the dialogue of civilizations lies in the unity of values preached by all religions," stated Tajikistan's President Imomali Rakhmonov. "We must not allow attempts to pit civilizations against each other to succeed."
The Jewish leaders at the conference also called for moderation and dialogue, and continued fight against terrorism.
"We want good and moderate voices to be heard, young people to be reared up in this spirit," said Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "We need to push the world toward harmony so that we live without serious differences."
Mortimer Zuckerman, that organization's chairman, expressed "gratitude to all present for your fight against all forms of terrorism and extremism."
In their letters, American legislators commended President Nazarbayev "on taking concrete steps to bridge the growing divide between Muslims and Jews at a time when tension in the Middle East is at a fulcrum and intolerance and anti-Semitism are rising worldwide." They said they would be remiss if they "did not thank you and your nation for providing unconditional support to the United States in our global campaign against terror and in stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."
Kazakhstan has been chosen as a host for such a meeting because it is seen as a suitable venue for interethnic and interconfessional dialogue. People of more than 100 ethnic groups following the teachings of 46 religious confessions have been living there peacefully since the country became independent in 1991.
Liberal Islam in Asiatic Dress
It was Kazakhstan's unique nature, says the grand mufti, that made it possible to host a conference that ended with a Jewish-Muslim joint statement calling for peace
By Lily Galili
Feb. 23 — A little more than a week ago, on Valentine's Day, the state-run English-language newspaper ran a big, front page headline congratulating lovers on their holiday. The headline looked like another attempt by the distant Muslim state to connect to the West, to be America on the other side of the world. But Id al-Adha, the Muslim Feast of the Sacrifice, which also took place the same week, was not felt in the streets of Almaty, the old capital.
In 1998, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev moved the country's capital to Astana in the north of the country, where most of the Russian population of the mostly Muslim republic is concentrated. The Kazakhs are only about half of the 15 million people of the huge country, which is four times the size of France. Nazarbayev, who was secretary-general of the Kazakhstan Communist Party in the days of the Soviet empire, wanted to maintain the delicate demographic balance and strengthen his "Russian" flank in the Islamic expanses of Central Asia.
It's the seams between East and West, Islam and Christianity, that make Kazakhstan such a fascinating place. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the country has also been moving along a hidden seam between the past and the future. Along with the new Mercedes sedans on the streets of Almaty, the streets are full of old, battered Ladas left over from the old days. International corporations and fashion brands offer their merchandise to whoever has the money, but the local market still sells old jars for a pittance to package merchandise. A middle class is slowly growing, and that's the great hope for the economy of a country blessed with all the natural resources a country could hope for: water, metals, diamonds, and a massive reserve of oil in the Caspian Sea.
Kazakhstan is also a major hope for the West, and not only because of the oil reserves that could become an alternative to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, but also because of the moderate Islam of the region. Not for nothing did President George Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell send their best wishes, through the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, to the Conference on Peace and Harmony, hosted by Nazarbayev through the mediation of the new Eurasian Jewish Congress. The president of the congress, Alexander Mashkevich, who has a doctorate in philology and has reputedly earned a billion dollars in Kazakhstan since perestroika, is a personal friend of the president, and represents for the president another Jewish route to America. That's certainly why the Jewish delegation at the conference received a king's welcome, with dozens of police blocking the streets of Almaty and saluting in the freezing cold as the convoy of buses with the Jewish delegation made its way through the city.
International Jewry, and also local Jewry, has Kazakhstan's respect. Kazakhstan has always been a moderate country - 200,000 Jews found refuge there during World War II. But things are less obvious nowadays, in this era of extremist Islam, which has so far skipped over Kazakhstan.
A local Jew, accompanying a Jewish delegation as it paid respects at the grave of the Lubavitcher rebbe's father (who died here in 1944 after being exiled by the Soviets to Almaty), wryly noted that "a decade ago, the local police would persecute any Jew who wanted to visit this grave, Now the police accompany delegations of Jews who make pilgrimage to the grave."
A soft Islam
That cultural moderation allows nearly 100 ethnic minority groups to coexist peacefully, and Kazakhstan is most proud of the phenomenon. "The Lubavitcher's father is buried in Almaty, and Zarathustra began here as well," Nazarbayev proudly declared at the opening of the conference. In private conversations he is said to call Israel, "the good neighbor."
His foreign minister, Kasymzhomart Tokayev, emphasized the country's moderate character, during a conversation with Haaretz. "We have no history of extremist Islam. We have a soft version of Sunni Islam," he said. "Islam here is more a code of behavior than a religion."
The Chief Mufti of Kazakhstan, Abkattar Kazhi Derbisalli, agrees wholeheartedly with that definition of Kazakhstan's special character though it's doubtful he would agree with the depiction as only a code of behavior. But it was Kazakhstan's unique nature, he says, that made it possible to host a conference that ended with a Jewish-Muslim joint statement calling for peace and stability and denouncing terror and extremism. The mufti is proud of the enormous growth of Islam in the country, noting that in the last decade, the number of mosques has tripled, from 500, to 1,500.
The interview with him took place in the freezing cold, in the open courtyard of the new Grand Mosque of Almaty. Someone explained to me that since I was a woman, it would be improper for the mufti to meet me in his office. But the office was not physically connected to the mosque, and two other local men sat in on the conversation, so perhaps, despite his openness, it was difficult for the mufti to give a formal interview to an Israeli newspaper. A conversation in the courtyard of the mosque, less formal, was more acceptable.
Dr. Derbisalli, it's said, never wanted to be a mufti. He's has a doctorate in Arabic literature, studied at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, as well as in Morocco and Tunisia. But Nazarbayev decided on Derbisalli as mufti, and in Kazakhstan, where the newsstands overflow with newspapers that are all state-run, people obey the president, even if it means going to an inter-religious conference with Jews and issuing a joint statement at the end.
"That's how things are in Kazakhstan," says the mufti. "Everyone lives here in great harmony. If someone here asks about the ethic origins of someone, the questioner must be a foreigner." He speaks with joy about Islam in Kazakhstan, proud of the new Islamic University in Almaty, where imams are trained over a four-year course. Many religious colleges have opened, he notes, and the Grand Mosque of Almaty can hold 10,000 people at prayer. "During the Soviet era, there was militant atheism," says the mufti. "But the love of religion never left our hearts. Now there is freedom of religion."
That freedom is guaranteed by strict separation of religion and state. For that reason, and perhaps because there are so many ethnic groups in the country, Kazakhstan has no public religious holidays. The only joint holidays are the national ones. The tradition of Soviet-imposed atheism remains the great dam blocking extremist Islam in the Muslim Republics of central Asia. The president, who has been described as a "benevolent dictator" in the Western press, is not relying only on traditions to keep extremists out. His regime is doing everything it can, including using the intelligence services, to prevent extremist Islam from penetrating his country.
The mufti rejects any slanders of religion after the attacks of September 11. "That wasn't religion," he says. "Those were people who used religion as an excuse. We condemn it vehemently. Immediately after the Twin Towers fell, I issued a declaration: `Terrorism has no religion, race or nationality.' I called the terrorists a `gang of bandits.' All the arguments, that the attacks are embedded in Islam, are the result of ignorance. We preach brotherhood in our mosques, about the things common to Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. We share many of the prophets, and we respect the others."
The chief mufti does not appear worried about fundamentalism gaining a foothold in Kazakhstan. "Fundamentalism is a Christian concept from the 19th century. What you call Islamic fundamentalism is the politics of the minority, using religion to achieve political aims. But politics is about change. There is one politics before lunch and another after lunch. Only religion is eternal." Indeed, the distinction appears valid in Kazakhstan, which has managed to preserve a liberal Islam while maintaining good relations with ultra-Orthodox and fundamentalist Iran. "That's our advantage," says the mufti. "Our president has special relations and a special status. The fact is the conference, which was attended by leaders from the entire region and from America, took place in Kazakhstan, not Iran. In general, Kazakhstan is not Iran.
And the reason, he says, is "while there are countries around us with illiteracy rates of 30-40 percent, we don't have any illiterates in our country. Education is the best way to prevent extremism."
Eliminating illiteracy and providing at least basic education for all is indeed the greatest asset left behind by the Soviet system to countries like Kazakhstan. It's because of that foundation that Central Asia's Islam is very different from extremist Islam seemingly rampant everywhere else.
In private, some Kazakhs say they are aware of the fact that the choice facing them is Iran or Turkey. They choose Turkey. Others say the comparison is invalid, unnecessary, because of Kazakhstan's special character.
"This is a very sober country," said a foreigner who has been living in Kazakhstan for a long time and knows it well. "They don't hide their problems, but deal with them. There's no inter-religious strife, nor even intra-religious strife."
As opposed to his effusiveness about Kazakhstan-style Islam, the mufti is very careful when he talks about the expected American attack on Iraq or the Israel-Palestinian conflict. On the Middle East conflict, he says simply he doesn't know enough, but in view of his background, he must surely has views of the conflict.
As for Iraq, he says, "On these matters, one must respect the decisions of the Security Council, but one must remember the Iraqi people are innocents, and they are not guilty. A Russian saying goes, `a bad peace is better than a good war.' That's also my approach," says the mufti.
The spiritual leaders in his country do not have any direct contacts with their colleagues in Iraq, but they do nurture relations with imams across Asia. His representatives recently took part in a pan-Asian Koran-reading contest in India, and the Kazakh delegation came in fourth.
"That was definitely an achievement," he says, because in the Soviet era, "there weren't enough holy books. Only recently was the Koran translated into Kazakh and Russian. The Russian translator even converted to Islam." The whispers in the Jewish community of Kazakhstan, say the translator was a Jewish woman.
Some 20,000 Jews live in Kazakhstan (though there are higher estimates), and they are in the midst of a revival of the community, which once numbered 10 times that. Sometimes help comes through the government, which, for example recently allocated the community land in Almaty for a free meals center for the community. Chabad, of course, is very active and runs a school in Almaty whose Russian teachers wear kippot as they teach a full course of sciences and secular studies to the 153 pupils, some of whom board at the school.
The administrator, a woman, is not Jewish but she dresses as if she lived in Bnei Brak. A job is a job, and in Kazakhstan, nobody makes a big deal about religion. The walls of the classrooms include pictures of both the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the president.
Chabad is flourishing, as it helps build a Jewish community. That doesn't please the Israeli envoys, who would prefer to see all the Jews get on planes and go to Israel.
But Vitaly and Angela Epstein, a young immigrant couple who were on the plane with us coming back from Kazakhstan, had not a single bad word to say about their lives in the Muslim country.
"Islam here never bothered me," said Angela, whose grandmother was Jewish. "The attitude toward Jews was always good. My grandmother simply always wanted someone from the family living in Israel. And now, that can be me."
And so the world turns: While most of the world looks like it's gone crazy, with anti-Semitism breaking out everywhere, a distant Muslim republic suddenly looks like a very safe place for Jews. So safe, that the Muslim translator did not seem to be completely joking when she said, "maybe you'll send us back all the Jews who emigrated to Israel. We need people and good professionals."
Kazakhstan Appoints Ambassador to Israel After Seven-Month Break
By Tom Rose
ALMATY, Kazakhstan, Feb. 14 — Ending months of delay, Kazakhstan's president used the occasion of a visit by Jewish representatives from the United States and Israel to announce that he had appointed a new ambassador to Israel who would be named and dispatched shortly.
Meeting with delegates from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, President Nursultan Nazarbaev rejected assertions that the seven-month absence of an ambassador was the result of Saudi pressure on this emerging Muslim state in Central Asia.
The Conference of Presidents was in this storied crossroads of the ancient Silk Road on the Tibetan border to attend what Nazarbaev billed as the "First Annual Conference on Peace and Accord" attended by heads of Central Asian Muslim nations, the purpose or which was to promote peaceful relations between the various religious and cultural traditions in one of the world's most diverse and dangerous regions.
Presidents of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan were joined by the foreign ministers of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and the new Islamic government of Turkey to renounce terrorism "absolutely and unconditionally" as a scourge that destroys both targets and promoters.
Afghanistan's "transitional" Foreign Minister Maroofi Muhammad Yahya used his Oxford English to describe his nation's recent role as a "nest" and "breeding ground" for international terrorism had utterly destroyed the country and "annihilated our infrastructure."
Despite increasing criticism from human rights groups and the US State Department, a representative of which attended Thursday's event, that Nazarbaev was continuing to consolidate his power by limiting opponents and shutting down independent media, the Kazakh leader basked in his role as being the world's first Muslim head of state to call an international dialogue between Muslims and Jews.
Just last week, another high profile conference attendee, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan, was roundly criticized for what critics called a sham referendum which extended his term in office and greatly expanded his powers.
Conference delegates adopted a joint declaration calling upon all member states in Central Asia to respect the rights of minorities and to act as one in the "fight against international terror."
While not mentioned once during the official proceedings, the underlying theme was clearly the campaign to disarm Iraq. American representatives, lead by Conference of President's chairman Mortimer Zuckerman and former US senator Rudy Boschwitz tried to make the point that the question was no longer whether Saddam Hussein would survive but rather how to construct a more peaceful and stable "post Saddam" era.
Praising President Nazarbaev for creating what he called "an extraordinary opportunity," Zuckerman, who is publisher of the New York Daily News and US News and World Report magazine, said he would "proudly" would make Israel's case to a gathering of Muslim leaders. Israel's fight, Zuckerman argued, was no different than that of any other free people trying to defend itself against "unspeakable evil."
"All these guys needed was a demonstration of American leadership," commented a US official attending the conference. "They want to be on the right side of history. Saddam is history and they know it."
February 21, 2003 - excerpt from Full Transcript
...
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well stated.
You were just over in that region. Where did you go? You just got back today.
MR. ZUCKERMAN: I was in Kazakhstan. And that is an indication
of how we oversimplify the problem, because the Central Asian Republics, along with Indonesia and Turkey, represent moderate Muslim countries. There are 130 million Muslims there, and they were there at a conference to do one thing, to say we're opposed to militant extremism, we're opposed to terrorism, and we want to have a dialogue of civilizations, by which they meant a dialogue with the Christian and Jewish communities. Now, that does not represent the Arab Muslim world, but it represents the Central Asian --
MR. BUCHANAN: But they're --
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Let him talk. Let him talk!
MR. ZUCKERMAN: -- but it represents the Central Asian Muslim world. So we have a -- that's a Muslim firewall to the expansion of
the extremism that we see in the Middle East.
MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Were you edified?
MR. ZUCKERMAN: I was astonished by this because it wasn't
something that was just done in a small group, it was on their
television, a one-hour program that repeated all of the speeches,
including mine, I might add, that night to every one of those
countries.
MR. BUCHANAN: This is the Bishket group. But I'll tell you, they're all facing Islamic fundamentalism, as the Russians are in Chechnya. The fundamentalists are moving north. You're right, they're anti-fundamentalist, because they're threatened.
MS. CLIFT: Yeah. One thing we know --
MR. ZUCKERMAN: But it's also good to have them on our side and
to know that the governments there are really helping out....
- transcript by Federal News Service
Congress of the United States
Washington, DC 20515
February 13, 2003
The Honorable Nursultan Nazarbayev
President, The Republic of Kazakhstan
C/O The Embassy of Kazakhstan
1401 16th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20003
Dear President Nazarbayev:
We are writing to support your efforts and that of the people of Kazakhstan to promote interfaith dialogue and harmony between Muslims and Jews at the upcoming International Conference on Peace and Harmony on February 13, 2003. We strongly believe that your efforts to bring together a vast array of political leaders - including Presidents from several Muslim majority nations, the Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan and Turkey, as well as leaders of the Jewish community from the United States and across the globe - is critical to promoting tolerance and peace during a time of great uncertainty worldwide.
Mr. President, we commend you on taking concrete steps to bridge the growing divide between Muslims and Jews at a time when tension in the Middle East is at a fulcrum and intolerance and anti-Semitism are rising. We believe the international conference being held in Kazakhstan is critical to efforts to counter extremism and sends a strong signal that the present and future course of the Muslim world will not be controlled by state sponsors of terror or nefarious organizations, such as Al Qaeda, but by those nations and people who respect and promote peace, tolerance and democracy.
Again we want to congratulate you on hosting this conference and for promoting greater tolerance and understanding during these most difficult times. We thank you and your nation for continuing to provide unconditional support to the United States in our global campaign against terror and in stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We believe Kazakhstan will continue to play a crucial role in these two areas of international concern and will work together with the United States and nations in the region to bring greater security to Central Asia.
We look forward to working with you and the nations and organizations represented at the upcoming conference in Kazakhstan to further promote the goals and principles of tolerance and peace for future generations.
Sincerely,(signed)
ROBERT WEXLER
Member of Congress
JOSEPH PITTS
Member of Congress
EDOLPHUS TOWNS
Member of Congress
ELLEN TAUSCHER
Member of Congress
GARY ACKERMAN
Member of CongressHENRY WAXMAN
Member of Congress
ZACK WAMP
Member of Congress
ANTHONY WEINER
Member of Congress
MarTIN FROST
Member of Congress
JUDY BIGGERT
Member of Congress
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