Real Islam

[Prapor]

Village Central Yeluzan in modern Gorodishensky region of Penza oblast (province), Russia, is a native Tatar village, founded in the 80-s of XVII сentury. Today, it is the largest Tatar community in the European part of Russia, counting about 11 thousand residents (also, my own addition, largest Muslim rural community in Europe).

One of the features of the external appearance of the village is the solidity of its buildings. In Yeluzan, there are about 3 thousand homes, only 7 of them are made of wood, and the rest - brick or mixed. Houses are mostly 2, 3-storey, many decorated with ornaments of colored bricks, marble and decorative stone. One-story houses are also large - from 100 to 500 square meters and more. Premises for cattle resemble modern mini-farms - they 10 to 12 heads of cattle on average. The village has natural gas and telephone access, which the residents route into their homes and use at their own expense. Virtually every house has a satellite dish and is connected to Internet. Internal roads are covered with asphalt, which, however, is broken in many places, because the villagers own about 1,200 large trucks ("Kamaz", "MAZ" and "Gazelle" mostly), and about 3 thousand cars.
The realtive wealth of the villagers comes from their hard work. In the village there is no unemployment. With the crumbling of agriculture in the perestroika years, Yeluzanians created their own jobs. There are seven mills, which process grains and oilseeds. There are three abattoirs, four meat processing plants, a woodworking shop, and a fleet of minibuses which run to the regional center and all around the Russian Federation. Currently Yeluzan has bought two comfortable "Mercedes" buses, which daily bring people from Yeluzan to Moscow and back. There is a pasta/macaroni factory, creamery, four bakeries, an auto repair shop. There are 52 shops, three indoor markets, a beauty salon, billiard room, pharmacy, dental office, a fashion studio and a internet cafe. At own expense, the villagers have built a horse race track, set up a football field, and bought a fire truck.
Yeluzanians breed livestock for slaughter (provide Moscow, as well as Saratov, Samara and other cities in the Volga region with "halal" meat), and grow high-grown oilseed crops. Own land is not enough to graze their cattle, so the Yeluzanians lease land from the neighboring ethnic Russian villages. Another source of income of the villagers is trucking for hire. Every year many of the villagers’ private trucks are contracted for the cleaning of grain, sugar beet, and potato farms in Tatarstan, Saratov, Samara and other regions of the Volga region; and hundreds of the trucks work on construction sites in Moscow and other cities.
The distinctive features of the spiritual life of Central Yeluzan is the absolute absence of drunkenness and the strict ncksucksireforhees and uset Muslim rural community in Europe)commitment of the villagers to their Islamic religion. There are only two stores, funded by regional government agencies, which ly two stores, founded by asell alcoholic beverages. Their customers are mostly ethnic Russians and other Slavic people working in the village and residents of nearby villages; and shoppers who come from other regions to the village’s markets. Friday in Yeluzan is a holiday. The school also works only until dinner time on this day, so the children have time for Friday prayers. In the village there are seven mosques and two more are under construction. Boys and girls are committed to Muslim tradition - in the village there are no noisy parties, discos, no wondering the streets in the evenings; young people spend their time in the gym or internet cafes. In the month of Ramadan, the village holds uraza. A characteristic feature of the external communication is a courtesy, respect for elders, quiet speech with a soft Mishar (Tatar ethnic sub-group) accent. The village closed its kindergarten, for it is believed children should be brought up in their family. Yeluzan has a high fertility rate - for 6 months in 2005, for example 86 infants were born. In the village there is practically no mixed marriages, divorces are very rare. There is literaly no crime. Public opinion condemns drinking, moral laxity, laziness. On the other hand, there is tolerance for other religions and different lifestyles. Residents of the neighboring Russian villages, working in this village as builders on different objects, are grateful for the work, shelter, and general kind, welcoming nature of Yeluzanians. "This is the only place in our region where there are jobs and salaries are paid fairly and on time”, says a Russian worker. “The Tatars help us feed our families", says another to reporters who’ve come to see this phenomenon with their own eyes.
Traditional values in the village are teamwork, mutual support and mutual assistance. Yeluzanians have just finished collecting funds to help ethnic Tatar, Russian and other refugees who just arrived in the area escaping ethnic conflicts in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, I guess). All mosques and madrasah, and many other social facilities were constructed and are maintained on money donated by residents. Many people pay zyakat - a religious tax, when people make large donations to charitable and social projects numbering in the tens of thousands of rubles.

Thus, adherence to Islam and the preservation of traditional social foundations of Central Yeluzan allowed this community to become a modern model Tatar village.
[FONT=&quot]
Rustem[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Gainetdinov[/FONT][FONT=&quot],[/FONT][FONT=&quot] Candidate (Russian version of Ph.D.) in Historic Sciences[/FONT]

http://tatarlar.lv/?p=2796

Central Yeluzan

Sabantui (Tatar community celebration, like a village fair) in Yeluzan

(By the way, today, when Russians get together with family and friends for a holiday, to celebrate and have a good time, that is called a sabantui. Tatar culture amd Russian culture are interconnected. Tatars are considered the second Founding Nation, you know)

Women at prayer

Mosques

Red Army Veterans' Memorial

Tractors

As the article says (and was hard for me to translate into English) people in Yelizan own a lot of construction trucks and equipment, and many regularly work on contract in Moscow and elsewhere

Anyway, the main point of this thread is, a person can be a strict, observant Muslim, but not necessarily a Wahabi, a wife-beater, a terrorist. Real Islam stands for peace, charity, hard work, and good family values.

 

[fredleander]

.....Anyway, the main point of this thread is, a person can be a strict, observant Muslim, but not necessarily a Wahabi, a wife-beater, a terrorist. Real Islam stands for peace, charity, hard work, and good family values.

Thank you for sharing. Normal, thinking people of course understand this...​

 

[84RFK]

As with most other religions, no actual problem with the religion itself, only by the different views and ways to practice it.

 

[Del Boy]

Another VERY good post Prapor, illustrated in a way that pins the message to the notice board, making it stick first time. Informative and interesting on all fronts. Your posts could well become the book marks here for you area; I believe that we feel we know and understand something of you country from you, and i am sure that relevant questions re. such wiil be referred to you.

Better than a history lesson or such. Thank you.

 

[headwards]

I feel perhaps that 'Real Islam' is a deceptive title, many people would call fundamentalist Islam the 'real' thing, as many Christians would call fundamentalist Christianity 'real'. What you have displayed is certainly a form of Islam which is more palatable to other cultures but I would assume that at its core it has a lot of questionable ideals - as many religions do - Although from your description this culture is far more progressive then any Islam I have read about or encountered.

I feel like a strict observant Muslim would follow the Quaran literally. And is he does that then he would be rated as a criminal at the least in my culture, legally and ethically. Though by the same note I suppose an ardent follower of Christianity would be the same, if perhaps understood a little better. Its all crazy stuff at the heart of it man.

Burkas or hijabs or whatever you call them create a lot of distrust in my culture which values face to face contact to foster mutual understanding and respect. It cuts those people off from our society in a big way and I feel creates a sense of 'us and them'. I understand Europe's approach to them and hope the religion alters to cope with it- At least to free women from their dogma as the Burka will limit their work and social opportunities. (by Burka I mean the whole face covering deal with only the eyes showing - hiding your face is very deviant here)

I appreciate this post and have great respect for this community who do so much to help others, I did not know cultures of this kind existed in such a large and organised size and hope all Islam communities can become more like this.

 

[viper2007]

This is a good post.

I am a Muslim, I have been a Muslim since birth. The Quran is indeed a book to be used as a guide to manner in which we lead our lives and the manner in which we conduct ourselves. I can assure everyone here that, nowhere in the Quran, and I mean nowhere, does it says that it is fine to kill innocents and non-combattants. All Muslims are taught to have respect for the Almighty's creation, and that includes fellow Man- never mind what faith that person subscribes to. It is considered a great sin to embark into destruction.

But the voice of Muslims that is heard nowadays, are voices of militants who has wierd agendas and motive, most for personal gain, doing all manner of hideous things in the name of Islam. So the world, in particular the West, sees Islam as a somewhat vile thing. So whos fault is it truly, the one who peojects this sort of image, or the one that is led to believe that Islam is indeed a bad religion.

I've always encouraged fellow non- Muslims who makes disparaging remarks to read about Islam, rather than taking them head-on with equally rude and silly remarks because there will no end to this.

I know this may be just a dream, but I would like to see tha day that all faith can come together and work towards making this world a truly better place to live- Insya Allah (roughly translated, it means "God Willing)

 

[MontyB]

I hate to be the carrier of bad news but the hope that all faiths can come together is just a dream as all the dominant religions are designed to be exclusive, confrontational and much like the human race they do not tolerate difference well.

Religions problem is that it is designed as a personal guide for individuals to implement in a way that suits them however it is administered as a controlling influence which does not allow for individual interpretation so it will always cause conflict.

 

[Yossarian]

I hate to be the carrier of bad news but the hope that all faiths can come together is just a dream as all the dominant religions are designed to be exclusive, confrontational and much like the human race they do not tolerate difference well.

Religions problem is that it is designed as a personal guide for individuals to implement in a way that suits them however it is administered as a controlling influence which does not allow for individual interpretation so it will always cause conflict.

Restatment of one of the biggest questions for our species...

But as for Mr. Prapor, every post you make like this brings a glimspe of your portion of the globe, and how things are there, and you do it very very well, It's things like I that I scavange for because I like tearing down the ignorant walls build of assumptions, I never really feel okay on excepting the ways of life of any group or culuture as is, and always hold a special train of thought of how things really are in the world.

Just because Im an ignorant *bag, does not mean my outlook on others has to be:wink:,

With that stated I can grow and maintain respect towards others and their ways of life.