Abdal Hakim Murad – Ukraine, Islam & the Current Conflict

Bismillah somebody's been asking about the relationship of Islam to

Ukraine and those amazing Eastern European

peoples, I had the privilege of going there visiting some of the

old mother houses and mosques with my family about maybe eight or so

years ago. Now, and it's obviously for those of us who are European

Muslims, which is basically, by definition, all Muslims who are

domiciled in Western Europe and who are fascinated by the

incredible story, really one of the great heroic stories of the

OMA of Islam in Europe, the heroism of Islam in Spain of the

Inquisition, the heroism of the Muslim countries of Sicily, of

Islamic Malta, the great story of Islam in the Balkans, most

recently in the Bosnian conflict. But further east, of course, we

think about this the ocassion genocide, the biggest genocide in

Europe in the 19th century, when, but 80% of the Muslims in

Circassia were, were killed. And then we think about Ukraine,

Crimea. So, you know, as as a European community, we are

absolutely focused on what's happening in terms of the Islam as

the third Abrahamic dispensation, the one that comes to solve the

problems and that historically has functioned as such a healing

principle in those places. So we think about Islam in South Eastern

Europe and the Ukrainian basin up as far as the Don River and

beyond.

And although there are signs of early Muslim

presence there from the kind of early Ambassade period, traders in

particular, on the sea of as off in kapha, in Carson, some of those

ancient trading communities really,

Islam as a substantive and even majority presence in South

Ukraine, goes back to the successes of Ganges Han the first

Mongols. 1227 countries Han dies, and he's conquered that entire

region, all of what is now Ukraine 90% of what's now Russia, he goes

as far as Hungary.

Episode is ruling still from from Karakoram in Mongolia, one of

history's monumental episodes of Imperial conquest, so dies in 2027

and the Mongols who are in those regions, many of them settled down

he divided them parent of four amongst his four sons, and the

westernmost part, which includes all of what's now Ukraine goes to

his son, whose grandson is better que han Baraka Han, one of the

most significant figures really in Northern European Islamic history,

because Belka Han in 1258 is the first to convert to Islam. And it

becomes really a very significant Muslim and facilitates the

conversion process progress right across southern Ukraine, even to

the north of Kyiv. There's very substantial Islamization going on

largely through Naqshbandi and Cobra we and other Ghaderi Tahrir

close, who are establishing tickets, and you can see ruins of

those buildings even to this day, and it becomes really an important

part of part of the ummah.

People ask, Well, why is it if Russia and Ukraine was so solidly

Islamist and became really integrated into the rest of the

Ummah, under this great empire that the Russians called the

Golden Horde, that they themselves just called on us the great, the

great nation, one of the great episodes of Islamic history really

in that region. And of course, even frontline goes up there. And

some of you will have seen Antonio Banderas, and Omar Sharif in the

famous movie, The 13th warrior, which is wonderful if you want to

see Vikings and Muslims and Ukrainians and monsters all in one

movie. It didn't do very well in America because, well, it has a

Muslim heroes. So

it didn't play well in the multiplexes. But it's an

interesting kind of window into that world.

So Belka Khan has converted to Islam and it seems he's very

devout. And from that time onwards, the interest of the loss

is no longer at what is going on to the north. At that time, Russia

is not united, there are different barons and boilers competing with

each other but to the south.

And hence the Muslim Ukraine starts to look to the south rather

than to the north. Why is this? Because Belkin Han has good

relations with the last Ambassade Kailash and Baghdad, burka Han and

Akbar Khan. He has good relations with the last Khelifa in Baghdad.

Al Motta awesome, almost Alison, and then of course full ago, who

is still a Buddhist

shamanist Mongol, treacherously attacks the remains of that a

basket case and kills the last Khalifa

and is pressing west. So backcare Han stops looking to the north and

starts looking to the south and he forges an alliance with the

Mamluks in Egypt and it's because of their military support with

these these very significant Ukrainian Muslim armies that the

Mongols are finally stopped at Angel lot and elsewhere. So it's

believed to be the case that it was Belka Han, who protected

Jerusalem and Makkah and Medina from being completely destroyed by

the Mongols. That's one of the contributions of Ukrainian Islam

to really the central history of the Ummah, these aren't marginal

people any longer.

Now, the interesting thing that happens at this time is following

Darko fans, demise. You have

other M years in that region. One of them is mum, ie the great Amir,

whose formal name was Mohammed, who again was a great warrior

against the sort of barbarian peoples to the north and to the

east, one of the people who is expanding the mother ourselves in

the mosques into western Siberia across the Euros and there are

still Muslim communities in the Urals to this day from that time,

and one of the stories that the Russian Muslims will tell you is

that mummy, of course, said to have been buried in the great

Muslim cemetery the mummy of collagen is named after him in the

city of

well, Volgograd now, then called Stalingrad. According to the

Russian Muslims, at any rate, it was the prayers of the Olia of the

Al Bayt buried in the Mumbai of Colgan that turned the tide at

Stalingrad, because that was the essence of the battle between

Eastern West and that's where the biggest Soviet War Memorial is

located right in the middle of that Tata Muslim burial ground

there's an eternal flame and so forth. That's the story Russian

Muslims will tell you it's that are dead Alia actually were the

ones who defeated Hitler anyway.

And then we find through the period of decline following the

Battle of Kulikov, or field, which was 1380, which is when Russia

starts to become united. And it becomes more or less clear that

even though Ukraine as it now is a still under Muslim rule, and Islam

is really thriving there, but also very big Jewish communities carry

out Jews and others, Greek communities, it's a typical

cosmopolitan Muslim place, to the north of that is going to be

Muscovy, leading on to the 16th century and Ivan the Terrible's

destruction of Muslims on the river Volga and the Russian push

to the east.

So, southern Ukraine,

obviously the Crimea is a Muslim country until the end of the 18th

century when Catherine the Great captures it. The Treaty of yesI

which is one of the great defeats really for the Ottoman Empire,

when the Black Sea is no longer just a Muslim lake. And the city

of * Bay, which was the capital of the Z province of the Ottoman

Empire was captured and Christianized by Catherine the

Great and 20 years later, * Bay becomes the city of Odetta. To

this day, Hyderabad has the official name of ADESA, but it was

originally an ottoman city and, and settlement and still a very

kind of interesting place

after 1792, in the Treaty of Yasi, Russia NYSED. But there's Yeah,

there is a mosque there.

And some very heroic stories from Muslims who were executed by the

communist

subversion sufferer of was the great alum of ADESA, who, after

the Russian Revolution was was shot by the communists. Also in

that era, you find the

Jewish communities,

which have always been big in the Muslim world, they start to flee

from the old Ottoman territories back into the Ottoman Empire

because of the pogroms particularly the 1882 big pogrom

of the Jews in in Ukraine and in Russia, very many of them flee to

the Ottoman Empire, and I've even met American Jews converts to

Islam who remember how their grandparents in Odessa would

always make sure they had not even passport, just in case things got

difficult. The church started to ferment a pogrom again, they could

move over the border into the Ottoman empire where they were

where they were safe. So under the communists, things become really

difficult. Muslims by this time in Ukraine are actually a minority.

And you have various heroic stories in Crimea in particular

whether you know

Catherine the Great demolish the mosques in Crimea and brought in

Russian settlers. And it's been a very difficult experience. In

1944, Stalin deported all the Muslims of Crimea, and more than

half of them. Maybe 150,000 died just during the deportations. It

was a great catastrophe for them. And they're still trying to come

back most of the Jimmy Lev, of course, is the chair of the

Crimean Tatar Mejlis is said to have carried out the longest ever

protest hunger strike recorded anywhere when he was arrested by

the Soviets, because of his campaigning for Muslim Rights in

Crimea. He's been nominated for a Nobel Prize as a medal from the

United Nations High Commission for Refugees and so forth. Various

assassination attempts on him but he was a kind of hero really for

the Muslims of the area. So today's situation is that there is

a Mufti in Kyiv

at the main mosque in Kyiv, they have about 400 500 Muslim

congregations around Ukraine with about 200 mosques, which are

formally designated as mosques and about 100 More under construction,

a great Islamic revival going on there. The policy of the Mufti is

is to send the Imams to study in Jordan and Lebanon. There used to

be Ukraine Islamic University at the at Jamia Mosque, which is in

Donetsk that's in one of the breakaway Russian separatist

republics in the east. Part of the problem today are in post

independence, Ukraine has been that the big concentrations of

indigenous Ukrainian Muslims have been in the areas that have been

annexed by the Russian Federation. Crimea, when Muslims were about

15% of the population, of course, once it was 90% 15%.

And also in Donetsk, and where the university is and also in Luhansk,

whether it's a big Tata or Muslim community Tartaros have a lot of

Greek blood, a lot of German blood, a lot of Slavic blood,

they're very kind of ethnically interesting community. They don't

look like Mongols any longer, for the most part, but there's a big

Cathedral Mosque in Luhansk. And there's also a famous mosque in

healthcare, one of the biggest and most popular in in Ukraine, which

has been according to report slightly damaged in the recent

bombardment. He was demolished by the communists in the 1930s

because they said it was getting in the way of the river in Kharkov

which was a complete absurdity, but it was rebuilt by the Muslim

community there in the 1990s. In Kyiv, you have the main mosque,

which is where the Mufti resides, you have the Rama mosque and and a

number of other purpose built mosques, which are quite quite

beautiful some of them and in Mariupol, which is now under

siege, of course you have famous Imam Ismail, who is there right

now Ismail hygienic law at the Soleimani mosque. Maria Paul

anciently in a Muslim area, but this is a relatively new mosque

constructed with money from a Turkish businessman who works in

Ukraine a lot. There was a report just four days ago that the mosque

had been shelled and damaged. But the Imam has got a message out

saying that it doesn't seem to be the case. And it's interesting

Muslims, they will tell you that, of course it's called the

Sulaymaniyah mosque, because sometimes Salima and the

magnificence of the Ottoman Empire, who ruled southern Ukraine

was married to his favorite wife Katsuki Horam assault on who's

buried next to him if you're good at Soleimani, and mosque in

Istanbul. And she was actually a Ukrainian, famous, very beautiful

and really influential built a number of famous mosques in

Istanbul. So that's another connection. So where this will

end, we don't know. But the Muslim community has been

very active in the current disputes. Even though always it's

caught between two fires just as during the Second World War caught

between the Nazi nightmare and the communist nightmare, just like

Jewish communities in many ways, but without any kind of real

external support or interest. And we just have to hope and pray for

a just resolution ready for all ethnicities in this conflict. And

that everybody receives assurances of security of stability that the

mosques can be rebuilt that the community can continue to go on

making a major contribution as it has done in the past. Muslims no

longer are your grain the way they used to be, even though there was

tolerated churches in the ancient monasteries there. But it's still

a significant population with very deep Local Roots. And for those

who are interested in the amazing history of Islam in Europe, one of

the great heroes stories I will

Say, unlike Spain where everything was wiped out in the Ukraine,

Muslim communities continue to exist under very difficult

circumstances to the present day so we make dua to Allah subhanaw

taala to ease the sufferings of the people of Ukraine and of the

people of the wider region and insha Allah to bring about justice

and freedom and equality and insha Allah good outcome for everybody

in the region inshallah.