Senhor Padre António,
Vossa Reverendíssima, invocando, "O Sermão de Santo António aos peixes", há trezentos e setenta anos, "verbera a maldade, os vícios, as ambições e as prepotências dos homens"
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"As palavras da Bíblia Sagrada vêm-me à cabeça: não há maior amor do que dar a vida pelos amigos", disse Putin, citado pela agência russa TASS, ao justificar a invasão para proteger a população russófona no leste da Ucrânia. - aqui
Para Cirilo, Patriarca de Moscovo e líder da Igreja Ortodoxa Russa, a guerra de Putin é "metafísica" e nela se joga a "salvação humana"
Em 2018, quando Constantinopla concedeu independência à Igreja Ortodoxa da Ucrânia, já os ucranianos temiam que os russos promovessem uma “guerra religiosa”. Querendo recuperar os fiéis perdidos, o patriarca russo já começou a perder apoios.- Sofia Lorena - 22 de Março de 2022, 7:15
Foi a 8 de Março que o patriarca de Moscovo e líder da Igreja Ortodoxa Russa se referiu à guerra da Rússia na Ucrânia como “algo diferente e muito mais importante do que política”. “Estamos a falar de salvação humana”, afirmou, descrevendo o conflito como uma luta com “um significado não físico, mas metafísico”, sobre “uma rejeição fundamental dos chamados valores que são hoje oferecidos por aqueles que reivindicam o poder mundial”.
A justificação imediata, explicou Cirilo numa cerimónia religiosa no segundo domingo depois do início da invasão, seria uma “parada gay” planeada para a região do Donbass, onde ficam as duas autoproclamadas repúblicas separatistas. A parada simboliza a luta cultural entre os valores supostamente defendidos pela Rússia e os do mundo ocidental e liberal a que a Ucrânia ousou desejar pertencer. “Para entrar no clube destes países é preciso fazer uma parada do orgulho gay”, explicou Cirilo.
À primeira vista, paradas gay e “desnazificação” ou necessidade de defender supostas vítimas de “genocídio”, alguns dos argumentos apresentados por Vladimir Putin para a sua “operação militar especial” na Ucrânia, parecem ter naturezas muito diferentes. Na verdade, os argumentos de Cirilo completam os de Putin.
Ambos acreditam na ideia de “Mundo Russo” e na “Terceira Roma” que Moscovo assumiu ser no século XV, numa altura em que a actual capital russa já era o centro e gravidade da Ortodoxia. E ambos vêem Kiev como “jóia da coroa” perdida, berço político e religioso da nação russa: o Rus’ de Kiev, reino do príncipe Vladimir (Volodomir, para os ucranianos), soberano que, segundo a tradição, se terá unido aos habitantes num baptismo colectivo, em 988, assinalando assim o nascimento do cristianismo eslavo e da Ortodoxia russa. “A Ucrânia é uma parte inalienável da nossa história, cultural e espaço espiritual”, afirmou Putin, dois dias antes da invasão.
“Putin tem defendido o conceito do chamado Mundo Russo e esse conceito fundamenta-se na Ortodoxia russa”, disse à CNN Victoria Smolkin, professora de História e Estudos Russos e do Leste Europeu na Universidade de Wesleyan. “Mundo russo”, escreve no site The Conversation o professor de Religião Comparada Scott Kenworthy, “é uma ideologia de soft power que promove a civilização russa, laços com os falantes russos em todo o mundo e uma maior influência russa na Ucrânia e na Bielorrússia. “O Mundo Russo é onde quer que haja falantes de russo, é onde quer que haja uma igreja russa – não reconhece as fronteiras políticas existentes”, sublinha Smolkin.
A aliança entre Putin e Cirilo começou pouco depois da entronização do patriarca, em 2009, nos anos em que Putin foi primeiro-ministro, e fortaleceu-se quando este regressou à presidência para um terceiro mandato, em 2012. Cirilo começou por recuperar as propriedades que os soviéticos tinham confiscado à Igreja Ortodoxa, mas o seu verdadeiro objectivo era devolver importância à sua Igreja.
“Apesar de 70 a 75% dos russos se considerarem ortodoxos, só uma pequena percentagem é activa na vida da igreja. Cirilo quis ‘re-igrejizar’ a sociedade, afirmando a Ortodoxia Russa como central para a identidade, o patriotismo e a coesão russos – e um Estado russo forte”, escreve Kenworthy. “Também criou uma burocracia altamente centralizada que espelha a de Putin e reprime vozes de dissidentes.” Putin viu na Igreja Ortodoxa uma força para sublinhar a sua legitimidade e obter ganhos políticos, esforçando-se por apresentar a Rússia como país defensor de valores conservadores cristãos.
A “linha vermelha” de 2018
A anexação da Crimeia, em 2014, acabou por cimentar essa aliança. Logo depois, Putin mandou construir uma estátua ao príncipe Vladimir em Moscovo. E parte da Igreja Ortodoxa Ucraniana (já dissidente desde a independência, em 1991) acabou por conseguir, em 2018, que o patriarca de Constantinopla lhe concedesse independência da Igreja Ortodoxa Russa, depois de 332 anos de subordinação. Constantinopla cruzou uma linha vermelha”, acusou então Alexandre Volkok, porta-voz do patriarcado de Moscovo.
A Igreja Ortodoxa Russa já pouco reconhecia a primazia de honra tradicional do patriarca de Constantinopla (Istambul). Afinal, 150 milhões respondem ao patriarca de Moscovo. Mas na Ucrânia estavam 30 milhões desses fiéis e muitas paróquias, incluindo locais de culto importantes, como o mosteiro do Lavra, com mais de cem estruturas religiosas e um labirinto de catacumbas do século XI, onde estão enterradas algumas das figuras mais reverenciadas da Igreja Ortodoxa.
“Se virem pessoas que apelam à tomada pela força de uma igreja ou mosteiro saibam que são agentes russos. O objectivo do Kremlin é inflamar uma guerra religiosa na Ucrânia”, avisava então o Presidente Petro Poroshenko, em pré-campanha. “Trata-se da nossa segurança, soberania e da geopolítica mundial. É o fim da Terceira Roma, o mais antigo conceito de hegemonia mundial da Rússia. A autocefalia [independência em linguagem eclesiástica] faz parte da nossa estratégia de Estado pró-europeu”, defendeu Poroshenko.
Oito anos depois, com a invasão russa, chegam agora notícias de alguns ataques a igrejas no Ocidente da Ucrânia, mas o alvo são igrejas do ramo ucraniano que se manteve subordinado a Moscovo. Em muitas, chocadas com a guerra, Cirilo deixou de ser referido nos sermões.
Cortes e críticas
O apoio de Cirilo a Putin não surpreende, mas o chefe da poderosa Igreja Ortodoxa Russa enfrenta cada vez mais críticas. Há uma semana, a Igreja Ortodoxa Russa de Amesterdão anunciou o corte de laços com Cirilo e com o patriarcado de Moscovo, uma “decisão extremamente dolorosa e difícil”, tomada dias depois de os seus responsáveis terem manifestado “choque perante a invasão da Ucrânia pelas forças armadas da Federação Russa”.
No início do mês, uma carta aberta assinada por mais de 350 padres russos ortodoxos pedia “um cessar-fogo imediato” e “o fim da guerra fratricida”, lamentando “os sofrimentos imerecidos dos irmãos e das irmãs ucranianas”. Estes 350 são apenas um pequeno grupo, mas constituem uma “vanguarda de um mal-estar crescente no mundo ortodoxo”, escreve o jornal italiano La Repubblica. Alguns destes padres estão na Rússia. “É um acto de coragem”, disse à CNN o padre russo ortodoxo Andrei Kordochkin, da catedral de Santa Maria Madalena de Madrid, um dos signatários, notando que a missiva refere a palavra “guerra”, ilegal na Rússia, quatro vezes.
A sorte destes padres, tal como as dos que deixaram de louvar Cirilo nos sermões, depende do que acontecer no terreno e nas negociações entre a Rússia e Ucrânia. Cirilo também não vai escapar às consequências da guerra. Pode sair fortalecido, como acredita, mas também pode ver multiplicar-se o gesto dos signatários da carta e a decisão da Igreja de Amesterdão.
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European University Institute - Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Ukraine and the Clash of Civilisation theory, an interview with Olivier Roy
Islam expert Olivier Roy was recently interviewed for Le Nouvel Observateur on Russia's war on Ukraine. In this interview he explains why these events prove that Samuel Huntington's 'Clash of Civilisations' theory does not work. - 10 March 2022 |
Is the Russian-led war in Ukraine a 'tipping point in history'?
It is more of a step backwards than a tipping point, especially since this is a process that has been underway for several years. It is perfectly consistent with what Putin has already done in Georgia and to some extent in Armenia. He has always said that Ukraine is not a real country in his eyes. What is striking, however, is the brutality of the offensive. Putin had been insane to start a war, for his brutality leaves no other choice than resistance. But also, and foremost, because he fails to understand that this is a different era. Putin is both a XIX century strategist and a Soviet, He has a territorial vision of power and a culturalist vision of the Russian Empire centred around its Slavic and Orthodox component. Putin has not understood that Ukrainian patriotism exists, and that the Soviet system based on the federation of socialist republics has paradoxically strengthened. This, in the case of Ukraine, Georgia and Armenia, and has even created, in the case of Central Asia, 'republican' nationalisms.
He wants to be the new “Peter the Great” and write his name in history as the one who re-established the Russian Empire; that is his obsession. But the insanity is to wage a XIX century war in the XXI. In my opinion, he shot himself in the foot.
Could this intervention be a strategic mistake, just as the one Russia made by invading Afghanistan in 1979?
Certainly, but not for the reasons usually provided: the risk of stalemate and isolation, the weight of the sanctions or again economic cost of the occupation. What the invasion calls into question is a new geostrategic configuration that was slowly being put in place in favour of Russia since the advent of Putin in 2000, which was based on a binary vision of Huntington's 'Clash of Civilisations'. As a matter of fact, we have witnessed a shift in favour of Putin's Russia in significant segments of Western public opinion: a certain Christian right, together with the majority of populists and some conservative circles of all kinds. This started at the time of the conflicts in Serbia and Kosovo, where senior officers and intellectuals wondered whether we choose the wrong enemy, whether it would not have been more logical for the West to support Serbia instead of the Bosnians and Kosovars.
This shift has a name of course: the "Islamic threat". 9/11 obviously exacerbated this vision, especially as populist movements grew around the rejection of Islam. Local conflicts have been interpreted in terms of a struggle between the Christian West and Islam, from Sudan to Syria, touching on the Balkans and the Caucasus. In Syria, Bashar al-Assad is supported as much by the Russians as by those who present themselves as protectors of Oriental Christians. The riots in the French “banlieues” in 2005 were also described by analysts and novelists (Houellebecq) as the beginning of a civil war between "Europeans" and "Muslims", and part of the global Jihad. In this game, Russia appeared, for all this "reactionary" fringes, as an ally or even the bulwark of the West. I heard the ex-member of the “Front National”, Aymeric Chauprade, at the time professor of geostrategy at the “Ecole de Guerre”, call for an alliance between Christian Europe, Orthodox Russia and the Iranian Shiites against Sunni Islam, the great enemy.
In 2019, you dedicated the essay, 'Is Europe Christian?' to these growing proximities ...
Yes, because to this strategic vision another one was added: the war of values in the West. Putin's Russia was perceived by many conservative Christians (see the “Salon Beige” website for French Catholics) as the bulwark of traditional values, anti-LGBT and anti-abortion, whilst the Orthodox Church appeared as the champion of the reconquest of souls, in cooperation with the political power.
This explains the complacency of many American evangelicals and conservative Catholics towards Putin. The Polish and Hungarian leaders, although suspicious of the eternal Russia, were also in this front, alongside with Donald Trump's advisors (Steve Bannon). For France, we must remember Marine Le Pen's visit to Russia in 2015, which was a real milestone. Not to mention the distribution of very lucrative sinecures to European politicians of all sides who have morphed, without any conviction, into lobbyists enamoured of President Putin.
Does this war seem to you to be more of a loss for Putin than a victory?
Yes, Putin sacrificed all the soft power he had acquired over the last twenty years, which allowed him to be a global player, for a purely territorial vision of Russian power. The whole geostrategy of alliance with the populist right and Western religious conservatives, which made it difficult to exert pressure and sanctions against Moscow, vanished in thin air. In this respect, it is easy to see how his admirers are all backtracking, including Zemmour, who does not hesitate to take radical positions and usually boasts of "assuming" them. Today, Putin has become unjustifiable because he scares us. Today, all Europeans have a reflex of distrust. All Putin sympathisers or those who were in favour of finding agreements with the Russians, as Berlusconi, Marine Le Pen, Schröder (the first ex-European leader to join the Russian Nord Stream consortium), Fillon etc. are now devalued. Their reaction is eloquent, they are dumbfounded, and they cannot even find a semblance of justification.
What conclusions do you draw from this?
Samuel Huntington, the 'Clash of Civilizations' theorist, had this to say in a 1993 issue of 'Foreign Affairs': "If (the concept of) civilization is the key, then the probability of violence between Russians and Ukrainians should be low." The moral of the story, for me, is that with this military intervention by Russia in Ukraine, we have definitive proof (because we have many others) that the 'Clash of Civilizations' theory does not work, even though it inspires many thinkers in geostrategy. The idea that the collapse of the Soviet Union was irreversible and that we were now heading for a 'Christianity versus Islam' confrontation is collapsing and we can see that it has never played a role in Putin's vision. Since Catherine II, Russia has always integrated Muslims into the Empire. And Putin has an imperial vision, he is definitely not having a religion based geostrategy, as some of the European right and extreme right believed.
The facts were quite clear. Among Putin's four military interventions in the former Soviet space, three targeted Christian and Orthodox countries. The direct aggression against Georgia was to the benefit of the Muslim Abkhazians. During the last conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, the French far right and the Republicans (Les Républicains) called for Christian solidarity against the Turkish-Muslim threat. I had reminded them in an article (Le Monde, 18 November 2020) that the Russians were on Azerbaijan's side and not at all on the Armenians' side. They let the Azeris take over Karabakh and then pretended to intervene. In the wake of the war in Chechnya, Putin supported the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. The only place in geographical Europe where Sharia law is applied is in the Republic of Chechnya, in Russia. The attack on another Orthodox nation, Ukraine, will further accentuate the divisions in the Orthodox world but also in the Christian world in general (the Ukrainian Catholic Uniates are a bastion of Ukrainian patriotism). The only Ukrainian patriarch who still recognises the supremacy of Patriarch Cyril of Moscow, Onuphre, has just called on the faithful to defend the Ukrainian homeland. Putin has lost his claim to represent the Orthodox world.
Much has been said about the term 'denazification' used by Putin to justify his military intervention in Ukraine.
He is saying the same thing about Ukrainian nationalism that the Bolsheviks said before and after the Second World War, that "Ukrainian nationalism" equals "Nazism". And the problem is that he may be sincere because he is insane. He is completely paranoid. He believes in the omnipotence of propaganda and does not recognise that his own population is much better informed than the Soviet population was.
In his mind, the Ukrainians' resistance is quickly crushed, a dictator is put in place, and then they will fall in line, like the Czechs in 1968 and the Chechens in 2001. But this time it will not be as easy. Will the Ukrainian popular resistance take military forms, i.e. guerrilla warfare, attacks, terrorism, etc.? Or will it take the form of a kind of strike by the population? I don't know. Will the sanctions be effective? I don't know. But in any case, the Russian people will not accept to make sacrifices to keep Ukraine. The Russians do not see this war as justified. The narrative of "we are threatened, and NATO is coming to our doorstep" is not being bought. He has been far too disrespectful on that.
The Russians, at least the generations after the fall of the USSR, live certainly in the XXI century. Putin will be forced to increase repression even more, and we can already see the first arrests of Russian anti-war demonstrators. He finds himself in a politically unmanageable situation. It will in fact reinforce Ukrainian nationalism. And it will also paradoxically strengthen the European Union. It will force us to develop the defence aspect, whereas Putin thinks that we are structurally cowards and that we will seek an agreement with him because we don't want to go to war. And the Americans, on the contrary, at least while Biden is there, are going to affirm their solidarity, they are going to send troops to NATO member countries, firstly to the Baltic States. As for the Poles, they are no fools: dealing with Russia would be suicidal for them, even if the current government shares Putin's rejection of liberal values. Thus, the Europeans will close ranks.
You say that we are not changing the world and that we are experiencing the continuation of a process. Are there not nevertheless risks in seeing another geopolitical map being drawn? The initial hesitation of the Chinese to condemn the Russian offensive has created concerns.
No, I think we must be very careful about that. The Chinese could not condemn it because they reserve the right to invade Taiwan. But at the same time, the deep interests of the Chinese and the Russians are divergent. There will be no strategic alliance between China and Russia. On the other hand, the Americans can afford to be on two fronts, the Pacific and Europe, especially if the Europeans decide to strengthen their defence. The Chinese, on the other hand, have no desire to be on several fronts. Nor do the Russians.
This war came as a surprise and yet Putin had said, as soon as he took power twenty-two years ago, that he considered the dissolution of the Soviet Union to be 'the historical catastrophe of the XXth century'.
Yes, in this respect, the resentment and dismay of the Russians at the fall of the Soviet Union was underestimated. I was there at the time. It was a terrible trauma because everything collapsed without anything having happened: neither war nor revolution. That's what people didn't understand. When a regime change following an invasion, a war, or a huge catastrophe, at least we have some elements of understanding. But when you suddenly wake up with a new regime, or even a completely different nationality and map of your country, it is a very strong trauma. His mistake was to have avenged the trauma thirty years later. Now, there is a whole generation of Russians who don’t give a damn about the Soviet Union, who did not experience it. He remained frozen. He failed to understand that the new nationalisms have taken hold; that a Russian-speaking Ukrainian can also be a Ukrainian patriot and fight the Russian invasion.
The original article in French is available on Le Nouvel Observateur.
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Katherine Bullock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
University of Toronto provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA.
University of Toronto provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA-FR.
“The clash of civilizations,” wrote the late American political scientist Samuel Huntington in a famous 1993 article, “will dominate global politics.” He predicted: “The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”
Picked apart by critics for conceptual and empirical errors, the tragedy of 9/11 breathed new life into his theory of international relations. Huntington was regarded as prophetic.
His vision of an “Islam with bloody borders” that would confront the West, fuelled by Muslim extremists, put wind in the sails of the so-called War on Terror, turning western Muslims into suspects, not citizens, and transforming them into societal outcasts.
But Huntington also predicted:
“If civilization is what counts … the likelihood of violence between Ukrainians and Russians should be low. They are two Slavic, primarily Orthodox peoples who have had close relationships with each other for centuries.”
Now that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has proved him spectacularly wrong, it’s time to throw out his whole outlook, which has traumatized Muslims the world over.
Read more: Russia's actions in post-Soviet wars provide clues to its brutal Ukraine invasion
Some might argue that a theory is made of parts, and Huntington may have been wrong on the Russian element of his beliefs, but on Islam, he was right — so there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bath water.
However, the Clash of Civilizations theory has devastated Muslims for years because it formed the basis of post-9/11 security policies that targeted the supposed enemy of the West — Muslims. We need to shatter the Huntington lens completely, not just remove the portion on Russia and Ukraine.
First, a brief recap of the theory.
Many analysts are reluctant to predict what politics will look like in the future. Huntington didn’t hesitate, and was happy to provide editors at the magazine Foreign Affairs, Jim Hoge and Fareed Zakaria, the “big and controversial” article they wanted for their launch.
His piece, “The Clash of Civilizations?” — the question mark was removed for the book version — argued that wars had evolved from fights between princes to conflicts among nations and then to ideological clashes.
Huntington opined that the future conflicts that would dominate the globe would be wars between civilizations. The most likely culprit would be Islam which, he said, had “bloody borders.”
Without 9/11, Huntington’s theory would have likely been relegated to academia.
Even on the “Islam versus the West” count, it failed. It did not account for:
• A stable alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia
• Sectarian or ethnic divisions within civilizations (Protestant/Catholic; Sunni/Shia; Germany/France; Turks/Arabs/Persians/Malays, etc.)
• Inter-ethnic and inter-religious pluralism in Muslim history (700 odd years of the Convivencia in Al Andalus, Muslim Spain)
• Alliances between Islamists and the CIA in the 1979 Afghan war to oust the Soviet Union
• Millions of Muslims eager and happy to live in western countries.
That’s a brief list.
Muslim leaders pushed for alternative world views, such as former Iranian president Seyed Mohammad Khatami in his Dialogue of Civilizations and via organizations like the Alliance of Civilizations and the Common Word Initiative that evolved into World Interfaith Harmony Week. They countered that politics was never inevitable, but shaped by choices we make.
Sherene Razack, a Canadian women’s studies and critical race academic, argues that niqab bans are illogical because none of the stated reasons, such as inability to communicate or integrate, stand up to comparative scrutiny, so we must turn to psychoanalysis to understand.
Read more: Québec's push to ban the hijab is 'sexularism'
The same applies to Huntington’s theory. Why does the theory still appeal, despite evidence that it’s wrong?
The Clash of Civilizations still has traction because of its emotive, tribal appeal, setting up an us-versus-them scenario that’s helped create anti-Muslim westerners and anti-westerner Muslims.
Muslim youth growing up in the West since 9/11 have experienced a “collective trauma,” as one of my students put it recently.
Their weekly reflection notes written in response to class discussions roil with themes of despair at being scapegoated for violent actions that happened before they were born and that they had nothing to do with.
They’re resentful that their beloved faith has been singled out for being violent, while they know and experience western violence in the name of democracy. They watched as the U.S. dropped more than 26,000 bombs on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan in 2016 alone.
Some feel anxiety and depression at not being able to fit in and be accepted for who they are.
The scant literature on the psychological fallout from being treated as a terror suspect highlights mental health issues of despair, anxiety, depression — a chronic trauma embracing the entire Muslim community, young to old.
The West and Islam share many values that can form the foundation of good relations. There’s no need to outcast those who share ideals of standing up for justice, service to the poor, aiding neighbours, being kind to the elderly and children and the importance of hard work and self-sufficiency.
Next year, the Clash of Civilizations theory will have done a terrible job at explaining geopolitical forces for the past 30 years. Let’s throw it a retirement party.
