Musa Jarullah Bigiev (1873-1949): Are Islam, Communism and Anti-Colonialism Compatible?

Abstract

The article explores the “conciliatory discourse” on the compatibility of Islam and socialism in the previously unknown work of the prominent Tatar theologian Musa Bigiev (1873-1949) “The Alphabet book of the Great Truths of Islam” (1923/1924). Discourse analysis of the manuscript, the historical context of its writing and the theologian’s practical activities in the 1920s reveal the nature of the “conciliatory” discourse on decolonization, which combined into a consistent concept revolutionary, socialist ideas with religious principles. The author concludes that the Bigiev discourse was based on the anti-colonial, anti-Western pathos of socialist and Marxist ideas, proving the necessity of cooperation between Muslims and Eastern countries and the Bolsheviks. At the same time, in the 1920s, Bigiev did not change his earlier convictions: he continued to rely on a reformist reading of Islam in the name of ideas of liberation and revival of the Muslim world. Temporary rallying around the “Bolshevik flag” seemed a convenient tool for decolonization. Bigiev reconciled in his beliefs and demonstrated that these worldviews were not contradictory. Involved in global anti-colonial networks, the theologian was not a consistent communist and represented a vivid, but not unique for that era, type of theologian and politician who possessed a hybrid identity who possessed a hybrid identity characteristic of some Muslim thinkers, anti-colonial leaders of the Russian Empire, Soviet Russia and the Eastern countries.