Russia to allot almost billion rubles for educating Islamic experts

Source : ABNA / Ufa / 23 Nov 2011

Russia will continue preparing experts on history and culture of Islam, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said.

"We have allotted money for it in the budget this year, in 2012 and in 2013. We have envisaged a significant sum - almost a billion rubles (more than $32 million - IF)," Medvedev said at his meeting with Muslim clerics in Ufa, Bashkortostan.

He said that improving quality of education for specialists on history and culture of Islam, full integration of Islamic theological educational establishments in Russian educational system "is certainly an important task."

Russia has first time in history adopted a state standard of higher education on "Islam theology" and, according to the President, it gave a possibility to the biggest state higher educational establishments to open departments and prepare Islamic clerics.

"We're interested in having powerful and effective Islamic education. And even more, we're interested that authority of our Muslim clerics would be high not only in Russia, but all around the world," he said and added that only "in this case we can have correct moods inside Muslim community."

"Ignorance of elementary bases of religious culture does the young man most vulnerable for displaying radical behavior and extremist elements. Illiteracy is very dangerous theme. Religious illiteracy is twice dangerous because it frequently provokes not only problems in a head, but also as consequence – problems in actions of the person," he said.

Medvedev also said that there are about 7 thousands mosques and prayer houses, 96 Islamic educational establishments including seven universities in Russia. 320 mosques were built during the last four years.

"In the early 90s of the previous century there were about 90 mosques on the territory of Russia (may be you'll correct me), but it somehow corresponds to reality, and there were no educational establishments at all," he said.