Do Crimean Tatars have Generations Connection?

For clearing of this question on April, 17th, 2012, the female club "Nur" carried out "Meeting of generations" in the hall of the Islamic Cultural Center of Simferopol.

 

 

The anxiety about this issue was not casual: after all, nowadays, when the whole generation of the Crimean Tatars born on the peninsula has already grown up, it is already possible to make some conclusions about how much it was possible to keep the Crimean-Tatar nationally-cultural and religious identity at its representatives.

 

Nowadays witnesses of the deportation which started on morning on May, 18th, 1944, are very old men. During half a century they applied all powers for preservation of their religion, culture, language in the conditions of destruction by the communist mode of the slightest reminder on the existence of these people. They took care that the new generations which were born in deportation, in the absence of schools, textbooks, and books became worthy carriers of religion, culture, language of their ancestors and transferred them to their children and grandchildren.

 

 

These people and children brought up by them struggled for returning from exile, imparted to their children and grandchildren born on foreign land love to their far Motherland and pride of their national identity, despite power attempts to transform it into a shame brand. Whether we can, after two decades from the moment of returning to Crimea, say that we are their worthy successors?

 

Representatives of three age groups (above 65, women below 50 and very young single girls) gathered for discussion of the current situation. Memories on pre-war life of the peninsula, on the first years of life of the deported people firsthand sounded. They shared stories heard from their parents about formation on foreign land, and also about family and household problems arising after returning to Crimea.

 

 

Ancestors of the Crimean Tatars made enormous efforts that their people not only survived, but also preserved fidelity to Islam, and thus were not dissolved in the surrounding ethnoses. Whether in a due measure these qualities were transferred to the generation which was born and has grown on the peninsula? After all they became representatives of the Crimean-Tatar culture, and they are to bring up following generations.

 

Now we are on our native earth; we have possibility to create national schools, and also to bring up in children respect for seniors, to impart love for their Motherland by means of national telecommunications. We can freely teach bases of Islam and bring up on its basic principles spiritually healthy generation. But defects of the modern society did not pass the Crimean-Tatar people: bad habits are widely spread among youth, and moreover - among girls; appearance became far from modest and tidy, and behavior - too frivolous.

 

Probably, the problem is in impossibility to reach at least the same results which reached the senior generations in exile, in absence of communication and mutual understanding between generations?

 

Preservation of national identity and mixed marriages; interfaith marriages (with believers of different faith connect their fate about 18 % of young men and 14 % of girls) do not promote preservation of religious identity and education of children born in such marriages in Islamic cultural wealth.

 

And answers to questions why youth rejects religious practice as “superfluous conventions”, does not wish to lean in their lives against national culture and traditions, keeping them; and also does not see reliable pious spouses for themselves among their people, still should be found.

 

Feride VAIT