#lotsofinformation

[mrgualf]

Specializzazione o multi-tasking? Il dilemma del consolidamento dell’expertise

Vi racconto un episodio cercando di porlo come un fatto assimilabile all’esperienza di tanti.

Ci occupiamo per mesi di un processo o di una funzionalità tecnica che mettiamo in piedi non senza sforzi e impegno. Possiamo diventare riferimenti di quegli ambiti, non male davvero: quasi quasi i colleghi e i manager chiedono solo a noi per quelle materie, a distanza di due, tre o quattro tornate di attività nuove richieste dal Cliente. Poi, una persona che stimiamo ci spiega che, se non riusciamo a star fermi in ufficio (che poi, l’ufficio è già abbastanza ampio), è meglio interessarci a più temi, stream del Progetto, Moduli SAP, tematiche dell’Azienda.

Bene, in Capgemini non ho mai, dico mai, sofferto di carenza di angolature, sfaccettature, cui guardare per capire e saperne di più e rendermi il più possibile utile alla forza-lavoro.

[fromrussiawithlove007-blog]

Lecture Reflection

I have never taken a class, or really learnt anything of then what I see on the news about Islam. So as you can imagine I was very intrigued by Dominic’s lectures about Islam in Russia. Islam is one of the top four state religions. Along with Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism.  

We started our discussions with the history of how islam even got into the Russian area and which peoples it came with. As well Dominic was sure to mention that ethnicity does not equal religion, but for the sake of our discussion ethnicity tended to be related to which type of religion they followed. For example, the Tatars, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz and Bashkirs were considered Muslim because within their cultures that was the most prevalent religion. Even if the person was not Muslim he or she grew up with Islamic influence. In the same sense that a child growing up in Rome would have a Catholic influence. 

These ethnicities are considered Turkic ethnicities, which is the second largest group in Russia. They include the ones listed earlier as well as the Chechs and Tazars. Today Moscow has between 2-4 million Muslims, and has only 4 Mosques that serves these millions of Muslim worshipers. 

We were able to go over the history of how Islam got into Russia. Dominic described the spread of Islam was like a tornado and then a glacier. The Islamic riders would move into take a city, but be pretty tolerant of local customs and culture once they took an area. Then Sufi traders would come in and slowly influence the local population. The Islamic leaders would implement Shari’a Law, which means that the area will follow the 30 or so laws that are in the Quran, but the elders would look at the Adat (local non-muslim customs and laws) and create laws based off of the local culture and needs. Shari’a law is supposed to be a dynamic process that takes hints from the Quran and applies it to modern culture (evolves). 

Muslim empires of the 800-1500 were in the Russian area that we know today. At the hight of the Muslim empire people could move from Dagestan to Deli to the Kazakh area and could communicate (they all spoke the same of similar languages). Moscow was one of the Tatar territories (Khanates - city states) and was apart of that trade network. After the death of Ghingus Khan, in 1553 Ivan the Terrible conquered one of the other Tatar Khanates - Kazan. Starting the expansion of Russia. 

Now that Russia has so many Islamic peoples, the leaders had to figure out what to do with them. Their options were Kick them out (there were to many Muslims to do this), tolerance, conversion (didn't work), autonomy, assimilation or elimination (to messy). Assimilation seemed to be the best choice for the people in power at the time, and it was truly successful when Muslim peasants joined the Russian peasant to rebel against the land lords (it became more of a class thing rather then a religion thing). The goal was for everyone to identify as Russian - to join their Russian brothers and sisters. 

In his talks, Dominic focused a lot on Chechnya as well. We talked about the ethnic cleanse of Chechens from Chechnya during second Great Patriotic War (WW2). How most of their population was wiped out on their way from Chechnya to the Kazakh and Kyrgyz regions. During the 1980s/90s they were aloud to come back to Chechnya though. At the beginning of the 1990′s Chechnya wanted to become its own state, which started the first Chechnya war which was brutal. It ended in 1996 with the signing of a treaty that said Chechnya can rule itself but in 1999 they were going to go back to the negotiation tables and talk about it again. The first war was so brutal though that Russia found though that a lot of the people had become radicalized (the brutalization of people causes radicalization). Which lead to the second Chechnya war, which was very different then the first one because this one was based off of religion and not the idea of freedom. 

We went through a lot of history and the implications it has had on today during his talks. We discussed the reasons why the Chechen wars happened and the second time of troubles in the 1990s. We only skimmed the surface of what is going on though. I really enjoyed Dominic’s talks and I feel like I understand a little more about whats going on today. As well, because of his talks I am even more excited to see Kazan and be able to relate what we have learnt to the actual area. I hope to continue studying this subject in the future.