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MODERN RUSSIA: IDEOLOGY, POLITICS, CULTURE AND RELIGION
IGOR DOBAYEV. ETHNIC AND CONFESSIONAL IN ISLAM: IS "TRUE ISLAM" SO RELIGIOUSLY PURE? // The article was written for the bulletin "Russia and the Moslem World."
Keywords: Wahhabism, Islam, Islamism, Pan-Turkism, traditional Islam, Turkism, "pure Islam", ethnos.
Igor Dobayev,
DSc(Philosophy)/ Professor, Expert of Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of Center of Regional Studies, Institute of Sociology and Religion, Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don
Citation: Dobayev I. Ethnic and Confessional in Islam: Is "True Islam" so Religiously Pure? / / Russia and the Moslem World, 2021, № 1 (311), P. 5-20. DOI: 10.31249/rmw/2021.01.01
Abstract. Since the 1980s of the 20 century ideology, and then the practice of the so-called "Pure Islam" began, under external influence, to sneak actively to the territory of Russia. Its adherents entered into irreconcilable confrontation with the supporters of traditional Islam and it resulted in the emergence and development of religious and political extremism and terrorism under the guise of Moslem beliefs. In this regard, it seems relevant to find out whether the so-called "pure Islam," free from the influence of ethnicity and traditional values really exists.
Since the end of the 1980s of the 20 century in the course of the revival processes in the religious sphere, which were rapidly proceeding on the territory of the Soviet Union, the question of the "purity" of those forms of Islam that had formed in this space over the centuries became acute. Throwing such concepts as "pure Islam" (or "true Islam") into the information gave rise to reconcilable struggle with adherents of traditional versions of Islam. As a result, the accelerated politicization and radicalization of this religion, the emergence of religious and political extremism and even terrorism, which began to hide behind the Moslem faith, were recorded. This was facilitated by the opening of information centers at the embassies of some Moslem countries, the influx of numerous missionaries to the territory of our country, as well as the almost uncontrolled departure of young people abroad to receive Islamic education. In this regard, it seems very important in a theoretical and practical terms to find out whether the so-called "pure Islam," free from the influence of ethnicity, pre-Islamic and other later values exists really. It is quite obvious that the religious and ethno-national factors in Islam, as well as in other religious beliefs, are in a state of complex interaction. They can act independently, parallel to each other, or oppose or interact with each other. The latter processes are recorded most often, and our perception depends on the balance of strength and depth of the mutual influence of ethnic and confessional factors. As practice shows, religion in real life almost never appears in its "pure" form, but almost always in ethno-national, politicized and other forms. Russian publicist Y. Amelina, touching upon the topic of correlation between religious and ethno-national factors, notes that although they seem to organically complement each other, in reality there is a conflict in this area. Excessive emphasis solely on the religious component leads to religious and political extremism, and on the ethnic one to ethno-nationalism [1, p. 147]. A number of arguments can be made in favor of this thesis. For example, after the end of the Caucasian War in the North-Eastern Caucasus,
where the process of artificial accelerated re-Islamization of society was recorded, the tsarist authorities focused on the prevalence of the customary law of the North Caucasian highlanders (adats) over Sharia. However, since 1905, the principle of "Sharia against adat" had received official support from the Russian authorities, which was due to the fact that adats even more sharply contradicted the existing legislation and legal norms of the empire [2, p. 41]. Another example: in the 1880s there emerged and was developing a movement of "Jadids" in the Moslem regions of the Russian Empire, designed to combat the backwardness of the Moslem masses of the empire by carrying out reforms of religious education through the introduction of new teaching methods, teaching, in addition to theological, secular sciences. In the course of this activity, Russian Moslem Turks, primarily the Crimean Tatar reformer of the traditional way of life of Russian Moslems, Ismail Bey Gasprinsky (1851-1914), introduced not only the term "Russian Islam" into circulation, but also developed the ideological doctrine of Pan-Turkism. In the future, Pan-Turkism will be employed by the Young Turks, and the Turkish social scientist Ziya Gek Alp (Mohammed Ziya) (1876-1924) will become its main ideologist. At the same time, as already noted, the ratio of religious and ethnic factors in Islam is not exclusively of a conflict nature. We emphasize once again: these two components can interact, feeding each other, or they can be in a state of parallel development, without intersecting. In any case, their interconnection and influence on evolutionary processes in the development of various forms of Islam's existence are certainly of scientific and practical interest, including in the sphere of politics. When studying this reality, scientists distinguish at least three approaches [3, p. 18-23]. According to the first one, from the point of view of Islam, ethnicity is an insignificant construct, since theoretically Islam stands above ethnicity, racial and other differences. The main point is as follows: a person's belonging to the Islamic ummah. The second, the Arabian view of the problem
implies that in Islam there is only one dominant ethnicity (Arab-Arabian), the one from which the Prophet and his companions came. Conclusion: All Arab is Islamic. The third approach claims that ethnicity is important to Islam. The synthesis of the ethnic and the religious factors led, during the collapse of the Caliphate, to the emergence of the so-called "traditionalism" in Islam. The relationship between ethnic and religious factors became the reason for the emergence of various forms of traditional Islam: in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, South Asia, of course, in the North Caucasus [4, p. 54-58], etc.
Let's consider the above approaches in more detail. Having originated in the first decade of the 7th century, Islam, as an integral doctrine, was preserved only under the Prophet Muhammad and the first two "righteous" caliphs, Abu Bakr and Omar. During this period, Islam emerged and began to form as a religious system. However, later it disintegrated, became mosaic and today Islam, being a large social institution and at the same time a process, includes a number of directions, interpretations, trends, as well as sects [5, p. 12].
Almost the entire history of Moslem thought is a permanent emergence of ideological currents that arose in the course of a clash of different opinions on various problems. At the same time, Islam has by no means lost its general ideological integrity and systemic stability. In medieval Islam, movements and trends arose, as a rule, in connection with polemics on very specific problems. Thus, the polemics on Islamic law (fiqh) gave rise to a number of Moslem legal schools (madhhab), on the issue of power there appeared three branches that still exist today (Sunnis, Shiites, Kharijites), etc. In turn, Western orientalists and Islamic scholars introduced the concept of "ideological currents in Islam" into scientific circulation, including traditionalism, fundamentalism (Salafiyya) and modernism.
Nevertheless, despite the modern mosaicism of Islam, among Moslems there is a deep conviction that they belong to a single community of people professing a common faith, united by common traditions, historical roots and the unity of interests in the modern world: to the Islamic Ummah of the world, regardless of racial, ethnic, social, property and other differences. Islam in the eyes of its adherents is not only a faith, but also a way of life, everyday rules and customs, a mentality conditioned by Sharia law. Islam, more than other world religions, is included in the system of social and political regulation. Practically all aspects of a Moslem's life are declared religiously significant, since the Quranic worldview does not know the opposition of the sacred and the ordinary, religion and politics, sexuality and piety. All the fullness of life is sacred. The goal is tawhid (monotheism, postulating the assertion of the unity of believers), the integration of all life in a single community, which gives a Moslem the sense of closeness to the highest unity: God [5, p. 12-13].
After its emergence, Islam rather quickly lost the purity of the initial period and became inextricably merged with political doctrine. Indeed, Islam brought people not only the Word of God (Quran), but also gave them a state, which at first was able to provide members of society with relatively equal conditions and some semblance of "social justice." However, initially there was a contradiction in Islam: the hierarchical structure of society was sanctified by the doctrine, but at the same time it also claimed that all people are equal before God. This contradiction, undoubtedly, predetermined the subsequent history of Islam, the appearance in it of various directions, interpretations, trends and sects. The issue of the continuity of power, both spiritual and purely secular, turned out to be closely related to the same problem.
Let us emphasize that Islam originated on the Arabian Peninsula at the beginning of the 7th century, in Mecca, where the Arab tribe of the Quraysh lived, as a result of the prophetic activities of Muhammad, a representative of the Hashim clan.
The Quraysh at that time were pagans (polytheists), and therefore they extremely negatively perceived the Prophet's sermons regarding the principle of monotheism of the new religion. As a result, in 622, the Prophet with his small community was forced to move to Medina, but the armed struggle against the Meccan polytheists only intensified. It ended only in 630, when the Meccans capitulated and converted to Islam en masse. However, inter-clan contradictions have not disappeared anywhere, causing civil wars in the emerging Moslem state - the Caliphate. These contradictions grew during the reign of the third righteous caliph Osman from the Quraysh Umayyad clan, especially after his assassination in 656. Even then, inter-clan conflicts (Umayyads against Hashemites) prevailed over the religious unity of Moslems, already mythical by that historical period, which gave rise to deep contradictions in Islamic community. At the same time, let us emphasize once again that inter-clan contradictions and conflicts in Arab tribes and clans were recorded even in ancient times, when hostile relations between tribes were common. Due to the interdependence of the confessional and ethno-national principles, the term "Islamic nationalism" has become firmly established in journalism, and then in science. In relation to it, two polar opinions were formed. The first is to consider the Ummah of the Islamic world as a single "Islamic nation" (or "Moslem nation"), regardless of ethnicity, racial and other differences of Moslems. This point of view was shared, for example, by the founder of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna. His ideological followers, among them the ideologue of Ichkerian separatism Movladi Udugov, who founded the Islamic Nation organization in 1997, develop in theory and practice the ideological views of al-Banna. However, in our opinion, this approach is overly idealistic and refuted by real political practice. At the same time, we would like to emphasize that the overwhelming majority of secular Islamic scholars currently understand "Islamic nationalism" as this or that nationalist movement acting on a part
of the general Islamic field. For example, Pan-Turkism, that is discussed below. So, the concept of "Islamic nation" is more metaphysical than real.
The other two approaches to the relationship between religious and ethnic factors in Islam seem to be more realistic, since they are implemented in modern practice, but oppose each other, and therefore reconciliation between them is impossible due to incompatibility of goals. As for the Arab influence on the emergence and development of Islam, it is undoubted and unconditional. As already noted, Islam originated on the Arabian Peninsula, having received its initial development among representatives of a number of clans of the tribe of Quraysh, living in Mecca. It received a further impetus for development in Medina, where in 622 the Prophet and his community performed hijra (resettlement). Later, this religion spread among the Arab tribes of the entire Arabian Peninsula, and then, during the great Arab conquests and missionary activities of Moslem Sufi preachers, its area expanded from the Maghreb to the Philippine Islands. There is no doubt that not only the new religion influenced the minds of different peoples and ethnic groups, but they also influenced the further development of Islam, turning it from the religion of the Arabs into the world one.
The adoption of Islam during the period of the birth, expansion and strengthening of the Caliphate, the strengthening of its centralization was rather positively perceived by other peoples, since it gave a powerful impetus to their socio-economic and political development. However, later, upon reaching the phase of breakdown and subsequent stagnation, the negative aspects of adopting a religion, new for them, began to appear, since along with the oblivion of the religion of their ancestors, the old values, traditions and customs began to disappear. National sentiments weakened as ethnic ideology was replaced by religious. People said prayers in a foreign, Arabic language, not understanding their essence and meaning. The adoption of Islam entailed not only the change of previous religions to another one,
but had more significant consequences. Former traditions, customs, worldview, laws began to be replaced by Arabic ones. With the adoption of Islam, non-Arab peoples switched to the Arabic alphabet, abandoning their own writing. New generations of Islamized peoples began to lose their historical and national roots of ancient culture, traditions of their ancestors, their connection with the past was broken. Thus, the change of religions and transition to the Arabic alphabet led to a change in life values, a change in the worldview of the majority of Islamized and Arabized peoples. At the same time, the "center of gravity" in Islam was gradually shifting not in favor of the Arabs. More and more weight was gained by other peoples, first of all, the Turks, who created in the bosom of Islam a number of powerful states and empires, among which the states of the Ghaznavids and Seljuks, the empire of Timur, the Great Mughals and, of course, the Ottoman Empire, whose territory during the period of its highest prosperity was approaching 6 million sq. km should be mentioned.
The great Arab conquests mainly took place during the reign of the "righteous" caliphs (632-661), as well as in the era of the caliphate of the Umayyad dynasty (661-750), who founded the capital in Damascus. The Abbasids, who formed a new dynasty, ruled from Baghdad, which became their capital. During the years of their reign, the expansion of the caliphate was practically not recorded. Moreover, having reached its heyday, the state began to lose its integrity, and the Abbasids no longer conquered the lands, but lost them. So, already in 756, the surviving representative of the Umayyad clan, Abdurahman, created his own caliphate on the Iberian Peninsula, the last fragment of which, the Granada Caliphate, was won by Christians from the Moors during the Reconquista in 1492. Subsequently, the following states fell away from the Abbasid caliphate Algeria in 777, Morocco in 789, Ifrikia (Tunisia) in 800, Khorasan in 821, Sistan in 867, Central Asia in 900. A similar collapse took place in Syria, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Persia [6,
p. 172]. The Abbasid Caliphate was finally destroyed in the 13 century by Chingizids, who founded on most of its territory a new state of the Mongol dynasty of the Hulaguids. The last Abbasid caliph - Mutawakkil - in 1517 was forced to transfer the prerogatives of the "ruler of the faithful" (the title of the caliph is "Amer al-Muminin") to the Turkish Sultan Selim I, who defeated in the battle of Aleppo the troops of the Egyptian Mamluks who sheltered the last Abbasid caliph. The caliphate was finally abolished in 1923 during the reforms begun by the founder of the Turkish Republic, Kemal Pasha Ataturk.
Islam is a world universal religion due to the fact that the area of its influence includes many peoples with various ethnic, racial, cultural and other characteristics. Therefore, although faith, doctrine, worship in Arabic are common to all Moslems, but religious customs, traditions, rituals have clearly expressed features of regional and national cultures, which makes it possible to distinguish, say, Turkish Islam from Arabian. As noted above, in the Arab environment it self, including among the Quraysh, inter-clan contradictions and conflicts were noted. Facts of apostasy from Islam and hypocrisy were recorded, even the return of the state of "jahiliyyah" (pre-Islamic ignorance), as a result of which the process of re-Islamization had to be carried out by force in the Arabian Peninsula. For example, after the death of the prophet, the first righteous caliph, Abu Bakr, had to use military means to return to the fold of Islam those representatives of the Arab tribes who followed the path of apostasy. It is for the same reason, in order to build their own state, "purify" and re-Arabize Islam, in the middle of the 18th century in Arabia, a powerful religious and political movement developed, which became known as "Wahhabism." However, despite the fact that Islam appeared on Arab soil, absorbing many of the Arab values, including ethnic and even tribal, it is hardly appropriate to say that the Arab Islam is "pure Islam." However, in the 20 century, the efforts of individual countries and organizations set up by them to create conditions
for the restoration of the dominant positions of the Arabs in the world Islamic Ummah are recorded. In the wake of this process, of course, is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, on whose territory there are two main shrines of Islam - in Mecca and Medina, where millions of Moslems from various countries and regions make pilgrimages (hajj) every year. It should be emphasized that the current kingdom of the Saudis was created only on the third attempt, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The first Saudi state was given life by the so-called "Wahhabite movement," which arose in the middle of the 18 century, as a result of the alliance between the tribal sheikh Al-Saud and the religious teacher Mohammad Abd al-Wahhab of the Arabian Najd. By the beginning of the 19th century it covered all of Arabia, which at that time was part of the Ottoman Empire, but in 1818 it was defeated by the Egyptian army of Ibrahim Pasha. The second Riyadh Emirate existed for a little more than two decades (18431865) and collapsed due to the weakening of the central government and the separatism of local rulers. The third stage of the emirate's revival, associated with the name of the head and still ruling branch of the Al-Saud clan - Abd al-Aziz Ibn Abd al-Rahman - originates from 1902. In 1932, Abd al-Aziz, having united into a single state of Nejd, Hijaz and Hasa, proclaimed the formation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The king's sons became his heirs, including the current ruler of the KSA - Salman Ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Saud. Huge reserves and revenues from the sale of oil and petroleum products, as well as the ideology of Wahhabism that binds Saudi society together, allowed the KSA, this largest monarchy of the Persian Gulf, to become a leader among other monarchies in the region (Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman), to create on May 25, 1981 the Cooperation Council of the Gulf States (GCC), which includes all six monarchies of the region, organize and become the leader of many international political Moslem institutions (among them -the Organization of Islamic Cooperation - OIC, the League of the Islamic World - LIM - with numerous branches in many
countries of the world and many others), as well as a huge number of non-governmental religious and political organizations (NRPO), through which the export of the version of Sunni Islam that dominates in the KSA - neo-Wahhabism, based on the Hanbali madhhab, the toughest in Sunni Islam is carried out. It is the Saudi version of "Arab" Islam - neo-Wahhabism - that is presented today as "pure Islam", with demands for the "purification" of other traditionalist interpretations of this religion. The third approach to the relationship between religious and ethnic factors in Islam is associated with traditionalist Islam, the phenomenon of which was predetermined, firstly, with the inclusion in the 7th - 11th centuries. into the Arab Caliphate of many peoples, and secondly, with its subsequent disintegration into more ethno-culturally homogeneous states, in each of which Islam acquired a specific shade characteristic of the lifestyle of a particular Moslem ethnic group. Peoples with other cultural traditions, having joined the spiritual life of the Moslem world, brought their religious and ethical ideas, legal norms, and customs to Islam. As the well-known Russian orientalist and Islamic scholar S.M. Prozorov correctly emphasizes, there was a dialectical process of mutual influence of "theoretical" and "everyday" Islam, "official" and "popular" Islam. However, this process did not take place simultaneously in different regions of the Moslem world and led to the fact that in large historical and cultural regions (Maverannahr, Persia, North Africa, India, Indonesia, etc.), Islam acquired specific features. Therefore, the solution of the problem of correlation between Islam and the single Islam regional is of great scientific and methodological importance. This decision is based on the recognition of the objective fact that, along with the general Islamic principles that unite the entire Moslem world, there are various regional forms of the existence of Islam, in one way or another related to ethnicity. In this case, the problem of attributing certain ideas, norms, customs to Islamic or "foreign" passes into the plane of only a retrospective analysis, and the main criterion for belonging
to the spiritual world of Islam is the self-consciousness of a person or a whole people who consider themselves Moslems [7, p. 7-8].
Based on this, it can be argued that "it is with traditionalist, and not theological, Islam that the inseparability of ethnic and confessional principles is associated.
„.It is through traditionalist rather than dogmatic Islam that stereotypes of behavior of each specific Moslem are first formed, a Moslem, who at the everyday level is a member of his ethno-confessional community and only at the macro level is the bearer of the values and attributes of the world ummah" [8, p. 64-65]. Today, supporters of traditionalism advocate the preservation of the version of Islam that has historically developed in this or that country, region, in a particular territory, and oppose any changes, both in the religious sphere and in public life [9, p.30].
Religious and national (ethnic) factors in Islam are in a state of complex interaction. As noted above, nationalism as a political ideology and religion, Islam in particular, as a socio-cultural complex, each can act independently, either promoting or opposing each other. As practice shows, especially in the last century and a half, nationalism and Islam have converged and diverged more than once. They were united and separated by the realities of social and political history. The possibility of their effective interaction, despite fundamental differences, seems to be due to functional similarities. In epistemological terms, both nationalism and religion are based on absolutization, respectively, of a nation (nation-state) and a religious community, which are perceived as socially undifferentiated social structures. For them, evil is equally embodied in "outsiders," and in the Moslem East, it most often is the hostile expansionist West, and then local collaborators [10, p. 102].
Islam, due to the inseparability of the secular and confessional factors in this religion, has always had a noticeable impact on the course of socio-political processes in Moslem
countries and regions. Before the emergence of nationalism in its modern sense, the liberation movements that took place in the Islamic world often used religious slogans in defense of the traditional way of life. In the self-consciousness of peoples and ethnic groups, especially in critical periods of their history, religion was identified with ethno-national ideas and feelings, influenced interethnic relations, often feeding ethno-egoistic and nationalistic attitudes of representatives of certain strata of society. At the same time, as practice shows, religion in real life practically never appears in its "pure" form, but always in ethno-national, politicized, aestheticized and other forms.
In contrast to religion, nationalism aims to create a modern state and society.The history of Islam testifies that it was not ethno-national relations that adapted to the religious system, on the contrary, the latter adapted to them. An example is the centuries-old history of the Ottoman Empire, and now the Turkish Republic. For four centuries, Turkish sultans were simultaneously caliphs, spiritual and secular leaders of the Sunni Moslems. After the collapse of the empire at the beginning of the twentieth century the course was taken to build a nation-state based on the ideological doctrine of Turkism. However, already in the last decades of the last century, a process of re-Islamization has been observed in Turkey, and Erdogan's Islamist Justice and Development Party has been the ruling party since 2002. At the same time, already in the 90s at the parliamentary level, the closeness of the nationalists of the Nationalist Movement Party (PNM) and the Islamists was recorded. This complex process of interaction between religious and nationalist factors was formalized as a theory of Turkish national-religious synthesis. The concept of "Islamic nationalism" that we have already mentioned is more often understood today not as an idealistic "Islamic nation," but as one or another nationalist movement acting on a part of the general Islamic field. For example, the Turks in the ideological concepts of radical Islamists and ethno-nationalists are presented as "the best of Moslems." An active
supporter of the spread of the ideas of Islamism and Pan-Turkism in the spirit of the Turkic-Islamist synthesis is the Turkish billionaire, the head of the religious community "Nurcular" ("Bright Path") Muhammad Fethullah Gulen [11, p. 64].
The prevalence of the ethnic factor over the confessional one can also be traced on the example of the ideological doctrine of the Afghan Taliban, who, first of all, are Pashtuns with their customary right (Pashtunwalai), and only then are Moslems. This circumstance enables them to confront other ethnic groups of Afghan Moslems - Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmens, etc.
The interaction of Islam with the norms of customary law (adat) and traditional rituals can also be found among the peoples of the North Caucasus, however, here, too, the ethnic factor always prevails over the confessional one [12, p. 70]. In other words, in real life the balance between nationalism and religion has almost always been in favor of the former. This is especially noticeable in a situation when the interests of ethno-national groups of the same confession collide. In this case, religious-communal solidarity is inferior to ethno-national one. This was the case, for example, in the first half of the 1990s of the 20th century in Dagestan, when the united spiritual administration of the Moslems of this republic was literally torn apart along ethnic lines into the spiritual administrations of Dargins, Laks, Kumyks, etc. Similar trends were recorded in the course of Doku Umarov's implementation of the separatist project Imarat Kavkaz. Thus, despite the fact that the ideology of radical Islamism, on which the political project Caucasus Emirate was built, excludes the issue of ethnicity, when appointing the heads of the Valayats, the informal leader of the North Caucasian underground adhered to the principle of ethnic parity. According to him, an Ingush or an Ossetian could not become the emir of the Chechen valayat, just as the Ingush could not become the emir of the Ossetian valayat. A Chechen or a representative of another ethnic group could not become the amir of the united valayat of Kabarda, Balkaria and Karachay. Although formally
the ideologues of the Caucasus Emirate demonstrated the insignificance of the ethno-national idea in the system of relations of the Caucasus Emirate, in reality they followed the administrative principle of ethnic parity in the hierarchical management of the Caucasian territories. In the same way, the primary units in the network - jamaats (bandit groups) - were united into autochthonous cells with a pronounced ethnic color. Similar principles are practiced in the modern terrorist underground in the North Caucasus at the present time.
Thus, it seems that the synthesis of the religious and the ethnic is an undoubted factor underlying the traditional forms of existence of Islam. At the same time, those who advocate "pure" Islam demand the cleansing of religion from later accretions that go beyond the "golden age" (the period of receiving divine revelations by Muhammad and the activities of the first four "righteous" caliphs, i.e. 610-661) , in fact, advocate the re-Arabization of Islam. However, the statement that the so-called "pure Islam" is free of ethnic Arab influence is fundamentally wrong. Despite the fact that the above-mentioned sacred sources of Islam are compiled in the Arabic language, which had a colossal impact on the development of the cultures of many non-Arab peoples converted to Islam, it seems to confirm that Arab ethnicity, culture, traditions, and worldviews dominate in the modern "Islamic world" would be wrong. Moreover, many peoples during the period of the great Arab conquests and the adoption of Islam were culturally at a higher stage of development, for example, the Persians, Syrians, and some other peoples. In this regard, equating "pure" and "Arab" Islam is not only wrong, but also dangerous, since the desire to "purify" religion in practice leads to the emergence of religious fanatics, radicals, religious and political extremists and even terrorists who hide behind "good" intentions to "cleanse" Islam from "sinful innovations," "heresies." Such political practice almost always leads to the bloodshed, to wars, of which there are many examples in the modern world. The foregoing allows us to draw
a fundamental conclusion: there is no "pure Islam" free from the influence of the ethnic factor, but there is an Arabized Islam (Arabian, neo-Wahhabi), which is presented as "pure", "true". The desire to bring it to the North Caucasus and other Russian regions is, in fact, an attempt to replace local ethnic, cultural and other identities with Arab-Wahhabi ones. In principle, such a process cannot be conflict-free.
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