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Nuradin Khanaliyev,
2nd Secretary of the Foreign Ministry
of the Russian Federation
ISLAM IN POLITICAL-CULTURAL MATRIX
OF NORTH CAUCASIAN PEOPLES
The use of the religious factor in world politics has long-standing traditions and is timely in the crucial periods of socio-historical development. Historical experience shows that religion has a powerful ideological potential of social, economic, political, ethno-national and socio-cultural differences and conflicts. Under certain conditions religion can easily acquire radical and extremist forms. In the view of expert L. Mitrokhin, certain conflicts of a very earthly character can be raised by religion to a virtually cosmic level and formulate them in a generalized, absolute form excluding any compromise. However, the sources of these contradictions and conflicts should be sought not in the essence of this or that religion, but in the socio-economic, ethno-national, tribal, confessional, socio-psychological, socio-cultural, political, geopolitical, or any other realities of one or another region.
From this point of view the problem of influence of the so-called political Islam on the socio-cultural and political-cultural realities of the national republics of the North Caucasus is of great interest.
Islam continues to play a key role in the life of many Caucasian peoples and the formation and evolution of their spiritual, socio-cultural and political-cultural image. World religions, by virtue of their universal character tend to obliterate race, ethnic, language, political, and other differences between people. But there exists a definite connection between religions and national self-consciousness. As shown by historical experience, one or another nation chooses the concrete interpretation of its religious system in order to denote its distinctions from neighboring nations. Moreover, in many countries,
including a number of national republics of the Russian Federation, Islam has become one of the most essential components and instruments in the struggle for power. In this respect it is of special importance that from the confessional point of view this region is part of the so-called Muslim North, which is part of the much greater Muslim world. No wonder that after the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. the peoples of the post-Soviet republics mostly believing in Islam have begun to display growing interest in news and trends from the greater Muslim world.
It is also necessary to take into account the fact that the Caucasus is one of the links of the so-called Islamic arc of instability stretching from the Balkans to Kashmir. Throughout its entire length all and sundry fundamentalist movements, which are characterized by the pronounced politicization of Islam, are coming to the fore. This gives ground to speak of "political Islam," or "Islamism," which exerts a considerable influence on the public, political, socio-cultural and political-cultural spheres of life of the countries drawn in these processes. One of the main premises of this radical trend is the organic fusion of the state and religion. Its adherents regard the Sharia law as the source of power (al-hakimiya al-Islamiya). They are guided by the slogan "God is our aim, the Prophet is our leader, the Koran is our Constitution, Jihad is our way, death in the name of God is our superb striving."
Islam is used here as a means of achieving concrete political aims, determined by concrete interests of political struggle. In this sense it should be regarded not so much as religion, but rather as a political ideology. Ayatollah Homeini openly declared it when saying that "... Islam is a political-religious teaching in which politics is complemented by divine service, and divine service is complemented
by politics." He substantiated this thesis by the idea that "there are more political precepts in Islam than religious ones."
Political Islam is the collective name to denote various religious-political trends offering their own ways, forms and means of solving the problems engendered by modernization, and overcoming its shortcomings and negative consequences. From the point of view of the state of affairs in the Caucasus, the Wahhabi trend occupies the main place among these trends. This term is used to denote various Islamic groupings which are united by non-acceptance of traditional Islam and the official clergy. The modern Wahhabi trend is not monolithic, it has moderate, radical and fundamentalist tendencies.
The main aim of political Islam is to gain the dominating positions in Muslim states themselves. But as any radical ideology it tends to become stronger along the road to expansion abroad.
It is not surprising that rebirth of Islam in the conditions of the disintegration of the Soviet Union coincided with the powerful upsurge of the self-consciousness of many peoples. The rapid downfall of trust in the communist system was accompanied with growing interest in Islam as a more natural system of value orientations. Many people in the post-Soviet area, trying to find a reliable base for arranging their life, connected their prospects with Islamic nations and cultures. Quite often they regard Islam as some integral spiritual component of the ethnic culture of the indigenous peoples. Moreover, many researchers believed that in the new conditions Islam could become an influential integration force capable to reunite ethnic groups and nations.
Naturally, religion fulfills integrative and regulative functions, playing an important role in achieving and preserving unity and integrity of society and blocking and neutralizing various problems facing it. It is precisely this role that Islam is playing in most Muslim countries. It can safely be said that in a number of national republics it
was precisely Islam that was one of the crucial factors stopping the most hot-headed young people at the boundary, the crossing of which could have been fraught with unpredicted dire consequences for them.
At the same time it cannot be denied that under certain conditions religion could provoke contradictions and conflicts not only between adherents of different faiths, but also between representatives of different trends within the framework of one and the same religion. This is shown by the fact that in the post-Soviet area Islamic ideas were being used in the struggle for property and power between different ethnic groups, regional clans and political parties. Moreover, some groupings adhering to the Wahhabi trend and other forms of Islamic fundamentalism have turned into a factor seriously destabilizing the social and political situation in the Caucasus, especially the North Caucasus. Intra-elite and inter-clan struggle has been especially active in Dagestan, Chechnya and other national republics of the region. The main aim of the organizers and sponsors of this struggle is to oust Russia from the North Caucasus, create a unified Islamic state on the territory of the North Caucasian national republics, and enhance its territory at the expense of other Russian territories.
The Wahhabi challenge as a form of radical politicized Islam lies in the socio-economic and political spheres. However, no less significant is the fact that after the collapse of communist ideology, along with the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. many peoples, North Caucasian nations included, have lost spiritual and ideological values and orientation points, in other words, they have found themselves in an ideological vacuum. This vacuum soon began to be filled with Islamic ideology.
The growing sympathies for fundamentalist Islamic ideas could also be explained by arbitrary actions of the authorities, especially representatives of the law-enforcement agencies, corruption, organized
crime thriving in the North Caucasus, and other negative phenomena in society's life. It is not accidental therefore that the main target of terrorists in the North Caucasus is government officials, policemen, and court employees.
At the same time it would be wrong to regard Islam as an exclusively negative factor in the life of the North Caucasian peoples, which allegedly contributes to the destabilization of the existing situation and the growth of radical and separatist movements and sentiments in the region. Although it should be noted that certain fundamentalist trends of Islam are indeed used by radical and extremist groupings for their own political purposes. Secondly, it would also be incorrect to regard Islam as an exclusively cultural-confessional and purely spiritual phenomenon which is not connected with politics and is oriented exclusively to peace, welfare and stability in society.
These and some other factors show the complex character, status, role and importance of Islam for the life and destinies of the peoples of the North Caucasus. Islam in the region is far from monolithic. One can speak of local forms of Islam, which have a national tint which can be related to territorial and ethic affiliation. In this sense Islam can be used as one of the important elements of nationalism and an instrument in the struggle for power.
It should also be borne in mind that conflicts may arise sometimes between ethnic groups having one and the same faith. This is a case, for example, of the Republic of Dagestan, where the Spiritual Board of Muslims has been divided into several national communities.
But the overwhelming majority of the population of the national republics of the North Caucasus has not accepted political Islam as a system-forming ideological-political construct. The very fact of growing interest in faith should not be viewed as a definite tendency toward a radical change of the way and pattern of life based on Islamic
standards, and Islam itself as the factor determining the form of the political self-organization of peoples.
While realizing the danger of radical trends of political Islam for the social and political stability of the republics of the North Caucasus and the national security of the entire Russian Federation, it would not be correct, nevertheless, to speak of the total Islamization or fundamentalization of the North Caucasus. Likewise it would be wrong to extrapolate the situation of Islamic fundamentalism in Iran or the influence of Islam on the political life of such countries as Sudan, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, etc. on to the Muslim republics of the former USSR.
An analysis of the real state of affairs shows that in many cases the revival of interest in traditional Islam, as well as the Wahhabi and other trends of Islamic fundamentalism bears a formal character. One could agree with those experts and scholars who maintain that religious fundamentalism often serves as a substitute for ideology and mythology of ethno-national, cultural, confessional or other self-identification.
"Vlast," Moscow, 2013, No 4, pp. 79-83.
T. Chabiyeva,
Political analyst
RELIGIOUS IDENTITY OF YOUNG PEOPLE
AND THE WAHHABI TREND IN INGUSHETIA
The processes of re-Islamization exert a serious influence on the socio-political situation in the North Caucasus. The radical Islamist trends which have tried to proclaim themselves a public and political force right after the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. are playing a special role. In the 1990s adherents to the Wahhabi trend emerged on the Russian political scene, which immediately began to fight for
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