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G. Stankevich,
political scientist
POLITICAL ISLAM
AND CONTEMPORARY RUSSIA
The common world trends of Islam politicization to a large extent were displayed in contemporary Russian society. It is necessary to discuss the issue of Muslim population in the Russian Federation to comprehend them in detail. There are no exact numbers of Muslims living on the territory of the RF. All researchers, sociologists, demographers and historians, who study the problems of dissemination of Islam in Russia, agree with this conclusion. There exist different appraisals of it. According to the official population census in 1998, twelve million Muslims lived in Russia (the data of the all-Russian population census of 2001were not made public). According to census of 2002, the number of Muslims accounted for 14.5 million people (leaving aside legal and illegal migration).
The total number of people professing Islam on the territory of contemporary Russia makes not less than 20 million people, thinks expert Yu.M. Kabishanov. V.V. Putin mentioned this number of Muslims. According to well-known scientist A.V. Malashenko, the number of Muslims in Russia exceeded 15 million people in 1997 and increased to 18 million people by 2007. The share of Orthodox and
Muslim believers in Russia was changing to the benefit of the latter constantly: it was 16:1 in 1926, while it became 10:1 in 1999.
Islam has restored its position lost for the Soviet power years. This process is named as "Islamic renaissance". The rise of the number of mosques is an indirect evidence of the number of Muslims.
By October 1917, thirty thousand mosques functioned on the territory of the Russian Empire. About 12 thousand mosques were closed and demolished, 87% of mukhtasibats were liquidated and up to 90% of mullahs were deprived of a chance of public worship. The Islamic spiritual elite (from 20 to 50 thousand people) was liquidated for the years of the terror of Stalin regime.
In the RSFSR remained only 416 officially registered mosques in 1948, and the number of mosques was reduced to 311 by 1968. However, thousands mosques and mullahs functioned without registration, and the authorities closed their yes to it. For instance, in 1980, according to G. Mikhailov, the head of the department of the Council of Ministers of the RF for relations with religious organizations, 335 imams and mullahs had official permit for divine service on the territory of RSFSR, while 1245 imams and mullahs were engaged in unregistered worship. In 1997, there were 3.5 thousand mosques in Russia, according to mufti S.M. Abubakarov, while over 5 thousand mosques functioned by the end of 1994, notes expert in the Caucasus V. Bobrovnikov.
By 1 January 1991, in Russia there were registered 870 mosques, in 1995 - five thousand mosques, while in 2000 - over seven thousand mosques. According to the Ministry of Justice of the RF, by 1 January 2000 out of 17 427 registered religious organizations the number of Muslim organizations accounted for 3098 (18% comparing with 14% in 1990), including 51 religious Muslim center, 2933 parishes and communities, 114 education institutions. Over 800 people were
students in higher and high Muslim education institutions in Arabic countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Qatar, Turkey and others).
Leaving aside the North Caucasus, the most mosques function in Tatarstan - over 700 (by the beginning of 1997) and in Bashkortostan -about 490. And further: Orenburgskaya region - 75 mosques and religious associations, Ulyanovskaya region - 50, Samarskaya - 41, Sverdlovskaya - 38, Chelyabinskaya - 36, Nijegorodskaya, Penzenskaya and Tyumenskaya - 35 each, Permskaya - 33.
Islam has been spread in the North Caucasus, in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, Chuvashia and Republic Marij El, Siberia, in Ulyanovsk, Samara, Astrakhan, Perm, Nizhni Novgorod, Ekaterinburg regions, in the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In general, they speak about two Muslim areas - Tatar-Bashkir and North Caucasian areas. The Tatars - the biggest Muslim ethnos (5.5 million people) live in compact settlements in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan as well as in some regions of the Volga Basin, South Ural and Siberia. The Chechens represent the most numerous Muslim people in the North Caucasus. According to the unofficial data, they number 1.3 million people, including 800 thousand people in Chechnya itself. The total number of Muslims in the North Caucasian region makes about 6 million people.
The Muslims in Russia represent a poly-ethnic and multi-cultural conglomerate (38 indigenous peoples of Russia professing Islam). Each of two big areas, according to A. Malashenko, has its own traditions, history and is marked by different relations with the central power. The peak of crisis relations of Tatars with the central power took place for the XVI-XVIII centuries, while the Caucasian peoples keep in their memory the wars of the XIX, XX and even XXI centuries.
The North Caucasus sticks to its traditions to the greatest extent comparing with any region in the European part of Russia. Islam enjoys
greater influence in its eastern part - Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya, while the western part is marked by lesser influence of Islam.
There exist in Russia two relatively weakly connected Muslim communities. The renaissance of Islam in Russia, publicized in numerous printed sources, is not a process, specific exactly for Islam. All confessions represented in Russia went through the religious boom since the end of the 1980s-the beginning of the 1990s. The problem of personal self-identification of most citizens of Russia was caused by the crisis of the Soviet society resulted in disintegration of the Soviet Union and destabilization of all spheres of social life. The search for new world outlook orientations pre-supposed as one of the alternatives also the religious response to the fixed questions. The collapse of the foundations of the Soviet society and formation of a new society without definite ideological orientations allowed religion to become one of the factors having impact on the political processes going on in contemporary Russia.
The deeply rooted Islamic tradition in the common occurrence of Muslim peoples was one of the factors promoting Islam coming to the political arena of contemporary Russia. T.S. Saidbayev, a prominent expert in Islam, made the following remark: "Owing to objective reasons the Islamic religious influence was definitely stronger than in other regions of the country. Besides, in terms of social psychology there was consolidated an image of Islam as "an ever-lasting attribute" of national life, as a keeper of national values ...Inobservance of religious rites. is perceived as an apostasy from behests of ancestors, the disrespect of the nation and its culture".
The specific realization by Islam of its regulative function is one of the reasons of penetration of Islam in public consciousness of Muslim peoples. Unlike other religions, Islam is based not only on
moral directions. Shariat is the most important component of Islam in social sphere. At the same time, thanks to the greatest development of "civil-legal" part of shariat (family and succession law) the ancient practice of its usage in Muslim communities resulted in extraordinary fixation of Islamic ideas in every day and family tradition, which determines primary socialization of the individual. The justice of the key daily norms determining the foundations of the family and the kin is proved for Muslims by social life itself.
The situation in Russia for the 1990s can not help influencing self-identification of Muslims by religious reason (at certain stage promoted by the following factors: the crisis of civil self-identification after disintegration of the Soviet Union; the acute economic crisis, connected in public consciousness with indoctrination of pro-western liberal models of social development; the general rise of the role of Islam in international policy, proved by economic well-being of a number of Islamic countries as well as by "successes" of radical Muslim organizations in the struggle against the West).
At the same time, for the beginning of the 1990s the state itself stimulated the rise of confessional activities. Following adoption of some new laws on freedom of conscious many confessional associations intensified their activities. The first legislative act in this field became the law of the USSR in 1990 "On Freedom of Conscious and Religious Organizations". On 25 October 1990 the law "On Freedom of Religion" was adopted in RSFSR. In 1993 the Russian Constitution in its article 28 proclaimed the principle of conscience and religion.
For instance, the changes in the state and political order of the country essentially influenced the sphere of state-confessional relations and the legal bases of activities of religious organizations in Dagestan. The law "On Freedom of Conscious and Religious Organizations"
adopted on 5 May 1991 by the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Dagestan played a decisive role in liberation of religion from "state dictate".
The unjustified restrictions for cultural activities of religious organizations were repealed, the procedure of registration of religious organizations was simplified, and the religious organizations received the right of legal entity and the right for missionary and charitable activities. For a short time, the law allowed to re-create the former extended religious infrastructure, to involve religious organizations in public-political life of the republic. By 1 July 1995, in Dagestan there were 1270 mosques (comparing with 27 mosques in 1986), including over 850 registered ones. In December 1997, the Peoples Assembly of the RD adopted the law "On Freedom of Conscience, Religion and Religious Organizations", which fixed democratic rights and freedoms of citizens of Dagestan in this field; this law further promoted creation of legal, ideological and public conditions for normal activities of religious, including Muslim, organizations in the republic. The religious organizations played a great role in life of Dagestan's society. Representatives of various confessions started to make public statements on urgent issues of social-economic life in the republic both in the parliament and in mass media. Since the end of the 1980s, many religious organizations made a rather valuable contribution to the process of consolidation of civil peace in Dagestan, participated in charitable actions, took part in various conferences and initiated proposals supported by society. The religious situation in the RD, i.e. existence, characteristic and intensity of religious activities, dynamics and direction of their changes are determined by the factors of poly-ethnicity, poly-religiousness, poly-confessional and poly-cultural situation in society of Dagestan.
For the last 15 years, the rapid process of religious renaissance, particularly of Islam, took place, and the religious situation was changed in terms of its quantity and quality appraisal. For the period of 1986, the Spiritual Department of Muslims of the North Caucasus, 27 mosques, 5 Orthodox churches, 4 synagogues, 2 evangelist Christian societies, one society of Seventh-day Adventists and a Sufi brotherhood functioned in Dagestan.
According to the data of the Committee of the Government of the Republic of Dagestan for Religious Affairs on 1 March 2003, the following religious organizations carried out their activities in the RD: the Spiritual Department of Muslims of Dagestan, 1638 mosques (the rise of their numbers since 1986 made up 60 times!), 16 Islamic higher education institutions with 49 branches, 131 medreces, 327 maktabs with the total number of 15 630 students, including - 4200 students (26.87%) in maktabs, 5700 students (36.47%) in medreces, 5730 students (36.66%) - in higher education institutions, over 30000 Sufi of Nakshbandi, Shazili and Kadiri tarikats and 18 Muslim foundations. Over 95000 residents of Dagestan made hadj and umra, while about 1200 people were students in foreign Muslim education institutions. The representatives of religious-political trend of Islam - wahhabism carried out their underground activities.
The official roster of Principal Department of the Federal Registration Service contains 657 religious organizations, including 634 Islamic organizations, 8 Orthodox organizations, 1 Catholic organization, 5 Judaic organizations, 1 Armenian-Apostolic organization etc.
Dagestan was always considered to be a complicate republic in terms of its ethnic-confessional structure, since representatives of almost all religious confessions live and carry out their activities in the republic: Muslim, Christian, Judaic. Just influence of the confessional
factor on public consciousness and, consequently, on political culture conditioned emergence in Dagestan of parties and movements of different religious-political orientations. Since the end of the 1980s, the process of the ethnic and religious, mainly Islamic, identification of people took place in Dagestan.
The process of perception by Muslims of their religious identity demanded its fixing in the political and other spheres. Politicization of Islam was going on at different levels and in various forms. On the one side, the attempts were made to incorporate Islam into the political macro-system by means of creation of Muslim public-political organizations as a kind of attempt to form a new "official Islam", on the other side, there was going on the spontaneous politicization, including radicalization, of Islam within small social groups.
The following general trends characterize the contemporary religious situation in the Republic of Dagestan: the constant rigid competition among religious organizations and associations in the struggle for influence on the population and for extension of their parishes; the religious organizations and associations freely and without any control on the part of the state organs fulfill their functions in their milieu and in society, freely propagate their religion; the level of public prestige and of actual role of religion and its organizations in public republican processes has been raised; actually the reserve for the rapid further rise of the level of religiousness of the population in Dagestan has been exhausted to match its rise for the 1990s, while the tempos of growth of religious communities of most confessions, except Protestants (Fifties, Jehovah's Witnesses), were stabilized. The specific religious situation in the RD is characterized by the rapid rise of politicization of Islam, use of its authority and moral force for political aims, inter alia, by religious-political extremists. As far back, as in 1914, well-known expert in Islam academician V.V. Bartold stressed
that religious slogans were used mainly only as a means for achievement of quite definite political aims.
In the beginning of the 1990s, the so-called religious-political organizations appeared on the territory of post-Soviet Russia for the first time in Dagestan. In the past time, religion sometimes was used for political aims, and it is worth recalling the cooperation for the 1920s between the Socialist group of Dagestan and popular sheikh Ali-Gadji Akushinsky. In October 1990 brothers Ilyas and Bagauddin Kebedov founded the Islamic Party of Renaissance of Dagestan, which proclaimed the return to genuine Islam meaning eradication of display of people's religiousness - worship to saints-sheikhs, the implicit obedience of murids to the will of Sufi preceptor, the actually excessive expenses on certain rites - circumcision, wedding etc., mechanical memorization of Koran texts without comprehension of the sense. In the perspective, the IPR aims at creation in Dagestan of the Muslim state.
In the same year a group of intellectuals headed by Abdurashid Saidov founded the Islamic Party of Dagestan (IPD); its ideology combined Islamic renaissance in the republic with the ideal of creating a democratic society in Dagestan The party supported the idea of close cooperation between the believers and the secular intellectuals.
In the religious sphere IPD cooperated with the traditional clergy criticizing wahhabism and expressing sympathy with people's traditions in Islam. For the period of 1991-1994, the party repeatedly criticized the ruling republican nomenclature. In 1993, the tension emerged between Saidov and the traditionalists, who expressed loyalty to the ruling regime.
The second extraordinary congress of the party, held in January 1994, elected Surakat Asiyatilov (at present, the chairman of a committee of the People's Assembly of the RD) to the post of the
leader of the party. The party adopted the course to uniting all Muslims of the republic based on humane principles irrespective of nationality. Seven years later, the Islamic Party of Russia (IPR), headed by M. Radjabov, a businessman of Dagestan, was established. Many residents of Dagestan joined the party.
The authorities were concerned about creation of IPR due to its political direction, secular slogans and involvement of Muslims of the Russian Federation and Dagestan in the sphere of interests and actions of public-political formations.
On the eve of elections to the State Duma in 2003 actually all parties and movements possessed programs and positions in the field of state-confessional relations; therefore due to rigid rivalry the loss of IPR at the elections was pre-determined. In the republic itself the activities of adepts of IPR directed to politicization of Muslim umma were disliked by the official clergy in Dagestan, despite the appeals of IPR to correlate religious and secular laws in order to achieve peace and consent in society.
The examples of activities of the republican religious-political organizations show the difficulties in the process of adaptation of traditional notions and institutions to the contemporary social, political and economic development of Dagestan.
The description of the most significant public-political phenomenon in the North Caucasus, which by right may be considered Islam ("Islamic factor"), shows primarily the process of its self-realization, i.e. the forces and actions being the incarnation of this factor in dynamic of the shaping political process. It seems reasonable first of all to determine the characteristic of the group affiliation in the North Caucasus, which makes it possible to form local group aggregations as the initial subjects of political relations.
According to authoritative expert A. Malashenko, Islam in the North Caucasus is one of the main factors shaping local identity and having impact on the world outlook of an individual and the ethnic society. Recognizing the cultural variety of ethnoses in the North Caucasus, one should take into account their common ethnicity, the complicated mixture of mentality and culture, which not only characterizes any people but also unites them and distinguishes from all other communities. The recognition of this common ethnicity allows us to discuss the North-Caucasian identity and general influence of Islam on it.
From the beginning, Islamic identity was marked by reciprocal action and "rivalry" with ethnic identity, and this rivalry did not reveal the winner. For the Soviet times, the power perceived both identities as a unique entity, which sometimes was reduced to identification of ethnic, language or simply Soviet traditions with Islamic traditions. However, since the 1970s in the North Caucasus many unavailing efforts were taken to separate popular traditions from religious rites and even to set off against each other. And the attempts to replace these rites by artificially created Soviet rites failed as well.
Although the Soviet power was opposing official Islam in terms of registered mosques and imams, as well as destruction of religious sphere of life, it is not correct to compare it with the events concerning Orthodoxy. As R. Gainutdin mentioned, Islam does not demand existence of a mosque, and any educated Muslim may become imam. The priest and in certain cases the bishop is needed for worship by all means, and the Christian sacrament may be performed only in the church. Therefore for Muslims the closed mosques and arrested imams meant the need to organize an underground mosque, while for Orthodox believers liquidation of the church and the arrest of the priest
(and especially - of the bishop, since only the bishop may assign new priests) was a religious catastrophe.
The authorities did not close unofficial mosques, while at the local level they allocated premises for them or paid salaries to Muslim clergymen. On the one side, this fact was explained, as marked R. Gainutdin, by the decision of the CPSU and the Soviet state, which correctly appraised the religious level of Muslims and the attitude of the population to Islam and did not dare to take steps, which might cause open dissatisfaction of Muslims due to the actions of the authorities. On the other side, this explanation seems to be not sufficient. For instance, the Soviet state decided to start collectivization despite discontent and periodic mutinies of peasants. It is evident that not only the fear of "Islamic response" did keep the authorities from liquidation of unofficial Islamic structures.
The influence of Islam on formation of identity of the North-Caucasian society increased essentially for the 1990s. It was mostly characteristic for Chechens, Ingushis, ethnoses of Dagestan as well as for Karachais and Balkars. For various expert appraisals, the number of those, who considered themselves as believers for the initial post-Soviet period in Dagestan, varied from 81% to 95%. The index of religiousness in 1995 made 97% of Chechens, 95% - of Ingushis and 88% - of Karachais. At the same time, the ethnic identity did not lose its significance, which was reflected in its close connection with religious identity: "the Chechen is primarily a Chechen-Muslim, since the Chechen identity at present is inconceivable outside the context of Islamic tradition. This consideration is correct for other ethnoses in the North Caucasus", concludes A. Malashenko.
At present, the renaissance in the North Caucasus of traditional social institutions demonstrates inclination of the North-Caucasian structures for the past. All restoring custom, traditions, festivities
usually are marked by their religious character determined by the synthesis of Orthodoxy or Islam with the local beliefs. However, against this background Islam stands out at least for its greater social and political engagement.
Most researchers note that actually from the beginning of religious renaissance, started just before disintegration of the Soviet Union and collapse of the Communist ideology, Islam became not only a part of environment in the North Caucasus but to a larger extent acquired instrumental features becoming the key factor of political relations' dynamic in the region. The local ethnic elites particularly in the subjects with the prevailing or great share of Muslims started actively to use "Islamic factor" to ensure dominance of their clannish ethnic entities. For this sake, they repeatedly attracted to take part in regional, city and district elections the Muslim authoritative representatives, who, in their turn, organized propagandist support of local candidates and got a chance to create a rather influential support for the leadership of their republics.
Hence, it means that applying to Islam of certain groups actually signifies use of "their own" Islam, which was claimed as "genuine" one. Exactly therefore most social, political, economic and ethnic contradictions, culminated in war in Chechnya, to a greater or lesser extent have religious shade. The latter, in its turn, is determined not so much by inter-religious opposition between Orthodoxy and Islam as primarily by the internal Islamic disfunction, which is pre-conditioned by complexity, heterogeneity and discrepancy of traditional Islam in the North Caucasus.
Most ethnoses of the North Caucasus profess the prevailing form of Islam of Sunni trend. The spread of the second in terms of significance trend of Islam - Shiite is limited with the southern districts of Dagestan, where live about 80 thousand Azerbaijani Shiites.
Historically, in the North Caucasus there have consolidated two mazhabs (Sunni theological-legal schools) - khanifism and shafiism, which are considered as more liberal trends comparing with two others -Khanbalism and malikism. Shafiism is spread mainly among Chechens, Ingushis and some peoples of Dagestan. Khanifism is professed by ethnoses of the western and central parts of the North Caucasus as well as by Kumyks and Nogais.
On the one side, membership in mazkhab is not a significant factor with essential impact on perception by various ethnoses of Islam, on the other side, there is an opinion that the distinctions among Caucasian khanafits and shafiits are of great significance. For instance, the fundamentalist ("wahhabi") ideas more easily penetrate the shafiit than the khanafit environment, which, inter alia, is explained by closeness of shafiism to khanbalit trend as the ideological foundation of wahhabism as well as by the fact that in the east of the Caucasus Islam has more deeply incorporated into the people's consciousness, essentially determining their behavior stereotypes, while in the western part of the North Caucasus (Adygs, Karachais, Balkars and Nogais) the ethnic moral codes have greater significance.
One should agree with the point of view of those secular scientists, experts in religion, who think that the religious-political movements and parties do not limit themselves with incorporation in their programs of ideological formulas, such as "Muslim culture", "Islamic originality", "traditions" etc. In the propaganda activities these ideological formulas freely grow in the fanatic belief in salvation and renaissance of Dagestan only by means of shariat and sunna. From this point of view, religion and politics are not the compatible phenomena. But there exists also the point of view expressed by S.N. Sultanmagomedov, pro-rector of the North-Caucasian Islamic M. Arif University (Makhachkala). Setting his exaggerated hopes and
aspirations on religious-spiritual enlightenment, he writes that renaissance of morality and preservation of peace and content in society are possible to be achieved only through spiritual enlightenment of the people, which will save society from the vices of the mankind, from all possible stresses and troubles on the part of extremists, will reduce the number of people in hospitals and orphanages, will be a guarantee of bringing into a healthy state of the nation and the people as a whole. In the context of politicization of Islam the author shares the views of Z. Arukhov, who considered that in the milieu of the religious population there appeared adepts of the so-called "pure Islam", who in their propaganda activities stressed the significance of social and political elements, tried to propose to the representatives of the middle class, oriented to democracy, human rights and civil society, its own perception of perspectives of development of society in Dagestan.
Sharing the view of Z. Arukhov, it is necessary to say that some organizations of political Islam proposed to support the ideological leaders, who lacked official religious education but made comments based on dubious interpretation of Islamic norms and principles. At the same time, they did not took into account the circumstance that it was impossible to build genuine civil society in Dagestan without considering the type, characteristic and culture of peoples of Dagestan. Thus, politicization of Islam became the seamy side of religious liberalization, accompanied by contradictions between tarikatists (Sufi) and the so-called wahhabies (Salafits).
The official clergy in Dagestan criticized the missionary activities of adepts of wahhaby trend in Islam (originated in Arabia in the middle of the XVII century on the basis of teaching of Mukhammed ibn Abd Al-Wahhab). In their turn, wahhabies considered adepts of traditional Sunni Islam as apostates of "genuine" Islam of the Prophet and four faithful caliphs. The wahhaby propaganda did not stop at this
stage, and therefore in Chechnya and Dagestan the followers of wahhabism claimed for installation of the shariat form of governance and repeal of the secular laws imagined, to their mind, by the human will. The penetration of foreign Islam in its very dangerous extremist form to Russian Muslim regions started to acquire a particular significance and urgency due to the emerging threat to the national security, unity and territorial integrity of Russia. Some experts think that the root of all evil is "inside" Islamic regions of Russia. For instance, S. Markedonov tries to prove that criticism of the republican authorities in Dagestan by wahhabies is connected with unsettlement of many, particularly social-economic, issues, while mass abuse of power by republican officials, corruption, social differentiation and, consequently, a high level of unemployment, lack of transparency of the power and its lack of sensitiveness to the population's needs were the reason of enlargement of groups of salafits. And further the conclusion is made, which allows to regard wahhabies almost as volunteers of civil society in a separate republic: salafits propose a kind of model of Islam, where there is no place for clans, tapes, virds, ethnicity. This model was forming the universal project, which may be claimed in the poly-ethnic and fragmented country, such as Dagestan.
Many experts in religious problems and even state officials consider that it is necessary to know and to take good sense of religious extremism. The positive features are cited in the analytical reference of the government's committee for religious affairs: rationalism and accessibility of wahhaby doctrine; its ability to translate the protest against traditional forms of social organization. It should be noted that wahhaby ideology proclaims the ideas of spiritual egalitarianism, propagates equality of believers to Allah, which, in its turn, is correlated in their teaching with the appeals for social equality and justice. However, these good sides of wahhabism and diversity of its
displays, which attract sympathy of many analytics, are discredited in the eyes of the public circles and laymen-believers by the methods of armed forceful establishment of "Islamic order".
There are different views on the reasons of religious extremism, which consist in two mutually exclusive approaches - of external and internal character. According to sociologist Z. Abdulagatov, the clergy and the authorities are inclined more to the determined role of the external influence: foreign Muslim education abroad, missionary activities, activities of foreign non-governmental organizations, economic interests of transnational companies, geopolitical interests of separate states and other matters...There is another point of view that our misfortunes connected with extremism are determined mainly by internal reasons . Up to present, the state in the name of leaders of different levels did not recognize in public the significance of solving social-economic problems in the struggle against religious extremism.
The practice of the state-confessional relations turns out to be more diverse than theoretic provisions and declarations. The principal role in ensuring the rights and freedoms of citizens and, finally, of their security belongs to the state. For instance, the State Council of RD, the People's Assembly of RD and the Government of RD adopted several statements, which condemned the actions of religious-political extremists aimed at destabilization of public-political situation in Dagestan and in the North Caucasus. The specific measures were proposed for waging struggle against religious-political extremism, for liquidation of international bandits' formations on the part of Chechnya and Dagestan in August-September 1999.
On 16 September 1999, the People's Assembly of RD adopted the law "On Prohibition of Wahhaby and Other Extremist Activities on the Territory of the Republic of Dagestan". The law forbids creation and functioning of wahhaby organizations and groups or associations,
forbids activities of religious missions and their branches, of education institutions and physical persons propagating ideas of wahhabism. Various displays of Islamic factor shall be regarded with great attention analyzing its reasons and predicting its consequences.
However, the impact of the Islamic factor, despite its activities, has not resulted in significant ideological split of the whole society of Dagestan but destabilized to some extent only the religious community of the country. The regional basic values characterized by a great number of ideological and spiritual-moral priorities were reflected in this situation.
Thus, the external reasons had a great impact on the degree and forms of politicization, along the internal reasons in Russia.
The combination of internal and external factors resulted in transformation of political Islamic radicalism from potential to actual threat to security of the Russian Federation. While the attempt to create an Islamic state on the territory of the Chechen Republic to a large extent was the consequence of external "Islamization" of the separatist conflict at a rather late stage, the events in villages Karamakh and Chabanmakh demonstrate a chance of emergence of internal reasons of Islamic radicalization. As D. Makhanov writes, the residents of these villages decided to come forward against the dominating, in their minds, corrupted authorities in the republican structures; they intended to create on the territory of their villages "a genuine Islamic order". Although the residents of these villages, according to this expert, were not radicals, the similar change of the principals of public order means the exit of this small part of territory of the Russian Federation out of its legal sphere, which may be interpreted as "covered separatism". It should be stressed that the events in these villages of Dagestan acquired not religious but political characteristic, since they were the result of the conflict related to the existing practice of power's authority.
Thus, the analysis of emergence of radicalism in Islam gives a chance to define it primarily as a political phenomenon. Political radicalism in Islam has, in essence, not a religious origin. The reason of its origin is not at all the supposition that Islam does not accept the principles of organization of the contemporary society.
"Politicheskaya religiya: Teoriya i metodologiya issledovaniya problemy", Stavropol, 2010, p. 81-96.
Alan Jioyev,
political scientist (the RAGS under the President of the RF) EXTREMISM AND SECURITY IN THE NORTH-CAUCASIAN REGION
Against the background of the last decade, the significance of the North-Caucasian region (NC) in the contemporary geopolitical picture of the world grows more and more. For the period of millenniums, owing to its particular geo-strategic situation in the joint of European-Asian civilizations the Caucasus always attracted attention of various states being subject to great influence of different cultures and religions. Under contemporary geopolitical conditions the main redivision of the world is realized as an establishment of the control over natural resources, geo-strategic and military-sea routes; therefore the big world powers urge towards achievement of their principal strategic aim, which consists in pushing Russia to the north-east part of Eurasia far away from one of the main communication points of accesses to the center of world resources - the Mediterranean-Black Sea-Caucasian-Caspian region. Their nearest aims are as follows - to make uncompetitive the Russian main gas and oil pipelines and to lay round Russia their transportation routes, which deliver cheap raw resources
