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Islamist forms of nationalism and the idea of unity of the Tatarian people prevail on the basis of religious common character.
The leaders of RT and the national movement in Tatarstan pay attention to the need of training Muslim cadres in the country, with due account of unique feature of Islam in Tatarstan, which should continue the traditions of Tatarian theologians in the end of the XIX century -the beginning of the XX century. Although the national movement and national self-consciousness of the Tatarian people develop in a contradictory way and although they are marked by some negative aspects, as a whole, the national movement and Islam in Tatarstan reflect the processes of democratization and reforms in Russia, promote development of culture and the nation in Tatarstan under conditions of poly-confessional and multinational country.
The made analysis makes it possible to stress various groups in relation to Islam: from politologists of the official powers of the republic to the leaders of the moderate and radical wings of the national movement. The main idea of the official power is Tatarstanism, able to ensure the inter-ethnic balance in the republic. Euro-Islamism-Jadidism of the moderate wing may have a perspective in the undetermined future, though. The leaders of the radical-religious wing of the national movement stand up for penetration of Islam in politics, pursuing mainly ambitious aims of coming to power by means of religion.
"Vlast", M., 2010, N 9, p. 108-119.
S. Slutsky,
political scientists
THE IMPACT OF CONFESSIONAL FACTOR ON RECRUITMENT OF CADRES FOR THE TERRORIST UNDERGROUND IN DAGESTAN
Islamization of society. The rapid renaissance of Islam in the republic was started in the second half of the 1980s. For the period of 38
the mass demonstrations in 1987-1988 the population demanded to issue permission for construction of mosques. By the beginning of the 1990s the Islamic political parties were formed. Islam became one of the central factors of the republican ethnic-political process.
The "restoration-mastering" by society of the vast spiritual sphere, formerly forbidden for the main part of the XX century, was going on rapidly. This process was connected not only with the rise of the population's religiousness but also with the differentiation and subdivision of the general number of believers into followers of traditional Islam, tarikatists-sufis and the adepts of Salafism. With due account of the fact that the "theological" differences were combined with ethnic separations projected in the religious sphere, Islam in Dagestan turned out to be incapable to play a consolidating role. Rather on the contrary, it became a significant factor of differentiation and polarization of the republican society. For the 1990s, all trends of Islam in the republic, irrespective of conflicts and on the basis of complicated reciprocal actions, demonstrated rapid development and numerical growth of their followers. From 1986 to 2000, over 1550 mosques were constructed in the republic, i.e. the annual rate of construction of mosques made about 100 buildings. In the beginning of the XXI century the rates of construction was reduced to some extent (40-50 buildings per year). But in terms of the cult network Dagestan occupies at present the first place among all regions of the RF (about 1900 mosques in 2007). In the beginning of the XXI century 15 Islamic higher educational institutions, including 33 branches, 136 medreces and 205 maktabs functioned in the republic. The total number of students made up 14 thousand people.
For the end of the XX century - the beginning of the XXI century, under public-political and social-economic conditions of Dagestan, Islamic "renaissance" and considerable growth of
religiousness of the population could not help becoming the systemic factor of the growth of the conflict-generating capacity and finally of extremist activity in the republic. The social realities of life in the republic accelerated and aggravated the essential "vices" of savage Russian capitalism, inevitably conflicted with the ideas proclaimed even by traditional Islam, leaving aside its radical trends.
Traditional Islam in Dagestan is not less politicized than fundamentalism. The social-economic and spiritual crisis in the republic demands that the religious leaders should give their answer to the main contemporary problems... Political Islam in Dagestan acquires its shades, there exist "the left" and "the Right" groups. The first of them proclaim the ideas of social justice, contained in sermons of the Prophet and proscribed in shariat. The others stress the firmness of private property as a foundation of Islamic state. But both are combined by enmity and even hostility to all things, which relate to the West, underlines S.E. Berezhnoy.
The idea of social justice is more clearly expressed in the salafit (wahhaby) community. The ideas of pure Islam started to penetrate to the republic already for the 1970s. However, at this time they were rigidly neutralized by the Soviet power, and their influence started to grow only for the second part of the 1980s. For the first post-Soviet decade, a rather extensive salafit community was formed in the republic, including both moderate Muslims (the followers of Akhmad-Kali Akhtayev) and evident radicals, headed by Baggautdin Kebedov. The communities of salafits were grounded in many cities and villages.
The communities of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi were far-famed, and in 1999 a military operation was needed to liquidate them. Participation of wahhabies in the assault of the Chechen extremists against Dagestan turned out to be a rigid military operation against wahhaby community of the republic. However, the authorities were not
in power to liquidate it completely. The evident for ordinary Muslims connection of the official clergy with the unpopular corrupted power promoted conversion of some "zealous" believers to radical forms of Islam.
The transition of a part of Muslims to the positions of "genuine" Islam, certainly, did not mean their automatic accession to activities of the terrorist underground (TU). However, since the end of the 1990s the republican law enforcement bodies kept the intent look at salafits. In this case the suspiciousness of the law enforcement bodies was quite justified, since the reinforcement of the republican extremist underground was executed at the expense of adepts of "pure" Islam. As a result of the intent attention of the law enforcement bodies which transformed into rigid forceful actions some salafits, in their turn, passed from passive sympathy to the underground to active forms of its activities.
Not all people, having made the first step on "the escalator" of growing opposition to the authorities, went further to the last step - to participation in terrorist acts and military actions. However, there have formed a reason-consequence chain of connections, functioning as a conveyer, which reinforces the military underground with new cadres.
At the same time, many followers of traditional Islam also step on "the escalator of violence". As a result, at the present time, exactly the confessional channel of the cadre reinforcement of TU in Dagestan (and as a whole in the North Caucasus) may be determined as a dominant source.
And what is more, some researchers regard that the demographic basis of TU consists not of religious radicals but rather of representatives of the religious majority, i.e. traditional Islam, which is considered by the federal republican authorities as a tolerant Islam , which deserves recognition and all and every support. Actually, such
point of view on the situation is incorrect, since traditional Islam is politicized and often radicalized and even aggressive practically in all republics of the North Caucasus. S.E. Berezhnoy shares this point of view and asserts that in Dagestan traditional Islam is politicized not less than fundamentalism.
The question is not the assertion that the main principles of Muslim religion predispose the believers to terrorism to a greater extent than any other religious system. But, if you wish, Islamic civilization more acutely and painfully reacts to the contemporary modernization processes, connected both with positive changes in material-technical life of people and with perceptible deformations and losses in the spiritual sphere. These destructive changes are especially perceptive in the countries of overtaking modernization. With full extent, they are characteristic for contemporary Russian society and Russian capitalism. They are revealed in the way of formation of the latter through the shock therapy of society and the social-economic crisis, as well as in its evident features, including the extremely high level of polarization of incomes of the population, the clear social injustice and the rise of social pathology and the large-scale corruption of the state apparatus.
It is appropriate that sincere Muslim believers, under conditions of the contemporary reality of their republic, of the North Caucasus and the RF as a whole see many things which irritate and insult them very much. The Muslim community is not the exclusion in this enmity to the contemporary realities. It is sufficient to get acquaintance with the texts of many Orthodox authors to be persuaded in the analogous high level of internal rigid tearing away of the multitude of vices and "grimaces" of the contemporary modernized society. However, the social reaction of believers is different, being determined partially by systemic peculiarities of Orthodoxy and Islam. If an Orthodox with inveterate faith primarily saves himself, transforming his belief into a personal
"armor" against temptations and vices of the external world, a "true/zealous" Muslim chooses the road of struggle against this reality for the "correct" world.
If the struggle against evil by its means is inadmissible (simply not perspective) for the Orthodox, each Muslim is obligated to stop the evil. And it is possible to do it only by reciprocal force, by forceful "correction" of the unjust world. It is not a surprise that under conditions of the contemporary North Caucasus just the traditional Muslim majority, finally, becomes the significant resource of
reinforcements for the underground.
* * *
Thus, the concentration of protest energy was going on in various segments of social life in Dagestan. But the main, in essence, integral channel of its exit to the surface of public life (in the form of terrorist activities) became the religious radicalism in the beginning of the XXI century. Exactly at this time, the republican terrorist underground was going on through the concluding stages of its formation as a developed complex, which was able to re-produce itself, basing mainly on the internal resources. As it is known, the beginning of the XXI century was also the period of political stabilization in the RF, of a rather sustainable economic growth. The positive social-economic dynamics was characteristic at this time for Dagestan too. However, the process of radicalization of a part of republican society, started in the 1990s, continued its development and resulted both in the final formation of TU and intensification of terrorist activities in the republic for the last years.
It is worth recalling that for the first post-Soviet decade, related to the most intensified transformation of political and social-economic institutions, the criminal-corruption complex was formed in Dagestan.
Gradually the terrorist component was included in its "production" chains, making them more complicated (in essence, transforming into social "Gordian knot"). The republican terrorism to a certain extent was the religiously "shaped" radical social reaction of society in Dagestan to the large-scale corruption and inefficiency of the local authorities, to "putting to shadow" of the local economy and to polarization of the population's incomes
However, the religious extremism, being by its genesis and its strategic aim rather a systemic "antipode" to the criminal corruption, in some or other way starts to use the discovered, in this space, financial and infrastructural chances. At the same time, the simple "roofing" soon starts to be supplemented by other role functions (for instance, by founding their own enterprises directly and financially oriented to the needs of the underground). As a whole, the existence of the developed corrupted sphere, of the powerful shadow segment, comparable recently in its scale with the legal economy, facilitated essentially activities of TU. The activities of the latter, in its turn, extended the "illegal" social-economic environment of life in the republic, significantly impeding the struggle against it.
In other words, the main element of the extremist underground gradually is being included in this criminal-corrupted system, shaped in Dagestan. In certain sense, it is possible to speak about the criminal-corruption-extremist complex of Dagestan.
At present, the main part of society in Dagestan remains a passive (or passively suffered) element: a kind of social-demographic "ordnance yard", where the desperate struggle of conflicting parties is going on, finally, for the power over this narrow-minded "meat-jelly". For a long time, some experts (for instance, A.V. Malashenko) have qualified the events in Dagestan as "a civil war". However, being by its type a civil conflict, the struggle of the republican power against the
underground, nevertheless, may not be elevated to the level of "war" by its systemic format.
S. Slutsky. "Terroresticheskoe podpolye na vostoke Severnogo Kavkaza (Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia)", R-na-Donu, 2010, p. 94-120.
Kamaludin Gadjiyev,
publicist
NATIONALISM AND ISLAM IN THE CAUCASUS: IDEOLOGICAL MEASURING
Religion plays a rather significant role in formation of the nation and the national idea. The irony consists in the fact that the world religions due to their universality are summoned to eliminate ethnic, language, political and other differences among people and peoples. Nevertheless, there exists a certain connection between religion and national self-consciousness. Some authors think that it is possible to speak about ethnic religion. In definite situation a certain nation chooses ethnic religion, feeling its distinction from neighboring peoples and states.
For instance, Iran kept its identity in relation to surrounding it peoples and countries, for some time remaining attached to Zarathustrian faith, later conversed to Islam, having elaborated its own Shiite version. It is significant that in Ottoman Turkey Pan-Islamism came forward as a kind of device to serve the interests of realization of the founding directions of Pan-Turkism. As the Empire was weakening, the Pan-Islamist elements in ideology of the country were replaced by elements of Pan-Turkism.
There were cases, when conversion to different faiths could result in creation of two different nationalities. The division of formerly
