Under construction and highly contested: Islam in the post-Soviet Caucasus

Abstract

While scholarship on Islam in the Caucasus has focused on the late Soviet religious revival – the rise of Salafi jihadism and religious radicalisation in the northern part of these strategic crossroads – no study to date has addressed the discursive struggle over the social functions of regional Islam. This article deconstructs these discourses in order to examine the very varying, and often conflicting, representations of Islam advocated by various actors across the region and within particular republics. The article highlights the contested functions of regional Islam against the background of a religious revival that is still a work in progress.

Keywords:

• Decolonisation and colonisation
• Islamism
• religion
• culture

Funding

Emil A. Souleimanov carried out this work in the framework of the Program P17 ‘Sciences on Society, Politics, and Media’ at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. Sofie Bedford’s work was supported by the Swedish Research Council [grant number 348-2014-5974].

Notes

1. Hjelm, “Religion, Discourse and Power.”

2. Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis; and Jørgensen and Phillips, Discourse Analysis.

3. Halbach, “Islam in the North Caucasus.”

4. Balci and Goyushov, “Changing Islam in post-Soviet Azerbaijan”; Reynolds, “Muslim Mobilization”; and Yemelianova, “Sufism and Politics in the North Caucasus.”

5. Aliyeva, “Shia Islam in Azerbaijan”; Balci and Goyushov, “Changing Islam in post-Soviet Azerbaijan”; and Sattarov, Islam, State, and Society.

6. Henze, Islam in the North Caucasus.

7. Bram, “‘Re-Islamisation’ and ethno-nationalism”; and Reynolds, “Muslim Mobilization.”

8. Yemelianova, “Sufism and Politics in the North Caucasus.”

9. Abbasov, “Islam v sovremennom Azerbaidzhane,” 284.

10. Campbell, “The Autocracy and the Muslim Clergy.”

11. Balci and Goyushov, “Changing Islam in post-Soviet Azerbaijan.”

12. Alieva, “The Characteristics of Political Parties.”

13. Goyushov and Askerov, “Islam and Islamic Education”; Swietochowski, Russia and Azerbaijan; Alieva and Ayyub, Views on the History of Democracy Development, 108; and Yunusov, Islam v Azerbaydzyane.

14. Babich, “Islam and the Legal System.” According to Yemelianova, “Sufism and Politics in the North Caucasus,” 663, ‘the century-long armed conflict produced muridism, a specific politicized and militarized version of tariqatism’.

15. Halbach, “Islam in the North Caucasus.”

16. Shterin and Yarlykapov, “Reconsidering Radicalisation and Terrorism,” 310. See also Bram, “‘Re-Islamisation’ and Ethno-nationalism.”

17. Dragadze, “Islam in Azerbaijan”; and Motika, “Islam in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan.”

18. The local customary law, adat, required clan members to be submitted to the clan leadership, which further reinforced the position of the Sufi clergy.

19. Yarlykapov, “Islamic Fundamentalism in the Northern Caucasus.”

20. Dragadze, “Islam in Azerbaijan.”

21. Shaffer, Borders and Brethren.

22. Jafarov, “Post-Soviet Azerbaijan.”

23. Aliyev, State and Religion, 14.

24. Sattarov, Islam, State, and Society; and Yemelianova, “Islam, Nationalism and State.”

25. Motika, “Islam in Post-Soviet Azerbaijan.”

26. Balci and Goyushov, “Changing Islam in post-Soviet Azerbaijan.”

27. Balci, “Between Sunnism and Shiism.”

28. Many of these are available on the President’s official webpage, president.az.

29. Bedford, Islamic Activism in Azerbaijan.

30. Mirzayev, “Azeris shocked by Sectarian Attack.”

31. Balci and Goyushov, “Changing Islam in post-Soviet Azerbaijan.”

32. Goyushov, “Islamic Revival in Azerbaijan.”

33. Balci and Goyshov, “Changing Islam in post-Soviet Azerbaijan.” Even though this number is not uncontested it is probably at least closer to the truth than the traditional 65%:35% figures.

34. The most well-known group also being referred to as the Kabardino-Balkarian Jamaat (Kabardino-Balkarsky Dzhamaat, KBJ). Jamaat (here Dzhamaat) is the Arabic term for assembly, but also the traditional word for community in many parts of the Caucasus.

35. Yemelianova, “Kinship, Ethnicity and Religion.”

36. Shterin and Yarlykapov, “Reconsidering Radicalisation and Terrorism.”

37. Yemelianova, “Kinship, Ethnicity and Religion.”

38. Shterin and Yarlykapov, “Reconsidering Radicalisation and Terrorism,” 311.

39. Richmond, “Russian Policies towards Islamic Extremism.”

40. Ibid.

41. Yemelianova, “Islam, Nationalism and State.”

42. Shterin and Yarlykapov, “Reconsidering Radicalisation and Terrorism,” 319.

43. Malashenko, “Gosudarstvo i Islam v Rossii.”

44. Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan on Freedom of Religious Belief, Chapter 1, Article 8.

45. Interview with Caucasus Muslim Board, Baku, 2005.

46. Kotecha, Islamic and Ethnic Identities in Azerbaijan.

47. Bedford, Islamic Activism in Azerbaijan. The anti-corruption aspect is noticeably present in the ‘New Muslim’ discourse in Kabardino-Balkaria, as well where the Jamaat was providing support structures for new economic activities, without engaging in bribery, which was seen as a morally corrupt and ‘un-Islamic’ activity. See Shterin and Yarlykapov, “Reconsidering Radicalisation and Terrorism.”

48. Bedford, Islamic Activism in Azerbaijan.

49. The latest update of the list was conducted by the Norwegian Helsinki committee and is available at

http://nhc.no/filestore/Dokumenter/Land/Azerbaijan/ListofpoliticalprisonersinAZMay2015.pdf.

50. Hadjyzadeh, Islamism stuchitsa v nashi dveri.

51. Babich, “Islam and the Legal System.”

52. Bedford, Islamic Activism in Azerbaijan. While the author’s interviews were conducted mainly in 2004 and 2005, there are more recent reports of similar incidents, for example by Forum18, a Norwegian religious rights organisation.

53. Shterin and Yarlykapov, “Reconsidering Radicalisation and Terrorism,” 320. See also Fagan, “A Word of Justice.” Interestingly Salafism gained momentum among Turcophone Karachay-Balkars, in contrast to among Circassians.

54. Yemelianova, “Kinship, Ethnicity and Religion,” 69.

55. Richmond, “Russian Policies in the Northern Caucasus.” For the meaning of jamaat, see note 34.

56. Fagan, “A Word of Justice.”

57. The very adjective ‘Islamic’ or ‘Muslim’ had become widespread and increasingly prestigious by the early 1990s, crowning the names of mushrooming organisations and groups, often with a semi-criminal background, across the northeast Caucasus and particularly in Chechnya. In a similar vein the trend of Arabicisation of names dates back to the early 1990s.

58. In fact, Muslim dogma requires believers to pray five times a day. For more information on Dudayev’s Islamisation, see, for instance, Souleimanov, An Endless War, 134.

59. Despite the existence of strong ethnic nationalism, Maskhadov’s policies resonated with the Chechen population.

60. Furman, “Samiy trudniy narod.”

61. Souleimanov, “Chechnya, Wahhabism.”

62. Quoted in ibid.

63. Ibid.

64. Cited according to Tishkov, Obshchestvo v vooruzhennom konflikte, 447.

65. Ibid.

66. For a comprehensive analysis of the radicalisation of Salafi communities in Dagestan – and, more broadly, in the North Caucasus – see Sagramoso, “The Radicalisation of Islamic Salafi Jamaats.”

67. Tlisova, “Dagestan.”

68. Quoted in Souleimanov, An Endless War, 256. See also Rotar, “Kadyrov exploits Ties with Moscow.”

69. Accordingly Islamic dietary laws have permeated the republic since the mid-1990s, with pork and increasingly also alcohol and non-halal meat unattainable in the republic.

70. Interestingly Ramzan Kadyrov has maintained the same rhetoric as Maskhadov, whose close associate, the mufti of Chechnya and a devoted anti-Salafi, Ramzan’s father Akhmat was.

71. See, for instance, Abdulayeva, Vakhkhabizm v Dagestane.

72. Lokshina, “Virtue Campaign on Women in Chechnya.”

73. Ratelle and Souleimanov, “Retaliation in Rebellion”; and Ratelle, “Making Sense of Violence.”

74. Similarly, some Chechen intellectuals pointed to the Chechens as the ‘founders’ of the Aryan or Caucasian, that is, white, race. For more on the nationalist–Islamic symbiosis of inter-war Chechnya, see Souleimanov, An Endless War, 129.

75. Yakhyaev, “Mesto i rol’ Islama.”

76. Interestingly similar processes have been underway in predominantly Orthodox Georgia. Yet, in contrast to Georgia and the northeast Caucasus, this discourse has been quite weak in Azerbaijan and northwest Caucasus.

77. Importantly the latter is intertwined with frequent references to the genuine local tradition that needed to be preserved in order for the ethnic groups to maintain their ‘ancient identities’.

78. Lokshina, “Virtue Campaign on Women in Chechnya.”

79. For instance, in Azerbaijan the secular authorities’ 2010 ban on the use of the headscarf in public institutions, including schools, led to leading members of the Shiite clergy publically protesting at the authorities’ decision, claiming that one of the political establishment’s goals was to completely ruin the ‘morality of Azerbaijani women’.

80. See, for instance, Souleimanov, “Dagestan’s Jihadists”; and Souleimanov, “Dschihadisten in Dagestan.”

81. Ibid.

82. “Sultans and Tsars.”

83. Schmidt, “Discursive Institutionalism,” 311.

84. Balci and Goyushov, “Changing Islam in post-Soviet Azerbaijan,” 193–214.