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SPREAD OF JIHAD: THE ORIGINAL FACTORS AND THE SCOPE OF ISLAMIC RADICALIZATION IN THE NORTHERN CAUCASUS
Ruslan KURBANOV
Ruslan Kurbanov, Ph.D. (Political Science), Learned Secretary, Regional Center of Ethnic and Political Studies, Daghestanian Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Makhachkala, Daghestan)
Russia has been trying to put out the flame of resistance in the Northern Caucasus for 200 years now. Historians and political analysts came up with all sorts of explanations: the mountain peoples’ predatory nature; British and Turkish influence; the mutinous leaders of Sheik Mansour, and imams such as Ghazi-Muhammad, Shamil, and Najmuddin Gotsinsky; the socioeconomic crisis; and the subversive activities of foreign extremist organizations. In fact, resistance has been fed by the simple fact that the Caucasian Muslims cannot accept the rules, laws, and sociopolitical norms of the Russian state.
In his article “O znachenii nashikh poslednikh podvigov na Kavkaze” (The Meaning of Our Latest Exploits in the Caucasus), Nikolay Dobroliubov, a 19th-century public figure, identified the main reasons for the mountain peoples’ violent resistance: “From what we know about the history of the Caucasus we can conclude that the anti-Russian revolts of the locals were not brought about by chance people like Shamil or even by the very strict teaching of the Murids. The main reason was hatred of Russian domination.” Our contemporary Iakov Gordin says the same: “To harshly impose European ideas transformed into an ‘over-regulated’ variant typical of Russia on a fundamentally different system of world perception was a fatal mistake.”
Many of those who try to analyze the reasons for the region’s mutinous nature fall into the same trap. They follow their own logic (far removed from the cast of mind of a Caucasian Muslim resolved to fight the state) in an effort to explain why extremist and radical movements are gaining momentum. Even though such researchers do not go beyond the superficial and secondary causes of political-religious extremism, they claim a profound and exhaustive analysis of its roots and further development. Here I would like to dwell on the deep-rooted factors which go back to the violently tectonic layers of the local nations’ consciousness and their historical memory and…………..
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