DISCURSIVE PRACTICES OF CONTEMPORARY RADICAL ISLAM N THE COUNTRIES OF THE EUROPEAN UNION AND EURASIAN CUSTOMS UNION

Abstract

By the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century, extremist groups, operating in different countries and at the global level, have considerably extended their informational, tactical, strategic, ideological, political network, as well as resources and economic interaction, the process and the results of which have become especially obvious in the European Union and the Eurasian Customs Union member states. All sorts of terrorist and religious groups have mastered the skills of exploiting territorial conflicts across the post-Soviet space and the efforts in finding solutions to get out of the ethnic and confessional crisis. Radical Islam is ready and able to compete with the “classical” conservatism (paleoconservatism) and “new right” in turning to traditionalism, moralism, and religious fundamentalism. It is not inferior to socialism in its egalitarianism and anti-bourgeois social and economic propaganda, and also to fascism (National Socialism) in totalitarianism and the willingness to sow destruction and death. Islam has already become the “new alternative style” with a vast collection of discursive practices among the highly varied social groups not only in Muslim countries but in the Customs Union (CU) and the EU member states. Islam is gradually developing into a global radical anti-systemic ideology, filling the niche previously occupied by socialist ideology now in an ideological crisis. The Communist system was liquidated, the Communist ideology and the left-radical groups lost part of their appeal. The void was filled with religiously tinged political doctrines to let people express their dissatisfaction with the capitalist system. This added special importance to theoretical studies of a complex set of problems, related to the specifics of radical Islam, as we know it today. It is equally important to consider its pronounced impacts on the main components of the social and political systems of the EU and the CU and the possibilities to forecast, with a great deal of reliability, the trends in the direction of influence of Islamism, with due account for the forms of manifestation of radicalism at different levels of discursive practices. These problems should be addressed and resolved before proceeding to the task of ensuring efficient political governance and choosing the optimal trends of opposing these negative social and political phenomena. Studying the nature, types, and forms of manifestations of radical Islam in the EU and CU is instrumental for inter-state structures and special services in preventing ethnic and social deviations.