ISLAM IN THE CASPIAN AND THE CAUCASIAN FOOTHILLS BORDERLAND: SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVIVAL ON THE FRINGES OF THE MUSLIM WORLD
Abstract
Islam is rapidly gaining weight across the world. Islamophobia is escalating just as rapidly in the West, while in Russia certain highly influential segments of its political class have begun aping the West. By 2004, the unchecked wave developed into anti-Islamic hysteria.
After writing The Rage and the Pride in the wake of 9/11, Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci produced an anti-Muslim Western manifesto. She poured her hatred out on Islam and the Islamic world and addressed her affection and pride to the West. Her ideas are limited to only one thought: an anti-Islamic struggle without conditions and without mercy. In Russia, certain sources have done their best to familiarize the Russian public with her ideas. Vagrius Publishers put out a Russian translation of her book in 2004.1
We can only marvel at the tenacity of the anti-Islamic and anti-Islamist ideas: the passions bring to mind the atmosphere of the anti-Communist “witch hunt” of the early 1990s. In 2002, guided by her anti-communist syndrome, Margaret Thatcher tagged Islamism as “new Bolshevism.”2 Like many others, Daniel Pipes equated fascism and Islamism in his article “Contemporary Fascism” translated and published in the Moskovskiy komsomolets newspaper.3 In the West, people no longer distinguish between Islamism and fascism—It was Alexey Malashenko who familiarized the Russian audience with the state of affairs in this sphere.
In Russia, it is the media controlled by the liberal Russophobic circles that are zealously promoting anti-Muslim sentiments. The best evidence of this was the Vremena program run by famous TV personality Vladimir Pozner. In the fall of 2004, he suggested that the Islamists as a whole, and the Muslims living in Europe, in particular, should be treated with more severity. Some of the members of Russia’s Muslim clergy went as far as accusing the anchorman and the ORT channel of deliberate anti-Muslim propaganda.
The National Organization of Russia’s Muslims (NORM) circulated a statement in which it called on the country’s leaders “to revise in the most radical way the information policies of the state-owned TV channels with respect to Islam.”
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References
See: Nezavisimaia gazeta, 16 December, 2004, p. 6.
A. Malashenko, “Islamizm na vse vremena,” Svobodnaia mysl—XXI, No. 12, 2004, p. 19.
See: Moskovskiy komsomolets, 18 June, 2004.
NG-Religia, 1 December, 2004, p. 3.
Ibidem.
See: D. Glinskiy, “Musul’mane Rossii: obretenie politicheskoy sub’ektnosty,” Konstitutsionnoe pravo: Vostochno-evropeiskoe obozrenie, No. 2 (39), 2002, pp. 21-22.
A. Kuraev, “Kak otnositsia k islamu posle Beslana?” Izvestia, 15 September, 2004.
See: A. Malashenko, op. cit.; A. Vassiliev, “Ot rassveta do zakata? Ekstremizm kak proiavlenie krizisa tsivilizat-
sii,” Poisk. Ezhenedel’naia gazeta nauchnogo soobshchestva, No. 6 (820), 11 February, 2005, p. 13; S. Gradirovskiy’s culturologically beautified conception of “Russian Islam” is another variant of fear of Islam.
See: V. Kurennoy, “Uskol’zaiushchiy predmet,” Otechestvennye zapiski, No. 5 (14), 2003.
V. Ignatenko, “Raskolotaia umma v ozhidanii Sudnogo dnia (Novy vzgliad so starykh pozitsiy”, Otechestvennye zapiski, No. 5 (14), 2003; V. Kurennoy, op. cit.
It should be noted that professor of the Center of Slavic Studies at Hokkaido University Kimitaka Matsuzato has arrived at a truly novel approach within the research project “Islam and Politics in Russia: Multilayered and Comparative Approach (April 2003-March 2006).” A. Malashenko’s idea about the “multilayered” nature of Islamic alternative that exists at four layers—lo-cal, national, regional, and global—can be described as heuristic and fruitful. (see: A. Malashenko, op. cit., pp. 22-23).
In their latest work Magomed-Rasul Ibragimov and Kimitaka Matsuzato described the role of the jamaats as the basic system-forming territorial stability of Daghestani society (see: M.-R. Ibragimov, K. Matsuzato, “Chuzhoy, no loial’niy:
richiny ‘nestabil’noy stabil’nosti’ v Daghestane, avanposte slavianskoy Evrazii,” Polis, No. 3, 2005).
A. Malashenko’s term.
Our inadequate knowledge of the subtler points of Islam limits us in our more detailed use of the results of Islamic studies; we want to avoid profanation of Islam, a fascinating and monumental phenomenon.
M.Iu. Roshchin, “Islamskiy fundamentalism na Severnom Kavkaze” [http://viktorpopkov.narod.ru].
Quoted from: V. Viktorin, E. Idrisov, “‘Astrakhanskiy mir’—prezhnie i novye grani mezhetnicheskogo edinstva i sotrudnichestva,” Astrakhanskie izvestia, No. 5, 29 January, 2004.
See: S. Batalden, “Musul’manskiy i evreyskiy voprosy v Rossii epokhi Aleksandra I glazami shotlandskogo bibleis-ta i puteshestvennika,” Voprosy istorii, No. 5, 2004, pp. 48-49.
B. Akhmedkhanov, “Zhizn ‘Wahhabita’ na perekrestke okrain,” Obshchaia gazeta, No. 42 (376), 19-25 October,2000, pp. 1-3.
Interview with Rector of the Astrakhan branch of the All-Russia Institute of Law Prof. O.I. Cherdakov, Astrakhan,June 2004.
B. Akhmedkhanov, op. cit.
Interview with the leader of the Daghestani community in Astrakhan A. Pashaev, deputy of the State Duma of the Astrakhan Region, May 2002, June 2004.
See: Volga, No. 22, 15 February, 2000; Komsomolets Kaspia, 27 July, 2004.
“Radikalizm ot imeni islama i Astrakhanskiy kray.” Materialy ‘kruglogo stola’ 13 oktiabria 1999 g.,” Informatsion-ny biulleten administratsii Astrakhanskoy oblasti, No. 4, November 1999, p. 2.
Obshchaia gazeta, No. 42 (376), 19-25 October, 2000; Informatsionny biulleten administratsii Astrakhanskoy oblasti, No. 4, November 1999.
B. Akhmedkhanov, op. cit.
See: A. Kappeler, “Dve traditsii v otnosheniakh Rossii k musul’manskim narodam Rossiiskoy imperii,” Otechest-vennaia istoria, No. 2, 2003, p. 134.
See: D. Glinskiy, op. cit., p. 17. In the past three years only one more ethnic Muslim—head of the Ministry of the Interior Rashid Nurgaliev—joined the government.
State Duma Deputy from Daghestan M. Mammaev said in this connection that school education at the local level has been neglected for a long time. “Young people have no choice,” said he (Zavtra, No. 28 (608), 2005, p. 5).
See: D. Glinskiy has offered the most professional description of this aspect (see: D. Glinskiy, op. cit.).
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