[lbo-talk] "Wahhabism" (was: Re: Beslan...)

[Chris Doss]

I wrote:

> 
> Not Saudi. "Wahabbi" is the term the locals use in
> the
> North Caucasus to refer to the form of extremist
> fundamentalism that was imported into the area in
> the
> early 90s from _some_ sources in the Gulf (I do
> _not_
> mean the Saudi government). It blended with local
> cultures, where it has the support of about 5%-10%
> of
> the population, according to my sources, and is by
> no
> means a simple copy of Saudi official Islam. The
> Shariah Code of Chechnya was copied from that of
> Sudan. Basayev is an Islamic fundamentalist of the
> Mullah Omar type. His ideology is almost
> indistinguishable from that of ObL -- but there has
> been some suggestion that it's all an act to get
> money
> from jihadi organizations and he doesn't really
> belive it.
> 

There's an article on what "Wahhabism" means in the
post-Soviet context here, though it's from back in
1999:

PRISM 
 
Volume 5 Issue 18 (October 22, 1999) 


ISLAMIC RADICALS: PARALLELS BETWEEN THE TROUBLES IN
THE NORTH CAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA 
By Igor Rotar

The Russian authorities claim that the ideological
inspiration and the main source of funding behind the
paramilitaries in Chechnya is the well-known Saudi
terrorist Osama Bin Laden. Kyrgyz President Askar
Akaev believes that the incursion into his country's
territory by armed brigades of Uzbek fundamentalists
and the war in Dagestan are two links in the same
chain, and that the guerrillas in both regions are
financed by Bin Laden and other Islamic
fundamentalists. Significantly, the Saudi terrorist
has declared a jihad on the United States and Israel.
It may be inferred that this is the beginning of a new
global conflict, to use Samuel Huntington's term,
between Western and Islamic civilizations. If this
hypothesis is correct, then the position of the CIS
states at the junction of the Christian and Moslem
worlds is more than unenviable: According to the
American political scientist's theory, most modern
wars take place in the zone where two cultures meet.
It is of great interest, in this context, to note the
viewpoint of one of the more prominent Islamic
fundamentalist ideologues in Russia today, Geidar
Dzhemal, who seriously believes that in order to avoid
the destructive--as he sees it--influence of the West,
the Russians will simply have no choice but to adopt
Islam. Let us attempt to establish the nature of the
forces opposing both the Kremlin and the secular
regimes of Central Asia today, and assess how serious
the threat of Islamic fundamentalism really is.

(snip)

In the Soviet Union the Wahhabites were first
mentioned in the early 1990s during the civil war in
Tajikistan. The opponents of the Tajik opposition said
that they were not fighting real Moslems, but
"Wahhabites." The Islamic opposition in Tajikistan did
indeed take up certain elements of Wahhabite ideology,
calling, for example, for a rejection of opulent
weddings and funerals. One of the leaders of the Tajik
opposition, Hadji Akbar Turadzhonzoda, made no secret
of the fact that his "Moslem brothers" had had an
enormous influence on him, and that he considered them
fine philosophers. "It is my conviction that
fundamentalism is not extremism, nor is it religious
intolerance. I think that every religious person
should have something of the fundamentalist in him, if
by fundamentalism we mean that a person adheres to the
true faith," Turadzhonzoda said at the time (1).
However, it is intrinsically wrong to equate
fundamentalism and Wahhabism, because the former
concept is much the broader of the two.





The first "Wahhabites" appeared in the North Caucasus,
just as they did in Central Asia, at the beginning of
perestroika, when, after the fall of the Iron Curtain,
missionaries from Arab countries reached the Moslem
regions of the Soviet Union and young Moslems from
these republics had the opportunity to study in
religious institutions in other Islamic countries.
However, just as in Central Asia, local "Wahhabites"
categorically objected to being so dubbed. "Wahhabite
is a term which ignorant people use to describe groups
of Moslems who often differ very greatly from each
other. Basically, anybody who criticizes the official
clerics is dismissed as a "Wahhabite." If you want to
be totally accurate, the so-called North Caucasus
"Wahhabites" should be called Salafites (the general
term for Moslem religious activists who at various
times in history called for a return to the way of
life and beliefs of early Moslem society), or
fundamentalists," one of the most important Moslem
academics in Russia, Akhmedkadi Akhtaev, told the
author shortly before his death.





Akhtaev's view is probably not far from the truth, and
in fact the term "Wahhabites" is generally used to
describe all groups of Moslems in the former Soviet
Union who criticize the regional features of Islam
which often incorporate local customs and even Soviet
innovations.





However, the problem is in reality far more serious
than one of minor religious differences. Before
perestroika, Moscow managed successfully to adapt the
very divergent cultures of the various peoples in the
country to communist ideology. Alas, this was only
possible under a totalitarian system. Western European
democratic institutions turned out to be ineffective
in the Moslem regions of their crumbling empires.
There is perhaps one thing which unites the rather
disparate fundamentalist groups: They accept neither
the former communist system nor the Western model of
development which has appeared in its stead. Typical
of this is the viewpoint expressed to Prism's
correspondent back in 1991 by the then chairman of the
Islamic Resurgence Party of Tajikistan (now one of the
leaders of the united Tajik opposition), Mukhammad
Sharifzodoi: "Western countries have their democracy,
we have ours. Our democracy is incompatible with
Western democracy! In the West the rights of the
individual are unlimited to such an extent that they
are practically not recognized as social rights;
because of the permissiveness of the Western way of
life, the West is heading for collapse. Whereas in the
Soviet Union, until recently, individual rights were
severely constricted. We will try to strike a balance
between these two extremes."





The growth in the social base of CIS fundamentalists
is also facilitated by the legal anarchy rampant in
almost all Moslem regions of the former Soviet Union.
In Dagestan today, for example, just two sections of
society have very nearly divided power between them:
the former party nomenklatura and the so-called "new
Dagestanis"--in other words, criminal bigwigs who have
their own armed units. The conflict between the
so-called "Wahhabites" of the Kadarskaya zone and
official Makhachkala first arose when the
fundamentalists refused to make a payment to the local
criminal structures. Meanwhile, in Uzbekistan and
Kyrgyzstan an "official racket" of corrupt officials
often successfully replaces the mafia. Given this
state of affairs, many Moslems lose their confidence
in the effectiveness of the actions of the secular
authorities, and become convinced that it will only be
possible to deal with this legal chaos if society
lives by the laws of the Shariah.





The success of Islamic fundamentalism can also be
attributed to the fact that its ideology is
organically intertwined with nationalist ideology.
Thus not only Chechen separatists, but also Tajik and
Uzbek fundamentalists stand up for their national
distinctiveness, setting this against the
"destructive" influence of the West. It is interesting
to note that among the leaders of both the Uzbek and
the Tajik opposition there are many people who speak
practically no Russian (a rare phenomenon in Central
Asia today), yet speak fluent Arabic. As the Russian
eastern specialist Robert Landa rightly points out,
"for any nationalist, even a nonbeliever... Islam is
the "everyday life" which protects them from invasion
from outside and from modernization which is forced
upon them (as is customary to believe). Therefore
Islam is an integral part of nationalism" (2). Thus
the current resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in
Moslem regions of the former Soviet Union would appear
to be quite logical. Whereas at the beginning of the
1990s the number of fundamentalists among the
population of Dagestan was no more than 2 percent,
today official Makhachkala estimates that it is
approaching 10 percent. There are no figures available
for fundamentalists in Central Asia, but there can be
no doubt that their number is growing.

http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=6&issue_id=402&article_id=3693



		
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