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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