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

Chris Doss lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com
Sat Sep 25 07:40:07 PDT 2004


On reconsideration, you may be right about the nationalism thing -- what I am suggesting is that ideologies like "Wahabbism" serve to, perhaps, cement a weak nationalism, weak because of internal societal frictions, such as loyalty to the clan/tribe coming before that of the "nation" or "people." Didn't some of that take place in what is now Saudi Arabia -- I mean, the use of religion as a mechanism to forge a shared identity among the various tribes?

On Tajikistan and the condition it's in -- well, if Tajik migrant workers are willing to live in the hellish conditions they do in Moscow, it must be pretty damn bad. A couple of years ago, a couple of dozen migrant workers from Tajikistan (it may have been Uzbekistan, I don't remember) burned to death in Moscow. There were about 30 of them living in a single bus. The oil cooker they were using to prepare food set the place on fire, and whoever had hired them and brought them to Moscow has wired the doors and windows of the bus shut.

It's by far from just Tajikistan that these people are coming from. Menial work in Moscow is mostly done by immigrants (legal or illegal) from the stans, Moldova and Ukraine. Not from Kazakhstan, though, since the Kazakhs are relatively rich.

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