Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 30 – Even though
Islam has made a comeback in many Circassian regions, Naima Neflyasheva says,
it has not generated the kind of radicalization seen elsewhere, largely because
along with the revival of Islam has been a revival of the Adyge Khabze, the traditional code of etiquette that has governed
Circassian behavior.
In the past, that code was seen as
antithetical to the Muslim shariat, the specialist on the North Caucasus at
Moscow’s Institute of Africa says; but today, many Muslim leaders in Circassian
areas view it as complementary to Islam and as having a positive influence on
believers (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/290090/).
Speaking
at a meeting in MGIMO this week, she drew a sharp contrast between Daghestan
and Kabardino-Balkaria where radicalization of Muslims is continuing and
Karachayevo-Cherkessia and Adygeya where “there are no signs of radicalization”
at the present time.
The
Moscow scholar suggested that a major reason for that was the revival of Adyge
Khabze and the support it enjoys among some Muslim leaders in the region goes a
long way to explain why “radicalization has not engulfed the Western Adgys
[Circassians] even though it has affected others.
Neflyasheva’s
argument is important because, given Moscow’s concerns about the radicalization
of Muslim opinion in the North Caucasus, it could provide a justification for
the center taking a more positive stance with regard to the Circassians and to
Circassian traditions and also for Moscow to promote the revival of similar
pre-Islamic value systems elsewhere.
Another
speaker at the session, Akhmet Yarlykapov of MGIMO’s Center for Problems of the
Caucasus and Regional Security, stressed that “re-Islamization in the eastern
regions of the North Caucasus, particularly in Daghestan, has had ‘an explosive
character’ since the disintegration of the USSR.”
According
to him, “Islam now only has expanded its
influence by increasing the number of mosques, medrassahs, and practicing
Muslims but deepened it by penetrating all sides of the life of society.” At the same time, however, Yarlykapov insisted
that “this must not be the occasion for panic.”
Not
only does the Russian government understand the situation better than it did,
viewing sufism in Daghestan as a positive phenomenon rather than a negative one
as it did in Soviet times, but it also recognizes that some problems are of its
own making, including the failure to bring to justice those who kill imams and the
spread of corrupt and repressive practices.
These
things, like the two Chechen wars, helped radicalize young people in the North
Caucasus and have helped ISIS to recruit as many as 5,000 fighters for its wars
in the Middle East, an exodus that has “not ended up to now.” But Moscow has succeeded in undermining all
radical Islamist “political” projects in the region.
Yarlykapov
stressed that it is a mistake to think that radicalism is largely the product
of poverty. “At present, many quite well-off people are leaving for ISIS,” he
said, some of them because of anger about corruption and repression at home and
the way those things have closed off their opportunities for social
advancement.
The
MGIMO scholar said that those in Moscow who believe that they can use what they
call “’traditional Islam’” as a barrier against radicalization are now at a
dead end. What such people should be asking is whether an individual or group
is “loyal or not,” rather than getting involved in theological doctrine.
Neflyasheva
agreed. She said that the Daghestani authorities should “return to the practice
of the previous head of the republic under whom was conducted a dialogue of
various trends of Islam and adaptation commissions worked.” They should also allow for the creation of a
distinctly Daghestani Islamic educational system and the development of Islamic
thought.