Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 8 – New sociological
studies show that the number of followers of the Sufi orders in Chechnya has
experienced “significant growth” especially among the younger generation,
something that both Ramzan Kadyrov and Moscow have reasons to welcome as well
as reasons to fear.
On the one hand, both Grozny and
Moscow view Sufism as a bulwark against Islamist fundamentalism; but on the
other, both are aware that in the past Sufi orders, while occasionally
cooperating with the Russian and Soviet authorities, have also helped to
mobilize North Caucasians against Russian rule (russian7.ru/post/nakshbandiya-i-drugie-samye-vliyateln/).
Sufism is not an equivalent to the
two main trends of Islam, Sunnism and Shiism, but rather a mystical aspect of
Islam that takes from both and can be followed by those in either of the two
basic traditions, thus making it a channel for the inter-penetration of Muslim
ideas and also a syncretic element that absorbs local traditions as well.
Today, Sufism is the dominant form
of Islam in Chechnya as well as Daghestan and some other portions of the North
Caucasus. Sufi missionaries brought Islam to Chechnya from Daghestan, and they
organized the two brotherhoods, Naqshbandia and Qadiria, that continue to
dominate the religious space in that republic.
The Naqshbandia led the resistance
to the Russian imperial advance in the 19th century. It was the
faith of Imam Shamil. The Qadiria sought a modus
vivendi, but scholars now say that many Russian imperial officials were
more worried about and hostile to the latter, viewing it as subversive of their
control under the guise of cooperation.
The relations of the two groups to
the Soviet authorities evolved over time. Initially, the Bolsheviks reached out
to them, but by the end of the 1920s, Moscow sought to disband the orders viewing
them as a threat to its control. But because the authorities closed many formal
Muslim institutions like mosques, the orders became the basis for the survival
of Islam.
“From 1958 to 1964,” as part of Khrushchev’s
anti-religious campaign, many Sufi leaders were tried and convicted of crimes
against the state, that that effort failed, the Russia 7 portal says, and it “was
not able to stop the growth of the influence of the Sufi brotherhoods” in
Chechnya and elsewhere.
Under Brezhnev, Moscow tried a
different tack: it sought the help of the orders in fighting social practices
such as blood feuds. And “thanks to the interference
of the sheikhs” as the leaders of the brotherhoods are called, “the number of
such feuds was sharply reduced” in the last years of Soviet power.
According to Soviet sociologist
Viktor Pivovarov, in 1975, “’more than half of the believing Muslims of the
Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic were members” of the Sufi orders; and in
1986, another researcher reported that there were 280 Sufi groups with some
8,000 followers in that republic. Today, those numbers are far higher.
The two dominant orders in Chechnya
now are the Naqshbandia and the Qadiria, which are approximately equal in size.
According to Daghestani researcher Garun Kurbanov, the former gains strength
from being at one and the same time “elite and simple” and adaptable “to changing
social and political conditions.”
The Qadiria in contrast wins support
both because it is more demonstrative – its practices are far more public and
dramatic, in some cases resembling Shiia Islam, and because it enjoys the
active support of Ramzan Kadyrov who is himself a member of this order or tariqat and who promotes its growth.
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