Paul Goble
Staunton, Nov. 4 – At the end of the Soviet period, there was a great deal of discussion about the possible survival and growing influence in the USSR of Sufism, the mystical trend within Islam that on occasion supports not passivity as is sometimes the case with Sufis elsewhere but militance and active resistance to the authorities.
The most prominent advocates of the idea that Sufism retained the capacity to play such a role in the North Caucasus and elsewhere were Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, especially in their 1986 book, Mystics and Commissars: Sufism in the Soviet Union (University of California Press).
At the time and since, many were dismissive of that idea, but recent developments in Moscow and Ingushetia suggest that Bennigsen and Wimbush were on to something and that at least some Sufi orders may continue to play a more militant and even violent role in resisting the Russian powers that be than many may have thought.
At the end of last month, police officials in Moscow and Magas arrested a group of senior Ingush officials and businessmen for the 2019 murder in the Russian capital of Ibragim Eldzharkiyev, the head of the Center for the Struggle against Extremism located in Ingushetia (iz.ru/1416905/2022-10-27/zaderzhan-organizator-ubiistva-glavy-tcentra-e-ingushetii).
All of those arrested were members of the Batal Haji Sufi tariqat, and the police in Ingushetia began a broader wave of arrests against its members, charging them with maintaining illegal arms caches that the authorities said had been used in this case and could be used again (fortanga.org/2022/11/vliyatelnyj-klan-chto-izvestno-o-dele-tarikata-batal-hadzhi/).
The Batal Haji Sufi tariqat is named in honor of the Ingush Sheikh of the Qadiria order, Batal-Haji Belkharoyev (1821-1914). Independent experts say that it had from 5,000 to 15,000 active members, although the group itself insists that there are now 30,000 people within its ranks.
The leadership of the tariqat is drawn from direct descendants of Sheikh Batal Haji, and it is, according to the Fortanga news agency, “one of the most influential, rich and closest clans in the republic,” a republic whose total population is only about 500,000. If the tariqat’s claims are true, that means one in every 15 republic residents and one in every seven adults is a member.
According to the authorities, the murder of Eldzharkiyev was the result of a blood feud, the response of the Batal Haji tariqat to the death of one of the leaders of the group at the hands of the anti-extremist body a year earlier. Others say it happened because Eldzharkiyev refused to do what the tariqat wanted.
Two men who were members of the tariqat but have broken with it and now live in emigration have spoken out about the Batal Haji organization. The first, Shamil Bulguchev, says that the group has been responsible for more than 30 murders and operates more as a criminal syndicate than a religious group (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/342139/).
The second, Islam Kartoyev, agrees, and points out that the Batal Haji group is “the most closed wird in Ingushetia,” one that doesn’t allow anyone to leave freely and that has threatened him repeatedly over the last ten years because he chose to break with it (youtube.com/channel/UCvi2ir8lxTPN4D_7sF_Ubsg/videos).
“The sect is very dangerous and insidious,” he says, as “it doesn’t take in new members or allow members to leave. There are reasons for this: this is an organized criminal group of about 15,000 members. Its followers act like programmed robots.” For members, the words of the leadership are “law.”
According to Kartoyev, “this is more than a religious group or wird; it is a real mafia syndicate. Its members will never be assimilated by anyone,” although for them religion not nationality is the key identity.
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