Young Muslims inside Russia Radicalizing Because of Collapse of Traditional Societies at Home and Problems in Islamic World Abroad, Kurbanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 1 – Young Muslims in the North Caucasus are becoming increasingly radicalized because of the rapid collapse of the traditional societies in their republics and because of social and economic problems in the Muslim world more generally, according to Ruslan Kurbanov of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

            The Moscow scholar says that young Muslims there blame the Russian state for its role in promoting modernization and are even prepared to “take up arms” against it, and they see the Muslim hierarchies in the Islamic world as having been corrupted by their ties with states and thuds follow radicals (rbc.ru/society/01/07/2024/667e6f809a7947bbc82b9e66

            Expanding on Kurbanov’s points, Mufti Damir Mukhetdinov of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of Russia suggests that some of these problems might be limited if it were the case that Russian society had provided greater opportunities for young Muslims to make careers and rise through the social hierarchy.

            But those elevators, military in the case of tsarist times and the communist party in Soviet times, no longer work, Mukhetdinov says. Some of them were destroyed, others were limited in their operation. And recently, he continues, “we haven’t offered anything new” as a replacement. Unless that changes, radicalization of Muslim young people will only continue to grow.