Ingush Muftiate, like Ingush Teips, Now Surrogate for Civil Society Magas Working to Destroy, Buzurtanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 5 – Because Magas and Moscow have arrested so many leaders of Ingush civil society and taken control of the political institutions such groups usually operate in, traditional primordially based groups have assumed a new and more powerful role, helping to consolidate the Ingush people, resolve disputes, and advance their interests.

            The teips, the extended family clans, have been the most prominent examples of this development (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/07/after-crackdown-on-ngos-primordial.html). But the republic muftiate, which the regime established to control society, has now become a spokesman for it. Indeed, it is now a surrogate for civil society as a whole.

            Given that the Ingush people have been deprived of their rights to control the political institutions of the republic and that both Magas and Moscow have arrested civic leaders and disbanded NGOs, Akhmed Buzurtanov says, traditional institutions have had to play a new and vastly more political role (6portal.ru/posts/укрепление-традиционных-гражданских/).

            The teips, to which all Ingush belong, are the most prominent, the Portal Six commentator says; but the republic muftiate has also assumed a new role, not working to control society for the state as the regime which set it up intended but to resolve conflicts among religious trends and to speak on behalf of the Ingush as a political-religious community.

            At the time of the mass protests against the Yevkurov-Kadyrov land deal, the muftiate avoided taking a direct role in the protests. Nonetheless, its leaders made clear that they were on the side of the people rather than the powers. And that was enough for the powers to move against the muftiate.

            First, Magas orchestrated a campaign of slander by other Muslim organizations in the North Caucasus against the Ingush muftiate; and now it is seeking to intervene in the elections of a new mufti so that the Muslim religious community will become servile to the state rather than being a defender of the Ingush people.

            What has made the muftiate so important in the last few years and what the political powers want to undermine is that the religious organization has become a collegial body in which almost all the trends within Islam can find a place and discuss with each other common problems.

            Magas, at Moscow’s behest and desirous of weakening this body, wants to install someone who will divide the community by taking sides with one trend and denouncing all others as heretical or extremist.  Consequently, a great deal rides on the elections of a new mufti who will move in one direction or the other.

            Because of the positive, mediating role that the muftiate has played in Ingush society and the ways in which it has helped the Ingush nation stand up to the continuing repression by Moscow and Magas, Buzurtanov concludes, it is critically important that its newly assumed role as a surrogate for civil society institutions be preserved. 

            The republic government continues to try to undermine any group, including the most traditional, that doesn’t do its bidding. Today, the government-controlled republic Supreme Court confirmed the earlier ban of the Council of Teips of the Ingush People imposed by a Sochi court (fortanga.org/2020/08/likvidatsiyu-soveta-tejpov-ingushskogo-naroda-podderzhal-apellyatsionnyj-sud/).

            Also in an unrelated development, TASS reported that Ingush police have identified identified two of the three men they say were involved in the July 28 shooting of a Russian Guard officer and are seeking their arrest (tass.ru/proisshestviya/9112353 and fortanga.org/2020/08/v-ingushetii-ustanovleny-lichnosti-predpolagaemyh-ubijts-rosgvardejtsa/).