A Clear and Present Danger: "Wahhabism" as a Rhetorical Foil

Author(s): Alexander Knysh

Source: Die Welt des Islams, New Series, Vol. 44, Issue 1 (2004), pp. 3-26
Published by: BRILL
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A CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER:

"WAHHABISM" AS A RHETORICAL FOIL
BY

ALEXANDER KNYSH
Michigan

"We shall not return to the state anterior to discourse-in

which
nothing has yet been said, and in which things are only just beginning to emerge out of the grey light; and we shall not pass beyond
discourse in order to rediscover the forms that it has created and left
behind it; we shall remain, or try to remain, at the level of discourse
itself.. .A task consists of not-of no longer-treating
discourses as
groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which
they speak."
Michel Foucault, The Archeologyof Knowledge,
Pantheon Books, New York, 1972, 48-49.

Prologue
In the giant body of literature on the political developments along
Russia's southern border over the past decade, one cannot help but
be struck by the frequency with which "Wahhabism" and/or "Wahhabi" Islam is invoked by Western and Russian journalists, academics, and political analysts as the principal cause of troubles and
political instability in these areas.' This is especially true of the
Muslim areas of the Northern Caucasus and Central Asia, although

l For some typical examples see: Muriel Atkin, "The Rhetoric of Islamophobia,"
Central Asia and the Caucasus, 1 (2000), 123-132; Marat Murtazin, "Muslims and
Russia: war or peace?" ibid., 132-141; Svante Cornell and Regine Spector, "Central
Asia: More than Islamic extremists," The Washington Quarterly,25/1 (Winter 2002),
193-206; Olga Bibikova, "Fenomen 'vakhkhabizma'," Aziia i Afrika segodnia, 8 (1999),
48-52; Vakhit Akaev, Sufizm i vakhkhabizm na Severnom Kavkaze, Issledovaniia po

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2004

Also available online - www.brill.nl

Die Welt des Islams 44, 1

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ALEXANDER KNYSH

some autonomous Russian republics, such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, are also occasionally mentioned in this context.2 Equally
surprising is the unanimity with which popular Russian and Western journalism and academic studies depict the ongoing Muslim
resurgence in the former Soviet Union as a life-and-death struggle
between the "Sufi" and "Wahhabi" versions of the Islamic religion.3
These Islamic movements in the territory of the former Soviet Union
are frequently portrayed by both laymen and experts as incompatible and mutually hostile interpretations of Islam adopted by their
adherents in an attempt to fill the vacuum left by the implosion of
the Communist ideology and system of values. The "Wahhabi-Sufi"
confrontation is frequently invoked in the public speeches of high
ranking Russian and Central Asian politicians, such as presidents
Karimov of Uzbekistan or Shaymiev of Tatarstan, who never tire of
invoking "Wahhabism" as a mortal threat to the very existence of

prikladnoi i neotloznoi etnologii, Moscow, 1999; Igor Dobaev, "Islamic Radicalism

in the Northern Caucasus," Central Asia and the Caucasus, 6 (2000), 76-86; "Azerbaidzan vydal Rossii vakhkhabita, vzorvavshego gazoprovod Urengoi-PomaryUzgorod," Lenta.ru, 23.07.2002; Aleksei Malashenko, "Chto khotiat imenuemye
vakhkhabitami," Islamskie orientirySevernogoKavkaza, Moscow, Nauka, 2001, 137-163
et passim); Alexei Savateev, "'Vakhkhabit' 'vakhkhabitu' rozn'," Aziia i Afrika segodia,
2 (2002), 5-12, and 3 (2002), 24-26; Robert Bruce Ware, Enver Kisriev, Werner
Patzelt and Ute Roericht, "Political Islam in Daghestan," Europe-Asia Studies, 55/2
(2003), 287-302; for further references see subsequent footnotes to the present article. For a recent (hostile) account of "Wahhabi" history and tenets in the West
see: Hamid Algar, Wahhabism: A critical essay, Islamic Publications International,
Oneonta, NY, 2002.
2
E.g., Aidar Khabutdinov, "Wahhabism in Modern Tatarstan," Russia and the
Moslem World, Moscow, 10 (100), 2000, 24-26; for a recent "discovery" of the socalled "Wahhabi cells" in Moscow see "FSB zaiavliaiut, chto v Moskve pri mechetiakh
sushchestvuiut shkoly vakhkhabizma," KavkazWeb.com,06.09.2002 and "Musul'manskie lidery otritsaiut sushchestvovanie shkol vakhkhabizma v Moskve," ibid.
3 Akaev, "Sufizm i vakhkhabizm"; Uwe
Halbach, "Islam in the Northern Caucasus," Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 115 (July-September 2001), 93-110,
see, in particular, 102-104; Dmitri Makarov, Ofitsial'nyii neofitsial'nyiislam v Dagestane,
Moscow, Tsentr strategicheskikh issledovanii, 2000, passim; Nadezda Emelianova
(Emel'ianova), "Islam in the Northern Caucasus: The obvious and the concealed,"
CentralAsia and the Caucasus, 6/12, 2001, 38-47; Gadzi Magomedov, "Chto strashnee
vakhkhabizma," Nezavisimaia gazeta, Aug. 7, 2001; Valerii Tishkov, Obschestvo v
vooruzennom konflikte: etnografiia chechenskoivoiny, Moscow, Nauka, 2001, 327-350;
Ware et al., "Political Islam," passim.

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"WAHHABISM"
AS A RHETORICALFOIL

their countries.4 Although many Western and Russian observers

agree that the activism of these "mutually opposed" movements is a
response to the dire economic and social conditions of the postSoviet era and the ideological void left by the collapse of official
Marxism-Leninism, they nevertheless tend to focus their analysis on
the religious premises characteristic of each group.5 Let us review
these premises, or rather, the ways in which they are construed and
articulated by both Russian and Western experts on Islam in the
former Soviet Union, paying special attention to the rhetorical strategies and conventions that inform these discourses.
"Sufism"and "Wahhabism"Juxtaposed
The advocates of "Sufism", according to many Russian and Western commentators, promote a revival of "traditional religiosity,"6that
is, one that organically integrates elements of "pre-Islamic" cultures,
beliefs and social institutions of the area with the Islamic religion
professed by its population. Known collectively as 'addt, or "customary law," these socio-cultural elements are seen as harking back to
the "pre-Islamic" local tribal and clan structures as well as ancient
belief systems such as, for instance, the cult of local shrines, departed
saints, tribal/family ancestors, and sacred sites or objects.7 These
4 Atkin, "The Rhetoric," 126; Alisher Ilkhamov, "Uzbek Islamism:
Imported
ideology or grassroots movement," Middle East Report, 221 (winter 2001), 40-46;
Gregory Feifer, "Uzbekistan's Eternal Realities: A report from Tashkent," WorldPolicy
Journal, 19/1 (spring 2002), 81-89; for a dissenting view see Ghonchen Tazmi, "The
Islamic Revival in Central Asia: A potent force or a misconception," Central Asian
Survey 20/1 (2001), 63-83.
5A
typical example is Cornell and Spector, "Central Asia," 195.
6 See, e.g, Nadezda Emelianova
(Emel'ianova), "Sufism and Politics in the Northern Caucasus," Nationalities Papers, 29/4 (2001), 661-688 and idem, "Islam in the
Northern Caucasus." For me, the notion "traditional" is highly problematic insofar
as it presupposes the existence of an unchanged and unchangeable "tradition" which
may occasionally fall into abeyance only to re-emerge again in its "pristine" form
under favorable socio-economic and ideological conditions. In this way, "tradition"
serves as a blanket explanatory category that is deployed uncritically to account for
a wide variety of disparate social and political phenomena.
7 Sanobar
Sharmatova, "Tak nazyvaemye vakhkhabity," Dmitri Furman (ed.),
Chechnia i Rossiia: obshchestvai gosudarstva, Moscow, Fond Andreia Sakharova, 1999,
399-425; I. Savin, "Religioznyi ekstremizm v Kazakhstane," Rossiia i musul'man-

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ALEXANDER KNYSH

structures and beliefs, goes the argument, serve local Muslims as

powerful sources of identity and pride vis-a-vis the Muslim community at large and the rest of the world. Outside observers, as well as
educated representatives of local Muslim communities, routinely
identify these structures and beliefs with one or the other version of
"Sufism" without, however, providing any solid historical evidence
to substantiate their claims.8 If we are to accept this line of argumentation, we should then recognize that "traditional" or "Sufi"
Islam can effectively serve as a natural vehicle of nationalist ideology in so far as it helps to promote nation-building projects with
their emphatic assertion of the exclusivity of a given ethnic group.9
While, according to most commentators and historians, "Sufism"
may, on occasion, become a means of Muslim mass mobilization and
armed struggle against internal or external forces, its otherworldly,
inward-looking orientation usually outweighs its militant potential.10
The "Wahhabis", on the other hand, are usually presented by political commentators, journalists and analysts as intransigent supporters of the "pure" and "authentic" Islam of the first Muslim
community at Medina, when it was led by the Prophet himself and
thus divinely protected from any error. In line with this view, the
chief goal of "Wahhabi" ideologues is to restore Islam to its primeskii mir, 3 (117), 2002, 63-66; Sergey Bereznoy, "The Role of Islamic Factor in
Crisis Settlement in Chechnia," CentralAsia and the Caucasus,1 (19) (2003), 169176.
8 This claim is problematic historically, since it ignores the fact that, in the
Northern Caucasusat least, such purportedly "Sufi"leaders of the 19"hcentury as
Ghazi Muhammad and Shamil distinguished themselves as staunch enforcers of
the sharn'a,who sought to eradicate any vestiges of "pre-Islamic"cults and beliefs
in their society; in particular,Shamil discouraged the use of 'adat in dealing with
legal issues faced by his community and insisted on a strict application of the principles of Islamic law;yet, at the same time, in the course of his adjudicatingactivity
Shamil generated a body of legal rulings (Arab.nizam;Russ. kodeks)that combined
elements of the shaWr'a
with those of 'adat;see my article "Shamil"in Encyclopeadia
of Islam, 2d edition, 9, 283-287.
9 See, e.g., Olivier Roy, "Islamet
politique en Asie Central,"Archivesde sciences
socialesdes religions,115 (July-September2001), 56-57.
10See, Savateev,"'Vakhkhabit''vakhkhabitu',"6-8;Ware et al., "PoliticalIslam,"
287-288. For a critical discussion of Sufism's role in Muslim resistance to 19'hcenturyWestern colonialism, see my "Sufismas an ExplanatoryParadigm:The issue of
the motivationsof Sufi movements in Russianand Western historiography,"Die Welt
des Islams,42/2 (2002), 139-173.

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"WAHHABISM"
AS A RHETORICALFOIL

val purity as they understand it. This means, first and foremost, purifying it of "alien," "non-Islamic" beliefs and practices that have crept
into the Muslim tradition in the course of the fourteen centuries of
its existence. According to many experts on "post-Soviet" Islam, the
"Wahhabis" identify the cult of local saints and sacred objects, popular superstitions (such as beliefs in the infallibility of "Sufi" masters
and their ability to intercede with God on behalf of their followers),
and adherence to the 'addt customs"1 in legal practice as gross violations of the "pure" Islam of the "pious ancestors" (al-salaf).12 These
violations or, in "Wahhabi" parlance, "(heretical) innovations"
(bida'), must be eradicated by all means necessary, including violence
and coercion.'3 While the "Sufi" party is seen by most Western and
Russian journalists, political commentators, military analysts and academics as more-or-less politically "benign" or even "pacifist,"'4 the
"Wahhabis" are routinely portrayed as politically "activist," "fanatical" and prone to indiscriminate violence against non-Muslims as
well as any fellow believers who disagree with their precepts.'5 Their
1 Tishkov, Obschestvo,340.
12
Hence their self-denomination-salafiyya
or salafiyyun, which is usually translated from Arabic as "[followers] of the pious ancestors [of Islam]." In the Northern Caucasus, rank-and-file followers of salafz or "Wahhabi" Islam tend to identify
themselves as members of either a regional or universal Islamic religious community and as followers of its spiritual leader (e.g., the "Daghestani, or Muslim, Jama'at"
headed by Bagautdin (Baha' al-Din) Muhammad Kebedov or the "KadarJama'at"
headed by Jarullah Rajabaddinov and a Jordanian cleric Habib 'Abd al-Rahman;
see Mikhail Roshchin, "Dagestan and the War Next Door," Perspective,11/1 (Sept.Oct 2000) available at http://www.bu.edu/iscip/volll/Roshchin.html;
cf. Sharon
LaFraniere, "HowJihad Made Its Way to Chechnya," WashingtonPost, April 26, 2003).
The terms salafi and salafism seem to have been imposed upon Daghestani and
Chechen followers of the "pure Islam of the pious ancestors" (as well as "Wahhabism"
for that matter) by their learned opponents, who are familiar with the history of
Islamic reformism.
13 The tensions created
by these incompatible visions of Islam are not unique
to the Muslim areas of the former Soviet Union; they can be observed throughout
the contemporary Muslim world. See my article "The tariqa on a Landcruiser: The
resurgence of Sufism in Yemen," Middle East Journal, vol. 3 (summer 2001), pp.
399-414.
14 This, of course, has not always been the case, as, in the 19th century, many
European and Russian scholars and colonial administrators considered Sufism to
be "enemy number one" of their colonial projects and mission civilisatrice,see Knysh,
"Sufism as an Explanatory Paradigm," passim.
15 Nadezda Emelianova
(Emel'ianova), "Tainoe i iavnoe v severokavkazskom
islame," Rossiia i musul'manskii mir, 4 (118), 2002, 43-52, especially, 48.

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ALEXANDER KNYSH

willingness to declare jihad against their political opponents and

eventually to establish an independent Islamic state in the Caucasus
and even beyond16 is viewed by some Russian journalists and politicians as a grave threat to the very existence of the Russian state.17It
should be pointed out that the wholesale condemnation by "Wahhabis" of local religious practices and beliefs in favor of a strict
application of the sharn'a18 is often construed by academics as an
attempt to transcend the parochialism of local Muslim communities and to create a global movement as envisioned by early-twentieth century proponents of pan-Islamism, such as Muhammad Rashid
Rida and Ibn Badis.19
The terms chosen by commentators and politicians to designate
each group often reflect their own religio-political views and intellectual preferences (pro- or anti-Sufi; pro- or anti-Muslim; pro- or
anti-"Wahhabi";anti-clerical; liberal, etc.). In contemporary Russian
academic and non-academic literature and media broadcasts, the
followers of Sufi Islam are usually called "traditionalists," "tarikatists"
(from the Arabic tarnqa,a term for a Sufi brotherhood), "muridists"
(from the Arabic murid, the adept of a Sufi master), "zikrists," (from
the Arabic dhikr, "recollection of God's name"-a common Sufi
practice), etc.20 The "Wahhabis", who are often described as salafts,
are also referred to by their opponents as "fundamentalists," "Islamists," "Islamic radicals," "Islamic militants," "puritans of Islam," or
simply "Islamic terrorists."21 I will now proceed to discuss how
16
See Vladimir Bobrovnikov, Musul'mane SevernogoKavkaza: obychai,pravo, nasilie,
Moscow, Nauka, 2002, 92-94, which quotes interviews with the "Wahhabi" field
commander Shamil Basaev, who declared "the liberation of Muslims [living] between the Volga and the Don" to be his ultimate goal.
17 Andrei Klochkov, "Vakhkhabitskii polumesiats," Kommersant-Vlast',Aug. 24,
1999; Aleksandr Borodai, "Ichkeriia do moria?", Zavtra, 33, 20 Aug., 1999.
18 On close
examination, this appears to be nothing but a pious utopia, for it
is not the sharna but who interprets and applies it that matters. For a critical examination of the idea of instituting sharfa legislation in the present-day Caucasus see
Bobrovnikov, Musul'mane SevernogoKavkaza, 272-281.
19See
my "The tariqa on a Landcruiser," 412-414.
20
See, e.g., Vladimir Bobrovnikov, "Vakhkhabity Severnogo Kavkaza," Islam na
territoriibyvshei Rossiiskoi imperii, 2, Nauka, Moscow, 1999, 20.
21
See, e.g., Bibikova, "Fenomen 'vakhkhabizma"' and Shermatova, "Tak nazyvaemye"; Aleksei Malashenko and Dmitri Trenin, Vremiaiuga: Rossiia v Chechnei Chechnia
v Rossii, Moscow Carnegie Center, Gendalf, Moscow, 2002, 78-79 and passim; cf.

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AS A RHETORICAL
FOIL
"WAHHABISM"

"Wahhabism" has become a "catch-all"explanatory model that is employed in a wide array of political, popular, and academic discourses
both in Russia and its former Muslim dependencies.
"Wahhabism",a Rhetoric of Fear
Accounts of the ideology and practices of Islamic political activism in Western and Russian literature vary significantly in points of
detail and level of sophistication. The same is true of the descriptions of the nature of the supposed conflict between Sufis and
"Wahhabis", which is presented from a wide variety of perspectives
ranging from (at least outwardly) objective to wantonly partisan and
apologetic/polemical.22 Most of these diverse analytical approaches
to the "Sufism-versus-Wahhabism" phenomenon have one feature
in common: whether academic or journalistic they are dictated by
the writers' firm belief in the unproblematic heuristic value and selfsufficiency of the categories in question.23 Even when differences
between regional manifestations of the "Wahhabi"movement in Central Asia and the Caucasus are duly acknowledged, their similarities
are nonetheless deemed sufficient to classify them as variants of a
single universal phenomenon.24
Malashenko, Islamskie orientiry, 104-134. It should be pointed out that these are
blanket terms that cover a wide variety of religio-political movements and beliefs
that are lumped together indiscriminately into the same analytical category.
22 For a relatively sympathetic account of "Wahhabism" that presents it as a grassroot reaction against the rampant corruption in high places and gross social inequities in post-Communist societies see, e.g., Dmitri Zantiev, "'Vakhkhabizm' v Rossii:
mif ili real'nost'," Rossiia i musul'manskii mir, 10 (112), 2001, Moscow, 43-48 and
Magomedov, "Chto strashnee vakhkhabizma." For a thoroughgoing denunciation
of "Wahhabism" by a pro-Shi'i/pro-Sufi author see Algar, Wahhabism;cf. Khaled M.
Abou El Fadl, And God Knows the Soldiers, University Press of America, Lanham-New
York-London, 2001, passim.
23 For a notable
exception see Bobrovnikov, Musul'mane SevernogoKavkaza, pp.
90-97; here the author describes the rise of radical Islam in the Northern Caucasus
as a revival of the age-old Caucasian tradition of "noble" banditry (abrechestvo),whose
representatives use religious rhetoric as an ideological cover and means of legitimization.
24 For a
typical example of this approach see: Shermatova, "Tak nazyvaemye,"
passim; cf. Khasan Dzutsev and Abram Pershits, "Vakhkhabity na Severnom Kavkaze-religiia, politika i sotsial'naia praktika," VestnikRossiskoi Akademii Nauk, 68/
12, 1113-1116; here the authors seek to demonstrate the historical continuity be-

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10

ALEXANDER KNYSH

Over the past ten years, accounts in contemporary Russian press

and media broadcasts of Muslim movements in the territories of the
former Soviet Union have grown increasingly negative.25One should,
however, point out that such negative attitudes predated the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were in evidence already in the early
1980s and were determined, in part, by the fear of a global Islamic
"explosion" in the aftermath of the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet
Army's debacle in Afghanistan. On a more popular level these negative perceptions were fed by the fear that Muslim ethnic groups
would soon "outbreed" the Russians to become the majority population of the Soviet Union.26
The negative tendency in Russian public discussions of Islam and
Muslims gained further momentum after the dissolution of the Soviet
Union and the discrediting of the official Communist notions of
"internationalism" and the "friendship of all nations." The dramatic
change in Russia's geo-political position and its withdrawal from its
former allies in the Middle East over the past decade have absolved
Russian politicians, journalists and academics from paying lip service to such "discredited" and "ideologically-driven" conceptions.27
tween Arabian "Wahhabism" and its "reincarnation" in the Northern Caucasus in
the 1990s; cf. Leonid Alaev and Yuri Tikhonov, "Vakhkhabity v Britanskoi Indii,"
Aziia i Afrika segodnia, 3 (524), 2001, 42-45; in this study, the authors draw a parallel (far-fetched it seems to me) between the Barelvi movement in the Indian Subcontinent and the situation in the Northern Caucasus in the 1990s.
25Vladimir (Archbishop of Tashkent and Central Asia), "Is there 'Islamic threat'
[sic!]?" Russia and the Moslem World, 10 (100), Moscow, 2000, 16-20; Murtazin, "Muslims and Russia," "Byt' musul'maninom v Rossii (interv'iu predsedatelia Soveta
muftiev Rossii Ravilia Gainutdina), Literaturnaia gazeta, 17-20 October, 2001; for a
fine analysis of popular Russian attitudes toward the idea of the introduction of
sharT'anorms into the lives of Russian Muslims see Bobrovnikov, Musul'mane Severnogo Kavkaza, 264-272.
26 This view was
particularly widespread among the Soviet military, who were
concerned by the steep increase of Central Asian ethnicities among the new draftees and their tendency to seclude themselves from the rest of the corps; the author's
personal impressions during his service in the Soviet Army in the late 1970s and in
the Soviet Navy, as a reserve officer, in the mid-1980s.
27
See, e.g., Georgii Mirskiy, "Islamic Fundamentalism and International Terrorism," CentralAsia and the Caucasus, 6 (12), 2001, 28-37. Cf. "Imidz sovremennykh
musul'man na territorii Rossiskoi Federatsii" (a round-table discussion organized
by the periodical Nezavisimaia gazeta), Rossiia i musul'manskii mir, 1 (115), 2002, 2334, especially, 27-29; Iurii Kagramanov, "Islam: Rossiia i Zapad," in Novyi Mir, 7
(July 2001), 137-157.

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"WAHHABISM"
AS A RHETORICALFOIL

11

It is now an "us-versus-them" situation, in which Russia's new identity is routinely seen as determined first and foremost from its allegiance to Orthodox Christianity.28The violent conflicts on the fringes
of the former Soviet Empire, especially in Nagornyi Karabagh and
Tajikistan, and later also in Chechnya and Daghestan, have contributed to the already strong anti-Muslim bias of Russian media outlets
and, to a lesser extent, academic publications. This process reached
its peak following the string of apartment-complex bombings in
Moscow and South Russia in September 1999, and more recently,
the events of September 11 2001 in the U.S.29 While the alleged
perpetrators of the former remain at large, the overwhelming majority of Russians are convinced that these tragic events were orchestrated by the Chechen and Daghestani separatists led by their field
commanders Shamil Basaev and Khattab. The duo are usually portrayed by the Russian media as rabid "Wahhabis".30
In light of the protracted military conflicts in Chechnya, Afghanistan and Tajikistan, the actual or imaginary Muslim resurgence in
Russia and its former satellites has come to be seen by many Russians as a grave threat to Russia's stability, if not to its very existence
as a sovereign "Christian" state. Occasional calls from some Russian
political analysts and commentators not to exaggerate the "Islamic
threat" and not to paint all Muslims with the same brush3' have not
changed the overall negative view of Islam and its followers among
the Russian public at large. The war in the Balkans, in which NATO
forces supported the Muslim Kosovars and Bosnians against the

28
Valerii Dzalagoniia, "Islam na pereput'e," Rossiia i musul'manskii mir, 5 (119),
2002, 45-52, which quotes a contemporary Tatar scholar as saying that "Russian
civilization as such does not exist; there is only Russian Orthodox civilization," 51.
29 "Imidz
sovremennykh musul'man," 25; cf. V. Shevelev and A. Kaid Musaed,
"'Islamskaia ugroza' kak teoreticheskaia problema sovremennoi sotsiogumanitarnoi
mysli," Izvestiia vuzov. Severokavkazskiiregion, Rostov-on-Don, 3 (2001), 25-42; Mikhail
Epshtein, "Zametki o chetvertoi mirovoi," Zvezda, 5 (May 2002), 203-214.
30
Shermatova, "Tak nazyvaemye," 408-416 and Vladimir Pavlov, "Po sledam
1 (2002), 30-38; Mariia Beloklokova and
'Chernogo araba'," Obozrevatel'-Observer,
Aleksandr Chuikov, "Kto finansiruet chechenskikh boevikov?", Izvestiia, 26 January, 2002.
31Aleksei Malashenko, Islamskie orientiry,165-169 et passim; Svetlana Popova and
Andrei Petrovskii, "Konflikt tsivilizatsii suschestvuet v umakh politikov," Izvestiia,
22 December, 2001.

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12

ALEXANDER KNYSH

Christian Serbs, was seen by many Russian public figures as an act

of betrayal of the "Christian" cause by the wrong-headed members
of the Western military coalition. While most ordinary Russians are
not familiar with the Huntingtonian "clash-of-civilizations" thesis,32
I have little doubt that they would eagerly subscribe to it, as they
tend to see the recent and ongoing ethnic conflicts in the former
Soviet Union as driven by incompatible religious and moral values.33
Mention should also be made of the change in the Russian public perception of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as many Russians have increasingly come to see the conflict in Israel-Palestine from the Israeli
perspective, that is, as Israel's legitimate struggle against Arab/
Muslim terrorism.34 After the apartment bombings in Moscow and
South Russia, it is only natural that many Russians have come to
identify themselves with Israeli victims of "Muslim terrorists,"35especially since the latter can be construed as analogues of the
Chechen separatists, who, like Palestinians, are bent on destroying
the territorial integrity of their respective states.
The Russian Orthodox Church has also contributed to the increasingly dim view of Islam among the Russians. It has historically posited itself as the sole legitimate guarantor of "genuine" Russian
cultural and moral values. No wonder therefore that its present
leadership is innately suspicious of any religious denomination in
its traditional spheres of influence.36 In this connection, one should
point out that over the past decade the influence of the Russian
church has grown dramatically at all levels of Russian society, including policy-making bodies and the media.37 Despite their lip service
32 It is
widely used as an explanatory model by many Russian analysts, see, e.g.,
Shevelev and Kaid Musaed, "'Islamskaia ugroza"' and Popova and Pertovskii,
"Konflikt tsivilizatsii."
33Mirskiy, "Islamic Fundamentalism," 33-37; "Imidz
sovremennykh musul'man,"
23-34; cf. Tariq Ali, The Clash of Fundamentalisms, Verso, London and New York,
2002, 273.
34
Mirskiy, "Islamic Fundamentalism," 30-31 and 36.
35 "Kak zhit' dal'she?"
Argumenty i fakty, 44 (Oct. 30, 2002).
36 Dmitrii
Furman, "Zeleznyi zanaves pravoslaviia," Obschaia gazeta, 21-27 Feb.,
2002; Dzalagoniia, "Islam na pereput'e," 50-51; for a rare attempt to counter negative attitudes toward Islam among the Russian clergy and public at large, see
Vladimir, "Is there 'Islamic threat'?"
37Alexander Agadjanian, "Revising Pandora's Gifts: Religious and national identity in the post-Soviet societal fabric," Europe-Asia Studies, 53/3 (2001), 473488.

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"WAHHABISM"
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to religious tolerance, the leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church

from the patriarch down view Islam as a dangerous and unwelcome
rival, whose values and practices are at odds with those of the majority of Russians.38
"Wahhabism"is the Answer:An intricate intertwiningof discursivestrands
It is against the background of this complex and unstable ideological landscape that one should view the discussions of the
"Wahhabi" threat in the contemporary Russian media. Many Russian
journalists and media personalities, including those who, during the
Soviet era, had demonized the Sufi brotherhoods of the Caucasus
and Central Asia by comparing them to "clandestine Masonic organizations," now have come to see them as a "lesser evil" in comparison to the "genuine and deadly threat" posed by "Wahhabi"
fundamentalism.39 Analogous to the principle "my enemy's enemy
is my friend", former Russian critics of "Sufism" have come to praise
it as a more tolerant and therefore acceptable version of Islam, whose
emphasis on individual freedom, spiritual quest and self-perfection
makes it compatible with the construction of a new civil society in
Russia.40Consequently, "Sufism", according to many commentators,
should be encouraged and supported by the secular authorities of
the Muslim republics in order to forestall the impending onslaught
of the "militant" and "retrograde" ideology of "Wahhabism".41
38 The
negative views of Islam among many members of the Russian clergy are
fed, in part, by the growing numbers of purported converts to Islam among ethnic
Russians (anecdotal evidence collected by the author during his visits to Moscow
and St. Petersburg in 2000-2002; there is no statistical evidence to substantiate such
claims). It should be pointed out, however, that similar fears are expressed by the
Russian Church authorities about the proselytizing activities in Russia of various
Christian denominations and "Oriental" sects.
39
Mirskiy, "Islamic Fundamentalism," 34-37; Anatolii Savateev, "Dagestan: istoki
fundamentalizma v bednosti," Rossiia i musul'manskii mir, 10 (112), 2001, 63-68;
according to the author, whereas "Islamic extremism" is characterized by "rigidity"
and "lack of tolerance" vis-a-vis all other secular and religious systems of thought,
"the tariqas demonstrate the ability to integrate into contemporary civil society,"
67; since no compelling evidence is provided to substantiate this claim, one is
expected to take it for granted.
40 Savateev, "'Vakhkhabit' 'vakhkhabitu"', 2 (535), 2002, 6-8.
41
Roy, "Islam et politique," 56-57; Shermatova, "Tak nazyvaemye," 413-418;

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The media campaign in Russia aimed at demonizing the "Wahhabi" sect gained momentum in 1998, when several "Wahhabi"42
communities in the Buinaksk district of Daghestan declared their
independence of the central authority in the republic's capital Makhachkala.43 Muslim leaders of four local villages proclaimed them
to be "enclaves" of sharna legislation, which were not subject to the
"infidel" rule of the secular government of Daghestan. Armed militias were created to enforce the precepts of the sharfa among the
locals and state police units were expelled from the "Wahhabi" controlled areas. These declarations nearly coincided with several armed
attacks on a Russian military base in nearby Buinaksk. The reasons
for the Daghestani uprising are complex and need not be detailed
here.44 What matters is that it was presented by many analysts and
politicians as the beginning of a "Wahhabi" revolution that threatened to engulf the entire Northern Caucasus and, potentially, Central Asia as well.
The anti-"Wahhabi" rhetoric in the Russian media and analytical
literature became particularly pervasive in August-September 1999,
when a Chechen-Daghestani force led by the popular Chechen field
commanders, Shamil Basaev and Khattab, invaded north-western
Daghestan (the Botlikh region) allegedly under the pretext of helping their fellow "Wahhabis"in their unequal struggle against the corBibikova, "Fenomen 'vakhkhabizma'," 49-51; for a dissenting view that presents "Sufi
Islam" as equally intolerant and totalitarian see Makarov, Ofitsial'nyi i neofitsial'nyi
islam, 3-7; cf. Magomedov, "Chto strashnee vakhkhabizma," passim; Mikhail
Roshchin, "Who Holds the Key to the Chechen Problem: Summary of a seminar
held at the Moscow Carnegie Center, 19January, 2000," available at http://www.cac.org/journal/engOl1_2000/02.roshchin.shtml.
42 It should be
pointed out that the leaders of these communities considered
the term "Wahhabism" and "Wahhabis" to be derogatory and demanded that the
Daghestani authorities not apply them to their movement, Savateev, "'Vakhkhabit'
'vakhkhabitu'," 3 (536), 2002, 25.
43 For detailed accounts of these
developments see Makarov, Ofitsial'nyi i
neofitsial'nyi, passim, Savateev, "Dagestan" and idem., "'Vakhkhabit' 'vakhkhabitu',"
passim.
44Most observers attribute this popular action to the rampant corruption of the
republican authorities, political persecutions against perceived or real "Wahhabi"
groups by local religious and political authorities, ethnic divisions (e.g., Avars versus Dargins), as well as the turf wars of local mafias, which represent different ethnic
groups and economic interests, see Makarov, Ofitsal'nyi i neofitsal'nyi islam, 16-28;
Savateev, "'Vakhkhabit' 'vakhkhabitu'," 2 (535), 2002, 6-12; Roshchin, "Dagestan
and the War Next Door"; Ware et al., "Political Islam," passim.

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rupt government of the Republic of Daghestan and its Russian

backers.45After the invading force was repelled by the Russian troops
and the Daghestani militia loyal to the Daghestani government in
Makhachkala, the rebellious Daghestani villages that had proclaimed
the rule of the sharna were declared by the Daghestani authorities
"nests of terrorism" and were attacked by Russian troops and
Daghestani militia. After almost two weeks of bombardment and air
attacks they were reduced to rubble and eventually forced to surrender.46 The fierce resistance put up by their defenders, who were
identified as Daghestani and Chechen "Wahhabis", was attributed
to their support by militant Islamic organizations based in Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Yemen, Sudan, and Afghanistan.47 "Wahhabi"
ideas and practices disseminated among the rebels by these organizations along with the financial and logistical aid were cited by the
Russian media as the primary motivation and driving force behind
the hostilities in Daghestan and Chechnya. After the destruction of
the villages, Daghestani authorities launched an all-out campaign
against "Wahhabis" and their "sympathizers," during which security
agents would "seize any young man suspected of being Wahhabi".48
Following the "liberation" of Daghestan from the Basaev-Khattab
rebel army, hostilities were transferred to Chechnya. "The Republic
of Ichkeria" was declared a hotbed of international Islamic terrorism, which had to be extinguished by all means necessary. The alleged "meddling" of foreign powers and organizations sympathetic
to militant "Wahhabism" offered the Russian military a handy explanation of its humiliating defeat at the hands of Chechen separatists in the 1994-1996 war. This early failure and the current stalemate
in the Russo-Chechen hostilities, despite the initial victories of the
45 See an interview with Shamil Basaev in
Bobrovnikov, Musul'mane Severnogo
Kavkaza, 92-95.
46
Roshchin, "Dagestan and the War Next Door," 6-7.
47 Konstantin Poliakov, "Vliianie vneshnego faktora na radikalizatsiiu islama v
Rossii v 90-e gody XX veka," Rossiia i musul'manskii mir, 11 (113), 2001, 32-49;
Beloklokova and Chuikov, "Kto finansiruet."
48 Roshchin, "Dagestan and the War Next Door," 8; cf. Milrad Fatullaev, "Na
vtorom etape operatsii v Dagestane stali razoruzhat' boevikov v Karamakhi i
Chabanmakhi," Nezavisimaia gazeta, Aug. 31, 1999; tellingly, the author warns authorities that "Wahhabism" is "a political rather than religious phenomenon" and
that "one should not paint all 'Islamists' (islamisty) with the same brush."

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Russian army in late 1999-early 2000, were conveniently attributed

by its commanders and press services to the generous ideological,
financial and logistical support from "Muslim terrorist organizations"
based in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.49 Vague and usually unverifiable references to elusive "foreign detachments" led by "Wahhabi"
commanders from Saudi Arabia, the Gulf and Yemen abound in the
reportage of the second Russo-Chechen war,50which is closely censored by the Russian military command in the Northern Caucasus.51
Following the August 1998 attacks against American embassies in
Africa, the Russian press and political commentators routinely linked
the presence of foreign Islamic militants in Chechnya and Central
Asia to the international terrorist networks headed by Usama bin
Ladin and his lieutenants. While evidence of al-Qa'ida's support for
the Chechen resistance has been rather scarce,52 the events of September 11, 2001 have gone a long way in lending credibility to such
assertions, at least in the eyes of the Bush administration.53 The
49Savateev, "'Vakhkhabit' 'vakhkhabitu'," Aziia i Afrika segodnia, 2 (535), 2002,
10; Gennadii Troshev, Moia voina, Moscow, Vargius, 2002, 36-37, 84-85, 168-177,
348-355, etc.
50See, e.g., Pavlov, "Po sledam 'chernogo araba'," passim; Savateev, "'Vakhkhabit'
'vakhkhabitu'," 9-10; Shermatova, "Tak nazyvaemye," 408-425; Bibikova, "Fenomen
'vakhkhabizma'," 49-57; similar opinions are expressed by authors of most of the
publications cited in the present study; for a more balanced assessment of the role
of "foreign fighters" in Russia's war with Chechnya, see New YorkTimes, Dec. 9, 2001
and WashingtonPost, April 26, 2003; realistic estimates suggest the presence of some
200-300 foreign fighters in Chechnya in 1999-2000. Some analysts argue that this
number includes both Middle Easterners (mostly Pakistanis and Arabs) and Muslims from the republics of the former Soviet Union, see Malashenko and Trenin,
Vremiai iuga, 102-103.
51 For evidence of
"foreign involvement" in the Russo-Chechen conflict see
"Armeiskii spetsnaz dobyl fotografii Maskhadova s mezhdunarodnymi terroristami,"
Lenta.ru, Jan. 20, 2003; "V Shalinskom raione unichtozheny arabskie naemniki,"
ibid., Jan. 27, 2003; "Chechneskie boeviki ne smogli dovezti 'Iglu' do mesta terakta,"
ibid., March 3, 2003; "Federaly razgromili bandu alzirtsa Mohammeda Kaddura,"
ibid., March 10, 2003.
52 Malashenko and
Trenin, Vremia iuga, 99-105; "Al-Qaeda Suspect Tells of
Chechnya Link," BBC News, WorldEdition (available online at BBC.com), 29 Oct.,
2002; "Ispanskaia iacheika 'al-Kaedy' gotovilas' k teraktam v Chechne," Letna.ru,
Jan. 24, 2003; Andrei Riskin, "Shahidy vzryvaiut federal'nye tyly,"Nezavisimaia gazeta,
112, (June 6, 2003).
53Mikhail Roshchin, "Rhetoric Clouds of 'War On Terrorism'", Perspective,12/
2 (November-December 2001) available at http://www.bu.edu/isip/voll2/roshchin.
html; Vasilii Bubnov, "Ben Laden pomirit Rossiiu i S. Sh. A.", Pravda.ru, Apr. 27,
2003.

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recent hostage-taking tragedy in a Moscow theater54 and suicide

attacks on the Russian troops stationed in Chechnya and Chechen
troops loyal to Moscow were also attributed to Basaev and his
"Wahhabi" terrorists.55

From the outset, the secular post-Communist (some would say

"neo-Communist"56) regimes of Central Asia and of some North Caucasian republics of Russia have viewed Islamic political activism as
the greatest challenge and the gravest of threats to their, for the
most part, authoritarian and oppressive rule. This perception on the
part of the new leaders of some Central Asian and Caucasian republics springs from their lack of Islamic legitimacy, which they try
to overcome by paying lip service to the (first and foremost) cultural and scientific achievements of Islamic civilization and by very
cautious attempts to sponsor a moderate revival of Islamic symbolism and educational institutions.57 Usually these half-hearted gestures
fail to placate their Islamic critics both inside and outside their
countries, as such critics view them as insincere, cynical and opportunistic. Faced with the criticisms of their domestic policies by perceived or real "Islamist" groups, the "neo-Communist" rulers
routinely couch their rejoinders in an anti-"Wahhabi" idiom.58 The
54 For an
eyewitnessreport of one of the hostages, see Tatiana Popova, Nord-Ost
glazamizaloznitsy,Vagrius, Moscow, 2002.
55Artem Vernidub, "Baraevdeistvovalvslepuiu," Gazeta.ru,Oct. 31, 2002 available at wysiwyg://http://www.gazeta.ru/firstplace.shtml; Sergei Iugov, "Dom
pravitel'stvavzorval odnonogii," Pravda.ru,March 19, 2003 available at http://
politics.pravda.ru/politics/2003/1/1/5/8606_Basaev.html. For a Western perspective see Andrew McGregor,"AmirAbu al-Walidand the Islamic Component of the
Chechen War," CentralAsia-CaucasusAnalyst,Johns Hopkins University, http://
www.cacianalyst.org/view_article.php?articleid=1000.
According to unverified reports, ShamilBasaevhas recentlyacknowledgedhis role in orchestratingthe Moscow
attack.
56 See,
e.g, Roy, "Islamet politique," 58.
57Shermatova,"Taknazyvaemye,"404-408;Cornell and Spector, "CentralAsia,"
194-196.
58 Ivan Aleksandrov, "Real'na li islamskaia ugroza
Uzbekistanu," Rossiia i
musul'manskiimir, 12 (114), 2001, 64-69; typical of this rhetorical exercise is the
statement of the minister of internal affairs of the Karachai-CircassianRepublic,
who described "Wahhabism"as a "time-bomb"that must be defused at all costs, see
Ruslan Levshukov, "Religioznyi ekstremizm v Karachaevo-Cherkesii,"Rossiia i
musul'manskiimir, 1 (115), 2002, 42-46; see also Savin, "Religioznyekstremizm,"
passim;Emelianova (Emel'ianova), "Tainoei iavnoe,"47; for a helpful summaryof

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critics are summarily condemned as "radicals,""extremists" and "terrorists" on the payroll of foreign powers. The term "Wahhabism" is
deployed by the "neo-Communist" rulers consistently and indiscriminately against anyone who dares to raise his voice against the inequities of their rule.59These verbal invectives are often followed by
ruthless suppression of anything that can be interpreted as "Islamist" opposition.60 One might venture a guess that if "Wahhabism"
had never existed, presidents Karimov of Uzbekistan, Shaymiev of
Tatarstan and their colleagues in the Northern Caucasus would have
invented it. Or, perhaps, invent it they did?
Interestingly, the anti- "Wahhabi" invectives in the Russian secular media and in the public pronouncements of the "neo-Communist" leaders are often reiterated by the official Muslim clergy of the
Russian Federation affiliated with the so-called "spiritual directorates" of various ethnic groups and regions of the Russian Federation. Many of its representatives, from the supreme mufti down to
the imam-khatibof a local mosque, have gone on record as vocal critics
of "Wahhabi" tenets, which they dismiss as contrary to the "traditional" Islam of the Muslim communities in Russia.61The rhetoric
the debates over "Islamic radicalism" in the Russian media, see Malashenko, Islamskie
orientiry, 118-120.
59 Ilkhamov, "Uzbek Islamism," 44-46; Vitali Ponomariov, "The Cause of Instability in Uzbekistan-Political
Reprisals Against Muslims," Russia and the Moslem
World, 12 (102), 2000, 35-37; cf. Malashenko, Islamskie orientiry, 119, which cites an
episode in which accusations of "Wahhabism" was used by a criminal group to eliminate its business rival in Kabardino-Balkariia; see also Malashenko and Trenin, Vremia
iuga, 96, which mentions the closure, in 1999, of some 200 religious organizations
in the Northern Caucasus on charges of supporting "Wahhabism" and "religious
extremism," cf. Ware et al., "Political Islam," 297-298.
60Ibid., and Ahmed Rashid, "Fires of Faith in Central Asia," WorldPolicyJournal,
18/1 (spring 2001), 45-55; idem, Jihad: The rise of militant Islam in CentralAsia, Yale
University Press, New Haven and London, 2002; "Uzbek Rights Defender Sentenced
to Imprisonment," Human Rights Watch (HRW) (http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/
09/uzbek0918.htm); cf. ibid., "Class Dismissed: Discriminatory expulsions of Muslim students" (11/12 October, 1999) and "Religious Persecution of Independent
Muslims in Uzbekistan" (20 August, 2002).
61See, e.g., "Imidz," passim; Murtazin, "Muslims and Russia," 138-141; Khabutdinov, "Wahhabism;" Emelianova (Emel'ianova), "Tainoe i iavnoe"; "Byt' musul'maninom"; "Dukhovnyi lider Azerbaidiana otvechaet na voprosy gazety 'Ekho"', Rossiia
i musul'manskii mir, 3 (117), 2002, 195-200; for Chechnya, see Bereznoy, "The Role
of Islamic Factor," 171 and 176; cf. Roshchin, "Who Holds the Key," citing the former
mufti of the Chechen Republic and its present de-factoruler Ahmad-Hajji Kadyrov.

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of the Muslim officials is aimed at proving that "traditional," "Sufi"based Islam is much better suited than "Wahhabism" to the diverse
and multi-ethnic society of the Russian Federation, in which Muslims will remain a minority for the foreseeable future. By invoking
the democratic values that have been embraced by Russian society
since the early 1990s, Muslim critics of "Wahhabism" argue that the
Muslim community of Russia can ill afford to treat its non-Muslim
neighbors as unbelievers, who, according to the "Wahhabi" tenets,
should be confronted with the choice to embrace Islam or to face
death. Nor would it be reasonable, as required by the "Wahhabi"
doctrine, to declare the "Wahhabi" understanding of Islam to be
the only authentic one and then proceed to excommunicate or
forcefully convert those who disagree with it.62This demand, argue
the opponents of "Wahhabism" among Russian-Muslim religious
leaders, flies in the face of the hard-won ideological and religious
pluralism of contemporary Russia. Even more vocally than Russian
journalists, representatives of the Muslim religious officialdom of the
Russian Federation emphasize the "imported," "foreign" character
of "Wahhabi" Islam.63This type of Islamic piety, goes the argument,
may have been indeed highly appropriate for the uncouth Bedouins
of Saudi Arabia, who at the time of Muhammad b. 'Abd al-Wahhab
(d. 1792)64 were notorious for their religious laxity. However, the
strictures of "Wahhabism" are totally alien to the Muslims of
Daghestan, Tatarstan, Kabardino-Balkariia and other Muslim regions
in Russia, who are committed to religious and cultural pluralism and
tolerance.65 In this view, the incompatibility of "Wahhabi" radical62 Emelianova

(Emel'ianova), "Tainoe i iavnoe," 51; "Dukhovnyi lider," 200.

Thus, according the chairman of the Spiritual Directory of the Muslims of
Kabardino-Balkariia, Pshikhachev, "Wahhabism is a military-political formation that
is funded from outside [the republic]"; as such, concludes Pshikhachev, it has to
be crushed by law enforcement agencies, Emelianova (Emel'ianova), "Tainoe i
iavnoe," 47 and 51.
64 For a
splendid account of the intellectual roots of the Wahhabi movement
see Michael Cook, "On the Origins of Wahhabism," Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Series 3, 2 (1992), 191-202.
65 Thus, according to "the official Muslim clergy [of the Russian Federation],
sympathy for Salafism and 'Wahhabism' in Russia can only be bought" by "forces
interested in the spread of Islamic extremism," Emelianova (Emel'ianova), "Tainoe
i iavnoe" (okonchanie), Rossiia i musul'manskii mir, 5 (119), 2002, 66.
63

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ism with the spirit of "Russian Islam" is demonstrated by the fact

that the dress code for men and women and the comportment of
the purported "Wahhabis" of Russia are often described as "Arab."66
What can be better evidence of their foreign roots?
While many Muslim clerics of Russia agree in principle with the
negative view of "Wahhabism" espoused by secular authorities, they,
nevertheless, have so far refused to approve the proposed ban on
"Wahhabi" Islam in the Russian Federation. The refusal to do so
was justified by Ravil Gainutdin(ov), chairman of the Council of Russian muftis, by the vagueness of this category, which, in his opinion,
made it impossible to differentiate between "Wahhabis" and non"Wahhabis" and thus to implement the ban in real life.67 Although
never openly stated, the reluctance to endorse such a ban reflected
the apprehension on the part of the religious leaders of the Russian
Muslim community that it could be used as a pretext for a state crackdown on all "suspicious" Islamic groups, "Wahhabi" or not.68
As already mentioned, in Russian academic and analytical literature, assessments of "Wahhabism" vary considerably. In many ways,
they reflect the media and popularjournalistic portrayals of this phenomenon outlined above, although Russian academics tend to provide far more details pertaining to the history of the movement and
its position vis-a-vis other trends and schools of thought in Islam. In
dealing with the historical roots of "Wahhabism", Russian academic
scholars and political analysts often question the usefulness of this
term when applied to actual Islamic political movements (commonly
called "Islamist") on the ground.69 Many insist on the use of the term
Salafism, which, in their view, carries fewer negative connotations70
66 Tishkov, Obschestvo,340-342; cf.
"Dukhovnyi lider," 196-197.
67 Paul
Gobble, "Who is a Wahhabi?", Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, July 7,
cf.
2000; http://www.rferl.org/nca/features/2000/07//F.RU.000707151509.html;
Levshukov, "Religioznyi ekstremizm," 44-45; Emelianova (Emel'ianova), "Tainoe i
iavnoe," 47.
68 Radio
Liberty/Radio Free Europe, July 7, 2000.
69 For a rather naive
attempt to prove that the Arabic term "Wahhabiyya" is
incorrect grammatically, since it is derived from the name of the father of the
founder of the movement ('Abd al-Wahhab), rather than from that of his son,
Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab, see Zantiev, "'Vakhkhabizm' v Rossii," 44-45.
70 Dmitri Makarov,
Ofitsial'nyi i neofitsial'nyi islam, 69-70; Malashenko, "Grianet
li s Kavkaza," passim; idem, Islamskie orientiry,passim; Poliakov, "Vliianie vneshnego
faktora," Rossiia i musul'manskii mir, 10 (112), 2001, 62-63.

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and is, moreover, often used as a self-denomination of various Islamic political parties and activist groups that outsiders describe, misleadingly, as "Wahhabi". In academic and analytical accounts of
political Islamic movements in present-day Russia conscientious attempts to gage "Wahhabism"'s potential to launch and sustain antigovernment and secessionist movements7' travel side-by-side with
Marxist-style inquiries into its social and economic roots.72 Dire predictions of the alleged potential of "Islamic terrorism" to undermine
the very foundations of human civilization73 are offset by vigorous
dismissals of the popular fear of the "Islamic threat," including that
of "Wahhabism", as unrealistic and overly alarmist.74 Finally, there
are those who argue that radical Islam in Russia in general and in
the Caucasus in particular has no future in so far as it will eventually be superceded by ethnic and nationalist loyalties within various
Muslim communities of Russia.75
A similar lack of unanimity marks Western academic studies of
Islamic political movements in the former Soviet Union and worldwide. Here we find a wide array of strictly negative assessments of
"fundamentalist" Islam in general and "Wahhabism" in particular,76
many of which seem to have been inspired by, or elaborate upon,
Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" thesis.77 On the other
extreme we find studies that categorically deny any reality behind
the "'Wahhabi' myth" and dismiss it as an expression of "traditional"
71

Zantiev, "'Vakhkhabizm' v Rossii"; Poliakov, "Vliianie vneshnego faktora," Rossiia i musul'manskii mir, 10 (112), 2001, 49-63 and ibid., 11 (113), 2001, 32-49.
72
Savateev, "Dagestan"; the author of this study seeks to prove that the roots of
Islamic radicalism lie in the poverty and rampant corruption that characterize many
post-Soviet societies; a similar view is expressed by Emelianova (Emel'ianova), who
argues that the "Wahhabi" movement in Kabardino-Balkariia is fed by the social
dislocations of the post-Soviet epoch with 85%-90% of the republic's population
living "below the poverty level," see "Tainoe i iavnoe," 49.
73
Mirskiy, "Islamic Fundamentalism," passim; "Imidz," passim; see, in particular, the remarks of a Russian sociologist Ignatenko, 27-29 and 33-34.
74
Malashenko, "Grianet li s Kavkaza," passim; idem, Islamskie orientiry, 165-170.
75Vladimir Bobrovnikov, "The Islamic Revival and the National Question in PostSoviet Dagestan," Religion, State and Society, 24/2 and 3 (1996), 233-238.
76
See, e.g., the works of Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes, Martin Kramer, etc.; for
a summary of their views that purports to steer a middle path between the two
diametrically opposed views of Islamic militancy and political activism, see Henry
Munson, "Between Pipes and Esposito," ISIM Newsletter, 10 (July 2002), 8.
77 Shevelev
and Kaid Musaed, "'Islamskaia ugroza'," passim.

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Russian "Islamophobia". One author even goes as far as to liken it

to "the old canard of Russian political paranoia about a subversive
conspiracy by Jews and Masons".78Between these extremes lies a vast
corpus of academic and semi-academic literature that tries to make
sense of the phenomenon with various degrees of impartiality, competence and sophistication. A detailed analysis of this literature
cannot be undertaken here due to lack of space.
Conclusions
Unlike most Russian and Western investigators of "Wahhabism",
I have so far deliberately eschewed the question as to whether we
are dealing with a "real" organized movement, a catch-all name for
Islamic political activism, or a bugbear of the philistine imagination
shocked by acts of "Islamic" terror.79 My goal was to examine how
"Wahhabism" has been deployed as an analytical and rhetorical concept on various discursive levels from popular journalism to "serious" academic literature. My preliminary analysis has shown that
different strands of discourse on "Wahhabism" are intricately interwoven and engaged in ongoing dialogues with one another. These
dialogues result in mutual enrichment and cross-pollination of the
discursive practices involved. While this discursive process may appear rather sophisticated, the end result is often not, in as much as
most of the authors discussed above consistently seek to reduce a
wide range of diverse political, social, ethnic and religious factors to
the lowest common denominator and thus to come up with a simple
and unproblematic explanation of sometimes vastly different phenomena.
Alongside the discursive dialogues outlined above, we witness the
continual elaboration and adjustment of "Wahhabism"as an explanatory model in response to events "on the ground". Thus, any new
violent action construed by observers as being "Wahhabi" propels
78
Atkin, "The Rhetoric of Islamophobia," 129.
79 Methodologically, my analysis is inspired in part by Foucault's concepts of
discursive practices and discursive formations (see the epigraph to the present
article), although I pay more attention to the social status and intellectual background of those involved in shaping them.

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"WAHHABISM"
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"Wahhabism" further along the scale of negativity, thereby reinforcing its image as "public enemy number one" of the Russian state
and, by extension, of Western civilization as a whole.80 For all its arbitrariness and vagueness, the word "Wahhabism" has acquired, in
the Russian public mentality, sufficient explanatory power to prevent it from being ousted by rival concepts, such as "Islamism," "Islamic fundamentalism," "political Islam," etc. When any of these
terms are used, they are more often than not applied to Islamic
movements in the Middle East, South Asia or North Africa, while
their counterparts closer to home are usually presented as "Wahhabis" par excellence,who are equally opposed to both secularism and
"traditional" or "Sufi" Islam. In Western publications, on the other
hand, the term "Wahhabism" is often, but not always, associated with
the developments on the southern fringes of the former Soviet
Union, mirroring its usage in Russian-language sources.81
The term "Wahhabism" is deployed in a wide variety of contexts,
from press releases of the Russian military command in Chechnya
and memoirs of Russian participants in the Russo-Chechen conflict82
to journalistic coverage of the Russo-Chechen hostilities to public
speeches of major political figures. It is also widely used by the leading figures of the Muslim religious officialdom of the Russian Federation and Russian academics, especially those specializing in Islamic
studies. In these varied discursive contexts, the term "Wahhabism"
80
Robert Bruce Ware, "WhyWahhabism Went Wrong in Dagestan?" CentralAsiaCaucasus Analyst, http://www..cacianalysts.org/Sept_13/Wahhabism_in_Daghestan;
Stephen Schwartz, "Liberation, Not Containment," National Review, November 30,
2001; Michael Wines, "War on Terror Casts Chechen Conflict in a New Light," NY
Times,December 9, 2001; "Piatigorskie terroristy poluchili po 15 let tiur'my," Lenta.ru
(on-line at www.lenta.ru) 12.07.2002; "Azerbaidzan vydal Rossii vakhkhabita..." ibid.,
23.07.2002; "Gruzovik so vzryvchatkoi pribyl v Nevinnomyssk po zakazu terroristov
iz Saudovskoi Aravii," ibid., 24.07.2002; "FSBzaiavliaet, chto v Moskve pri mechetiakh
sushchestvuiut shkoly vakhkhabizma," KavkazWeb.com,06.09.2002; "Uzbek Rights
Defender Sentenced."
81 For a notable exception see: Abou El Fadl, And God Knows the Soldiers; here
the plight and stagnation of contemporary Islamic theological and legal thought
are consistently derived from the intellectual "sterility and rigidity" of "Wahhabi
puritanism," which, in the author's opinion, has triumphed over other trends within
Islam both in the Middle East and in the Muslim diaspora of Europe and the USA.
82 Troshev, Moia voina,
passim; Aleksandr Mikhailov, Chechenskoekoleso:general
FSB svidetel'stvuet, Sovershenno sekretno, Moscow, 2002, passim.

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ALEXANDER KNYSH

acquires different connotations and is deployed with various levels

of sophistication to different ends. While the Russian military consistently uses it to explain the high casualties among Russian military personnel in Chechnya and Daghestan and the Russian Army's
inability to achieve a decisive victory over the Chechen separatists,
representatives of the Muslim clergy of the Russian Federation
employ it to foreground their status as guarantors of a peaceful coexistence between the Russian Muslim community and their predominantly Christian neighbors.
As their colleagues worldwide, Russian journalists pursue a wide
array of personal and professional goals, including the expansion
of their readership by means of playing on popular fears and expectations. By all accounts, "Wahhabism" is uniquely well-suited for
this goal as it allows the dramatization of the conflicts on the southern fringes of the former Soviet Empire by presenting them as "a
clash of civilizations" driven by incompatible religious, moral and
ethical values. Finally, Russian political experts and Islamologists,
many of whom have been marginalized and impoverished by the
woes of the Russian economy after Gorbachev's perestroikaand a steep
decline of the erstwhile prestige of academic professions, see in
"Wahhabism" a welcome opportunity to showcase their erudition to
the public and to demonstrate their usefulness for the powers-thatbe and international funding agencies, on whose largesse they depend for their well-being.83
Crude as this picture may appear it helps to explain the ubiquitous presence of "Wahhabism" on the Russian discursive landscape
and in the Russian public psyche. I would argue that in Russia
"Wahhabism" has effectively assumed the role that "Islamic fundamentalism" plays in Western discourses on Islam and Muslims. As
in the West, it is sustained by its protean quality and vagueness of
definition, which enable it to explain a great number of seemingly
83This is not to deny the value of Russian academic literature on the subject,
which I have used extensivelyin the present article. I owe special debt to the works
of Vladimir Bobrovnikov,Alexei Malashenko and Mikhail Roshchin, whose analysis of "Wahhabism"is quite on a par with, if not superior to, anything written on
this topic in the West.

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"WAHHABISM"
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25

unrelated events world-wide in terms that are easily understood (or

misunderstood) by the average consumer of such discourses.
Is "Wahhabism" a mere media myth or a real movement that
derives its vitality from its clear-cut and accessible doctrinal premises
and from generous donations it receives from abroad (primarily
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf)? As stated earlier, I have deliberately
refrained from answering this question in the present paper, since
any such answer would presuppose a different type of research involving travel to "'Wahhabi' -infested" areas of Russia and Central
Asia, interviews with purported "Wahhabi" leaders and analysis of
their statements and actions. In light of my recent field work in
Yemen,84 I have no reason to doubt that private individuals and organizations in the Gulf area are eager to support the worldwide
dissemination of the "puritan" version of Islam entrenched in their
societies. However, this support is hardly sufficient to account for
the tenacity with which the notion "Wahhabism" is deployed in the
discourses examined above. I would argue that without these discourses "Wahhabism" would hardly have acquired such a wide popularity among certain segments of Muslim populations in the former
Soviet Union. Paradoxically, litanies of condemnation of the "sinister plotting" of "Wahhabism" which one hears daily from oppressive and corrupt government officials, as well as from military and
political analysts and academics associated with them seem to be
achieving the opposite effect.85 By exaggerating the magnitude of
the "'Wahhabi' threat," the discourses analyzed in this paper contribute to the appeal of "Wahhabism" to the impoverished who are
disgusted with rampant corruption at high places, the disintegration of the social security networks, staggering unemployment and
84

Summarized in my "The tariqa on a Landcruiser."

As one commentator has aptly put it, "one should not present the Wahhabis
as children of the inferno, nor should one endow them with the overwhelming
might that they do not have and separate them from the rest of society," Savin,
"Religioznyi ekstremizm," 66. Paradoxically, while the first salafi groups in Russia
and Central Asia vigorously objected (and most still do) to being called "Wahhabis,"
more recently some radical groups have made "Wahhabism" "a badge of honor" of
sorts; e.g., the popular Avar religious leader Ayub Omarov in Astrakhan (a. k. a.
Ayub Astrakhanskii), who openly professes his allegiance to "Wahhabism" and has
imposed a distinct "Wahhabi" dress code on his followers, see Malashenko, Islamskie
orientiry, 114; cf. Ware et al., "Political Islam," 288.
85

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ALEXANDER KNYSH

lack of any viable solutions to their problems.86 Through the good

services of the state apparatus, its media outlets and academic institutions, "Wahhabism" has become an attractive option for disgruntled elements in the transitional societies of the former Soviet
Union. Many young Muslims in Russia and its "near abroad" construe its frequent invocation in the media by academics, journalists,
political and military leaders as a sign of its inherent strength and
invincibility.87 Consequently, the more adventurous (or perhaps
more desperate) consumers of this information decide to explore
its practical implications. Their oppositional activity couched in a
(largely utopian) religious rhetoric, whether consciously "Wahhabi"
or otherwise, is then perceived by hostile outside observers as yet
another manifestation of the worldwide "'Wahhabi' conspiracy." This
perception, disseminated through airwaves, printing presses, TV and
the Internet, adds another cycle in the spiral of the proliferation of
"Wahhabi" mythology. Once implemented in practice, the discursive construct named "Wahhabism"acquires a life of its own, at which
point there emerges the critical watershed between those who bandy
it around and those who stake their lives on it. In a macabre quirk
of fate, during the hostage-taking tragedy in a Moscow theatre in
October 2002, the members of the Chechen suicide squad headed
by the "Wahhabi" field commander Movsar Baraev88occasionally referred to themselves and their comrades-in-arms as "Wahhabis".89
86 For the romantic allure of
"Wahhabism" in the eyes of Muslim youth, which
has been to some extent created by anti-"Wahhabi" invectives see Malashenko and
Trenin, Vremia iuga, 86.
87 Ibid. and
Rashid, Jihad, 84-85.
88 For his "Wahhabi" credentials
see Grani.ru at wysiwg://15http://grani.ru/
Oct. 28, 2002.
Events/Terror.12994.html,
89 See the transcript of a telephone conversation between Movsar Baraev and
the former Chechen vice-president Zelimkhan Iandarbiev, who is often described
as the main ideologue of Chechen "Wahhabism", Vernidub, "Baraev deistvoval vslepuiu." From the context of this conversation, it appears that the term "Wahhabi"
was used to describe Chechen suicide bombers outside the theater captured by
Baraev and his comrades.

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