Transcript R.Dannreuther and L.March: Representing Islam

Russia and Islam: State
approaches, radicalisation and
the ‘War on Terror’
Roland Dannreuther and Luke March (with the
assistance of Katya Braginskaia)
University of Edinburgh
Representing Islam: Comparative Perspectives
University of Manchester
5-6 September 2008
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Aims of research
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Explore critical but often neglected dimensions:
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Russian academic/elite approaches to study of Islam
How these discourses relate to, or are translated into, state practice and policy
How these state-driven practices affect policies and attitudes on the ground
Engaging with the dominant paradigm: Evidence and concerns over Islamist
radicalisation within Russia - e.g. Hahn Russia’s Islamic Threat (2007),
Yemelianova, Radical Islam in the Former Soviet Union (2009)
– Studying Russia’s Muslim communities outside North Caucasus (e.g. Moscow)
– State-Muslim-Orthodox relations
– Connections to and/or justifications for other developments in Russia under and
since Putin
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Increasing repression of dissent
Centralisation of power
Social radicalisation (xenophobia, migrantophobia, nationalism)
Stability and projection of external power
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Case studies
• 3 case studies:
• Tatarstan
• Dagestan
• Moscow city
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State discourses about Islam (1)
• Schizophrenia
– Islam as ‘an inseparable, fully-fledged, and active part of the
multiethnic and multi-denominational nation of Russia’
– Government consistently supports Russian Islam, and official
Muslim institutions
– Russia as a ‘Muslim power’ (Putin, 2003)
– BUT: Islam as religion is also linked to extremism and terrorism
– ‘Foreign’ and ‘imported’ Islam (a ‘terrorist international’)
distinguished from traditional Russian moderate Islam in ‘war on
terror’
– Such distinctions often lost in popular discourse
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State discourses about Islam (2)
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‘Securitization’ of domestic policy as part of ‘war on terror’
– Russia as a ‘besieged fortress’ prone to external existential security threats
– Centralising measures often justified on an anti-terrorist or anti-extremist
basis
– Legal definitions of ‘extremism’ and ‘terrorism’ ambiguous
– Tendency to designate all variants of non-official Islam as ‘Wahhabism’
– Attempt to ride the ‘nationalist tiger’
– Concept of ‘sovereign democracy’ to consolidate the state against key
threats, above all against ‘international terrorism’
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Results:
– Increased state powers and prerogatives fertile ground for radicalisation (?)
– Increase in Caucasophobia and Islamophobia
– Reassertion of Russian Orthodox identity and potentially problematic
consequences for Russian inter-confessional relationships
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Moscow
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Muslims as sizeable and increasing minority (1-2 million)
‘Religious’ versus ‘ethnic’ Muslims
Official inter-confessional harmony
Immigration and fears of ‘ghettoisation’ (e.g. Butovo)
– Assimilationism and not multiculturalism
• Moscow as key stage for ethnic Russian nationalism,
racism
• Most problems arise from sins of omission not
commission
• Greater cultural assertiveness does not equal
radicalisation
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Tatarstan
• The exemplar of indigenous Russian Islamic
moderation and tolerance?
• BUT: Increasing central control
• Struggle for the appropriate locus and
interpretation of ‘official’ moderate Russian Islam
– ‘Euro-Islam’
– ‘Russian Islam’
• Disillusionment with ‘official’ Islam increases the
attraction of more unofficial and radical Islams
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Dagestan
• Battle of ideas between ‘Wahhabism’, and local Islams (often but not
exclusively Sufism)
• Dagestan as one of Russia’s most Islamic republics
• ‘Wahhabist’ insurgency peaked in 1999, but low-level political
violence increasing since 2005
• Causes of radicalisation:
– Socio-economic policies and youth unemployment
– Unpopularity and corruption of elites
– Radical anti-Sufi Islam as vehicle for anti-elite opposition
• State response
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Increasing federal control over regions
Replacement of corrupt leaders
Federal funding
Militarization and campaigns against ‘Wahhabism’
• Result: Success in Chechnya (?), but spread of radicalisation
across North Caucasus and beyond.
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General conclusions (1)
• No one Russian Federation, no one Russian umma
• ‘Islamic Threat’ greatly exaggerated (except in North
Caucasus)
• Competing dynamics of Muslim alienation/radicalisation
and integration/de-radicalisation
• Radicalisation:
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Governance issues, corruption, poor economic conditions
State repression and centralisation
Fracturing of Muslim hierarchy
Intergenerational conflict
Migrantophobia
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General conclusions (2)
• Deradicalisation
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Improved economic situation and state largesse
Increase in Russian ‘patriotism’
State support for moderate Islam (but controversial)
Chechenisation (even more controversial)
– Key future question: what is the impact of the new
Russia-West ‘cold peace?’
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