RUSSIA'S TINDERBOX - Belfer Center for Science and International ...

Iran and Afghanistan is a key factor in encouraging Russian fears. Given the attempts of Iran and
Turkey to extend their cultural and political influence into the Caucasus and Central Asia, and the
ongoing conflict with radical Islamic militias on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, the Muslim
peoples of Russia are now seen as a potential fifth column for disruptive foreign influence. Islam
calls on Russia’s Muslims to look to Mecca and the Arab, Persian and Turkish world and away from
Moscow and the Russian world. It is thus a major threat to Russian interests at a time when the
demise of Communism has left the former Soviet Union with no ideological basis for regional
integration, and the only elements keeping it together are rapidly eroding economic ties and Russian
political dominance.
As an organized religion in the North Caucasus, Islam came late to the region, carried by
Sufi missionaries from the Sunni Muslim Ottoman Empire, rather than from the Shi’ite Iranian
Empire. It did not take hold in the mountainous regions of Dagestan until the 16th century, and came
even later to Chechnya, Ingushetia and the northwestern reaches of the North Caucasus in the 19th
century—coinciding with the expansion of the Russian Empire in the region. In the Caucasian Wars,
however, Islam played a unifying role for the disparate peoples of the North Caucasus against the
Orthodox Christian Russian Empire.
As a result of the Russian invasion, the spread of Islam to the northwestern regions of the
North Caucasus was interrupted and its practice was thus consolidated only in the north east. Here
Dagestan became a focus for ‘enlightened Islam’ centered on a cult of books and scholars. Dagestan
and Chechnya also became centers of “Sufism,” which was practiced by individual brotherhoods
under two main tariqats or orders, the Naqshubandiya and Qadiriya, headed by a religious leader.
The orders demanded spiritual perfection from their members, but the brotherhoods, of which there
were more than 50, operated largely according to their own rules and were often in conflict with
each other over religious practice. Imam Shamil, the celebrated religious leader of Dagestan and
Chechnya who led the resistance to Russian in the Caucasian Wars of the 19th century, was part of a
Sufi brotherhood.
By virtue of its late arrival in the region, Islam also did not have a great impact on the social
structure of the North Caucasus. The region’s pre-Islamic features were retained, although religious
ritual came to regulate the general conduct of public and private life. The Islamic law code, the
Shari’a, was also not imposed on the region, but was assimilated into local customary law, or what
the Russian invaders called “Mountain Law.” In Dagestan this customary law was the Adat which
was compiled in a law code for each khanate, or independent principality, in the 17th Century. The
Adat codes often contradicted the Shari’a, and the religious leaders of the region were engaged in a
constant struggle to assert the primacy of religious law. Discussions of the differences between the
Shari’a and Adat law codes were a frequent occurrence in scholarly and public circles in Dagestan,
contradicting any claims of “Islamic Fundamentalism” or the strict observance of Islamic law in the
region prior to the Russian invasion.
In addition to these clear differences between religious practice and customary law, and the
autonomy of the Sufi orders, the long co-existence of the North Caucasians with neighboring groups
of different religions, including Mountain Jews and Georgian and Armenian Christians, prior to the
advent of Islam, encouraged tolerance toward other confessional practices. Islam merely enhanced
this tolerance by reserving a special place for Christians and Jews as kindred peoples and
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