Matrynenko A.V.

The Mordovian State Pedagogical Institute, Russia.

Salafits in the Republic of Mordovia as Challenge to Russian Identity: Myths and Reality (to the presenting of the problem)

The publication is prepared by financial support of Russian Foundation for Humanities, the project № 15-31-14003/15 “Regional aspects of Russian nation formation”.

A serious threat for formation of contemporary Russian nation presents dissemination of radical and extremist trends which not only provoke international and interconfessional conflicts but “wash away” Russian identity when quite big associations of the Russians stop equating themselves with Russia and become ,for example, “fighters for worldwide Khalifat”.

In the end of XX – beginning of XXI centuries international terrorism became one of the main global challenges bringing a real threat to the whole mankind. Unfortunately, it turned out historically, the strongest and the most dangerous segment of modern terrorism has become the combination of aggressive organizations and groups appealing to an extreme and rigorous interpretation of Islamic tradition. The conceptual and doctrinaire roots of the following group date back to the preaching of Sunnits preacher of XVIII century Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Vahhab who appealed against each innovation in Islam and called up for “saint war” with the unfaithful. A peculiar embodiment of religious radicalism of nowadays has become Islamic government of Syria and Lebanon with its international army of “jihadists” and severe mass executions of the unfaithful.

The problem of Salafits (Vahhabits) extremism to a large extent touched on Russian Federation of 1990s – 2010s. Martial victories of Russian army in the Northern Caucasus and the success of Russian security services in the fight against the following type of extremism have led to a full destruction of terrorist underground activities in the country. In the contrary, we can see recruitment of new supporters and even closer interconnection between Islamic radicals and foreign confederates ,in particular, connected with recruiting activity of Islamic State of Syria and Lebanon.

A definite example is the Republic of Mordovia – a small concerning its territory and quiet in ethno-confessional aspect region of RF. We can’t collate the scale of Salafits activity in Mordovia with the situation in the Northern Caucasus, nevertheless, the history of its penetrating in this subject of RF refers to the middle of 1990s. Exactly in this period in the biggest Tatar village of Mordovia- Belozerye- they tried to found Salafits community (jamaat) taking as an example the Northern Caucasus military branch. Its initiator has become the preacher Abuzar (Marushkin O.) from Astrakhan community belonging to one of the most uncompromising and extremist preachers of the South of Russia- Ayub Astrokhansky (Angutov A.) It’s a remarkable fact that in spite of abruptly antirussian rhetoric of Ayub Astrakhansky there were a lot of ethnical Russians who had adopted Islam in such radical rigorous interpretation among his supporters. Maruhkin O. was a typical representative who had taken an Arabian name Abuzar. Abuzar-Marushkin has gone missing nowadays but his personality has become one of the examples of social- psychological phenomena of “Russian islamist-terrorist” including such fighters as Tihomirov Aleksandr (Sayid al-Buryati), Sokolov Dmitry (Abujabar), Pechenkin Pavel (Ansarar-Rusi). Nevertheless, Abuzar’s activity wasn’t long on the territory of Mordovia, soon he was exiled outside the republic by the local law enforcement, leaving a small group of his adherents. Their quantity hardly exceeded ten people to the beginning of 2010s and it was that period when they had finally left the boundary of Mordovia and Russia. It’s an interesting fact that some Mordovian Muslims call leaving abroad Salafits from Belozeye “Takfirists”, “Kharijits”, pointing to their ideological closeness to the radical Egyptian group of 1970s “Takfir-va-l-Hijra”, to the medieval community of Kharijits who had formed a separate Islamic school at the same time with Sunnits and Shiits.

However, it’s important to emphasize that despite of the fact that some natives from Mordovia took part in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria on the side of the terrorist international formations, an absolute quantity of Muslims of the republic has turned out to be indifferent to the radical and extremist sermons and they carry on holding Sunnits Islam of “khanafits mazhab” (right wing), traditional for the whole Volga region.

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