Chechnia again

Submitted by Ianus (Poland), Dec 17, 2006 at 19:45

Dear Susan ,

> what is hanafites?

Followers of one of the four schools of Moslem law - the other being Shafi'ites, Malikites and Hanbalites.

> aren't the chechens sufi? a practice mistaken as being moderate, while no branch of islam is moderate?

On the whole they are but in the Caucasus sufism assumed a particular formled "warring tariqatism" with sufi orders ( "tariqat") where the master totally controlled and commanded his disciples. Under the Soviet period teh tariqats were suppressed. Later after the Chechens came back from Kasakhstan there were no open mosques in Chechnia/Ingushetia and almost no clergy. It allowed Islam after 1992 to assume very amorphous and unhierarchical forms with sufi orders represented by two major groups "nakshbandiya" and "karidya". The latter gained ascendency under Dudayev. He also started a huge mosque building activity. Within two years almost 200 mosque were constructed in Chechenia. Yandarbyev created a council of sufi elders to consolidate Dudayev's power.

But these imams were imported from outside and this bred suspicions and accusations of espionage. New Islamic forces appeared in the Chechen hothouse. " Jamaat islamya", "Muslim brotherhoods" , "Islamic Youth" closely collaborating with Saudi , Pakistani and Libyan organizations. But the real profiteer of all that turmoil was wahhabism. In 1992 Dudayev made his hajj to Mecca . After he returned home he organized an assembly of Chechen Moslems and the rise of wahhabism and Saudi influence in Chechnia became more and more evident . Chechen Wahhabites are not listed in the statistics.

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