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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Sufi revival underway in Chechnya |
| 2006-05-24 |
| Three circles of bare-footed men, one ring inside another, sway to the cadence of chant. The men stomp in time as they sway, and grunt from the abdomen and throat, filling the room with a primal sound. One voice rises over the rest, singing variants of the names of Allah. The men stop, face right and walk in a counterclockwise rotation, slowly at first, then fast. As they gain speed they begin to hop on their outside feet and draw closer. The three circles merge into a spinning ball. The ball stops. It opens back up. The stomping resumes, softly at first, then louder. Many of the men are entranced. The air around them hums. The wooden floor shakes. The men turn left and accelerate the other way. This is a zikr, the mystical Sufi dance of the Caucasus, and a ritual near the center of Chechen Islam. Here inside Chechnya, where Russia has spent six years trying to contain the second Chechen war since the Soviet Union collapsed, traditional forms of religious expression are returning to public life. It is a revival laden with meaning, and with implications that are unclear. The Kremlin has worried for generations over Islam's influence in the Caucasus, long attacking local Sufi traditions and, in the 1990s, attacking the roles of small numbers of foreign Wahhabists, proponents of an Arab interpretation of Islam often blamed for encouraging terror attacks. But Chechnya's Sufi brotherhoods have never been vanquished - not by repression, bans or exile by either the czars or Stalin, and not by the Kremlin of late. Now they are reclaiming a place in public life. What makes the resurgence so unusual is that Sufi practices have become an element of policy for pro- Russian Chechens. Zikr ceremonies are embraced by the kadyrovsky, the Kremlin-backed Chechen force that is assuming much of the administration of this shattered land. Post-Soviet Russia tried to make zikr celebrations a symbol of Chechen aggression, portraying zikr as the dance and trance of the rebels, the ritual of the untamed. Now zikr is held by the men the Kremlin is counting on to keep Chechnya in check. The occasion for ceremony on this day was the blessing of the foundation of a mosque that will be named for Akhmad Kadyrov, the Russian-backed Chechen president who was assassinated in 2004. The mosque, whose foundation rests on the grounds of the former headquarters of the Communist Party's regional committee, is meant to replace older associations. Not only is it an implicit rebuke of state socialism, it is located beside the ruins of another mosque - much smaller - that was being constructed by the separatists in the 1990s. Its scale and grandeur are intended as public statement. At a cost of $20 million, it will be a sprawling complex, with room for a religious school and a residence for the mufti, said Amradin Adilgeriyev, an adviser to Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's pro-Kremlin premier and son of the slain president. The mosque will hold 10,000 worshippers, making it the largest in the republic. Its minarets will rise 54.5 meters, or 179 feet, into the air. It will speak not just of faith, but of power. And so on this day the men dance. And dance. Tassels on their skullcaps bounce and swing. Sweat darkens their shirts. There are perhaps 90 men in all, mostly young. They look strong. But zikr is demanding. As some of them tire, they step aside. Others take their place. Their stomps can be heard two city blocks away. The entrance to the construction site is controlled by gunmen who make sure none of the separatists enter with a bomb. Other young men boil brick-sized chunks of beef in cauldrons of garlic broth, stirring the meat with a wooden slab. Zikr has several forms. This form traces its origins to Kunta-Haji Kishiyev, a shepherd who traveled the Middle East in the 19th century and returned to Chechnya and found converts to Sufism. Initially, his followers pledged peace, but in time many joined the resistance to Russia, and their leader was exiled. They fought on, becoming a reservoir of Chechen traditionalism and rebellious spirit. In 1991, when Chechnya declared independence from Russia, the Kunta- Haji brotherhoods, long underground, fought again. The author Sebastian Smith, who covered the Chechen wars and wrote "Allah's Mountains: Politics and War in the Russian Caucasus," noted how they became a source of rebel resolve. At one zikr ceremony he observed, the men were dancing, he wrote, until, a Russian bomber screamed low overhead, buzzing the village. Smith watched their reaction: "No one even looks up. The whooping grows louder." The Sufis also resisted the influx of Wahhabists who came to fight Russia beside them, but whose version of Islam aligned more closely with the Taliban. Kadyrov said in an interview that he hoped to help restore Chechen Sufi traditions, as part of a way of preserving Chechen culture. He has reopened the roads to Ertan, a village in the mountains, where Kunta-Haji Kishiyev's mother is buried. Her grave is a shrine and a place for pilgrimages, which for years had not been made. This spring the roads to Ertan are crowded with walkers, who visit the grave to circle it and pray. Still, efforts to incorporate Sufi brotherhoods into a government closely identified with the Kremlin contain contradictions. Some see manipulation on Kadyrov's part, noting that Chechen self-identity has never been suppressed, even by some of the most repressive forces the world has ever known. Whether Kadyrov can control the forces he taps into is also unknown. The zikrists dance on this day with state approval. But for whom? "Kadyrov wants to show that he is a supporter of Chechen traditional Islam," said Aslan Doukaev, a native of Chechnya who is director of the North Caucasus service for Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. "But Sufis always wanted Chechen independence, and that signal is being sent here, too." |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #1 Sufism is seen as the "gentler, kinder" islam, and hyped as some kind of new age spirituality (while IIUC it is actually some kind of derivative of christian theology infused into islam)... I don't know... the national-arabist fln butchers who comitted monstrous crimes during the algerian independence war were from a sufi background, and so were their pirates and slave traders predecessors, as northern Africa was mostly sufi (it is undergoing a salafization right now), so that idea is now really supported by facts. Check this (from Jihad Watch) for sufism's view on religious tolerance and Jihad(Tm). Bostom: Sufism Without Camouflage (Beyond Stephen Schwartz) |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-05-24 08:33 |