Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[KavkazUzel] Artur Gadzhiev, a 19-year-old native of Dagestan who carried out a massacre in Surgut on August 19 after swearing allegiance to IS leader al-Baghdadi, was reportedly on the so-called “preventive register for extremism” in Dagestan. The case of an attack on passers-by in Surgut can be repeated at any time in any of the cities in the north of Western Siberia, as well as in other regions of Russia, said Denis Sokolov , head of the RAMCOM Center for Socio-Economic Research of Regions.
Over the past decades, both "official Islam" and moderate Salafism have become uncompetitive for the ideology of the Islamic State terrorist organization banned in Russia, Sokolov is sure. In an interview with the "Caucasian Knot", the expert told what he thinks about the state of modern Islam in Russia, as well as about the prerequisites and consequences of the massacre in Surgut.
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He noted that today people from the republics of the North Caucasus live in Siberian cities in the second generation. Among them, the protest ideology becomes successful.
"Back in the late 1960s. In the 20th century, under Soviet rule, mass labor migration began, which was of a rotational nature. In the late 90s, migration flows intensified, but in the conditions of the collapse of the shift system, people settled for permanent residence in the region. Even during the development of the Mamontovskoye oil field, discovered by an Azerbaijani, a significant number of representatives of the Caucasus, engineers, came from Azerbaijan, and from Dagestan, first of all, Lezgins," said Denis Sokolov.
Kumyks, Nogais and Lezgins living on the plains in Dagestan had less access to political status and budgets in Makhachkala, so they were more oriented towards employment, Sokolov noted. “They went en masse to work in Surgut, one of the centers of oil production. Only in the village of Novaya Fedorovka, created by Surgutneftegaz, about 5,000 Nogais live compactly, and in Surgut itself there are at least 10,000 Nogais. But there are even more Lezgins who went to Surgut en masse earlier. If we estimate the number according to expert data, then 30,000 Nogais, 50,000 Kumyks and from 50,000 to 100,000 Lezgins permanently live in Tyumen, Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug and YNAO,” Sokolov said.
The second generation has already grown up apart from their communities, even though they maintain contacts with Dagestan, Sokolov notes.
"These people were educated, for example, at the Oil and Gas College in Surgut or at the Medical Academy in Tyumen, at other universities in Tyumen. Sufi Islam was not originally there, the second generation received mainly the Salafi aqida (belief - note of the "Caucasian Knot"). This was partly facilitated by the departure from their rural societies, partly by the fact that most migrants were not religious initially and their return to Islam was rather late."
Representatives of different nationalities of the Caucasus live in Surgut, but some discrimination affects everyone. There are deterrent factors when hiring people from the Caucasus and Central Asia, and getting into the police. A native of the North Caucasus can go to the polls as the head of a settlement with very great difficulty, he will have problems. There are unspoken orders that people from the Caucasus should not be hired for senior positions in the oil and gas sector,” Sokolov said. This, of course, contributes to the growth of protest moods among young people.
PRESSURE ON RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES RADICALIZES THE ENVIRONMENT
The Muslim communities of Siberia are a motley international and are represented by the entire ideological palette of religious movements in Islam, as well as in the North Caucasus itself, the expert notes:
"Of course, there were also supporters of the Caucasus Emirate (the organization was recognized as a terrorist — note by the "Caucasian Knot") - in the Salafi environment, namely among the youth. There were people who left because of problems in the North Caucasus with law enforcement agencies".
There are few such cases, of course. Islamic knowledge often came to northern communities through migrants from Central Asia. In the Tyumen region in the 1990s there were more than 10 imams of mosques, including the Tyumen Cathedral Mosque, Uzbeks who fled after the Namangan and Andijan events in Uzbekistan (meaning the events of 1990 - note by the "Caucasian Knot"). In Uzbekistan, these were religious dissidents. They have done a lot for the development of Islam in the Russian North, but many of them now, after the tightening of Russian policy towards Islam, live in exile.
In October 2010, the imam of the Salafi community of Novy Urengoy, Isomitdin Akbarov, was killed in Tyumen. The body of a religious figure with multiple gunshot wounds was found on the side of the road in his own car.
The murder of the imam in Novy Urengoy, and then the persecution of his son, the demolition of the local mosque in April 2015, were also a factor in the radicalization of the Islamic environment, the expert believes.
"All these young people have gone out into the streets. These are the youth of a new generation with smartphones, in which everyone just does not preach. Rural youth also stopped living with the problems of the community, and began to live with global problems, but today in Russia self-realization is impossible for a young person."
The village is over. In the cities, migration does not go to industry, it also does not exist, there are jobs only for laborers. Young people do not have a channel for embedding in a host society in which you can find a place in the sun and make a career, the meanings have been lost. These meanings of youth are offered in the global information space. And here, as if in a void, the program of self-realization and revenge proposed by IG * for everything that these young people do not like is working," Denis Sokolov believes.
"The rules proposed to young people when they need to lose their identity and play by someone else’s rules is an alternative that does not suit 99% of people, and here IS * offers a protest alternative - to demolish the whole world and build your own, where you will be the main one, where you will be keep a monopoly on violence, where they will play by your rules. Because you are just, and in the name of Allah you follow this path. In Siberia, these sentiments are as strong as elsewhere," Sokolov believes.
ISIS WINS ON THE IDEOLOGICAL FIELD
According to the head of RAMCOM, Russian realities provide a fertile environment for IS ideologues with protest activity.
"Young people with little Islamic knowledge, faced with a glass ceiling, urban youth or rural unemployed - this is all a fertile environment for any proposal similar to IS. An alternative to this cannot be offered not only by official Islam, which is inherently connected with the state, but even by other directions, including the Salafists. Even radical Islam cannot compete with ISIS today, because it is a political project with loud propaganda that arose during the ongoing brutal war, where you can come and take sides. The war of the "faithful with the infidels". You can’t oppose anything to this, even the “Imarat” ** could not oppose anything, having dissolved into the IG*, because its proposals could not become competitive in radicalness.
At the same time, the monstrous military losses of IS do not allow us to talk about the complete destruction of the jihadist ideology," Sokolov believes.
"Morally, in terms of propaganda, IS is not destroyed. This propaganda is no longer as powerful as during the heyday of IS, but there are supporters. Here the question is who will propose a new political project, but the question is not about radical beliefs. There has always been an excess of radical people at all times and in all regions, regardless of religious beliefs," Sokolov said.
JIHADIST ACTIONS WILL BE REPEATED
ISIS acts as a protest project on top of all constructions, which provides it with advantages in the ideological field, Sokolov believes, while not excluding the possibility of a repetition of the Surgut attack in other Russian regions.
"There is no reason not to allow the repetition of the story with Artur Gadzhiev in other cities and not only in Siberia, but also in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Irkutsk, Urengoy, Krasnoyarsk. that IS* as a global project acts on top of all structures, by itself, it does not need communities.On the contrary, any imam who works on the territory of a mosque is an opponent, competitor and enemy of IS*, he is the closest competitor.IS* built its policy in first of all, so that it was a war with those who are closer. They declared many Muslims infidels," Sokolov said.
In his opinion, the direct competitor of IS is always moderate Salafi communities, because the SAM is too far from the youth, being a bureaucratic structure.
"In fact, in Tyumen, Salafi Islam was official until the early 2010s, and there was a professional team of experts, unique for the regions of Russia, who worked with the governor's administration precisely on the topic of relations with religious and national organizations, keeping these relations within the framework of a normal dialogue on over 20 years.Most of the Muslims immigrated from the asset, some of them - Uzbeks - under the threat of deportation, some - under the threat of arrests and persecution.
Mufti Bikmulin left his positions, being one of the most professional organizers and religious figures (Galimzhan Bikmulin was the mufti of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims Tyumen region from 1992 to 2014 - note of the "Caucasian Knot"). He is a graduate of the Bukhara madrasah "Mir Arab", one of the last (one of the last graduates of the Soviet era - ed.)."Caucasian Knot"), where the mufti of the DUM AChR Nafigulla Ashirov (Chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Asian part of Russia - note of the "Caucasian Knot") studied," Sokolov said.
At the same time, the expert also noted that the expert component of the regional community of specialists also went to immigration, participating in the interaction of the region with Muslims and national communities.
"The expert component is now also in immigration, among such experts - Igor Bobrov - the head of the group who worked in the administration - immigrated to the United States. From the point of view of common sense, the policy of building relations with Salafi Islam was normal, reasonable. Compliance with the principles of freedom of religion and freedom of speech "This is both constitutional and correct, but, on the other hand, it turned out to be dangerous and harmful for people at the next stage. Because everyone who was involved in this process of building reasonable relationships subsequently found themselves under pressure," Sokolov said.
The head of RAMCOM does not link the presence of informal Muslim communities with a factor leading to radicalization in the region. He believes that radicalism in the youth environment is its characteristic feature.
"They [informal communities] will always exist, no one can cancel houses of worship and communication between people. There were few Salafi mosques anyway, besides, the imams in the mosques were of the Hanafi madhhab, but at the same time they could be with Salafi beliefs. This whole construction is about Salafis and Wahhabis has nothing to do with reality. Radicalism has nothing to do with religiosity, this is a property of a young person, almost anyone.
It so happened that the Salafi imam in our country was mainly in protest. He [Salafism] became the ideology of protest youth, he "He positioned himself as a competitor, as an opponent of officially accepted Islam. And he became the ideology of protest. We understand that a rather tough political project can be built on the Sufi aqida, this is a matter of chance and taste," Sokolov said.
He also noted that "Islam today is becoming one of the main protest ideologies, because today it is treated harshly."
"The liberal ideology is, firstly, complex, and secondly, it is still a minority ideology. I would not single out the cities of Siberia in a separate history. There are cities with a large migrant component, in which the likelihood of a repetition of the Surgut history is higher, but given that there are protest moods everywhere, I wouldn’t even focus on Islamic stories. We also had a shooting near Moscow, when a man arrived, killed about ten people, and we still need to figure out how these two cases are fundamentally different," Sokolov said.
"The fact that ISIS, including due to its policy towards Islam, today outperforms any, even radical Islamic movements among young people, is a fact that cannot be denied," Denis Sokolov, director of RAMCOM, concluded.
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