Alexander Zhukov: "...the leaders of the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of the Kabardino-Balkaria... have long fenced themselves off with a stone wall from the majority of the religious community"

published on the Polit.ru Alexander Zhukov, an employee of the HRC Memorial, website, analyzes the religious and political situation in Kabardino-Balkaria. The author notes that, to a large extent, the problems of the republic are connected with the position of the SAM of the KBR, its "inability ... to find a common language with those whom it, in fact, is called upon to" manage "".

At the end of February 2006, the President of Kabardino-Balkaria, Arsen Kanokov, announced plans to create commissions and committees under the city and district administrations, whose task would be to work with religious organizations. In fact, this is an attempt by the authorities to establish "direct" - bypassing the DUM - contacts with the "new Muslims", members of the so-called Kabardino-Balkarian Jamaat, headed by Musa Mukozhev.

The conflict between the Jamaat and the DUM began in the mid-1990s. “The members of the jamaat,” writes A. Zhukov, “are the so-called “new Muslims,” who call themselves “Salafis,” i.e., champions of the original, “pure” Islam (for the most part, these are residents of Nalchik, but M. Mukozhev many supporters in other cities and villages of the republic) accuse the DUM, among other things, of being involved in the disappearance of money collected by the community in the early 90s for the construction of a cathedral mosque, and of unwillingness to fight against the "anti-Islamic" customs that have taken root among the people, and First of all, with "funeral dues". We are talking about the situation when the so-called "people's mullahs" (people who often have neither religious education nor spiritual dignity), as well as some official imams, who enjoy the support of the Spiritual Administration, demand for themselves "gratitude" for the performance of certain religious rites. For a long time, the Salafists demanded that the DUM put an end to these exactions, motivating this not only by their anti-Islamic nature, but also by the fact that they hit the family budget of the republic's inhabitants too painfully, and without those forced to go into debt in order to "worthily" see off the dead.

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On the other hand, from the DUM of the KBR, accusations of extremism and "Wahhabism" have been heard against the jamaat all these years - one cannot say that it is completely unfounded: among the members of the jamaat, radicalist sentiments are really quite common."

At the same time, the author of the article emphasizes, “it would be a deep mistake to think that the Spiritual Administration is the only one to blame for the aggravation of relations with the “new Muslims.” In fact, it was the uncompromising, antagonistic position of the latter that made any reconciliation impossible. As a result, in the late 90s years, simultaneously with the strengthening of extremist sentiments among the members of the jamaat and the emergence of the first terrorist groups on the territory of the republic, the so-called "Wahhabi lists" are compiled in the DUM of the KBR, which subsequently received such notorious fame in the KBR and far beyond its borders. first of all) cannot forgive the Spiritual Directorate even "moderate" from among the "new Muslims", who up to that time remained loyal to the Spiritual Directorate.

One can only guess what was actually the role of the DUM KBR in the story with the "lists of Wahhabis". One can argue for a long time about whether they were really used by the Office as a tool in the fight against their ideological opponents or not. One thing is certain: it was not the Spiritual Directorate that initiated those repressions against believers that Novaya Gazeta once wrote about, and the lists of "Wahhabis" compiled by the DUM at the end of the last century clearly do not coincide with the "track records" of the Republican Ministry of Internal Affairs the beginning of this century."

But at the same time, A. Zhukov continues, it was precisely the passive position of the SAM, its unpreparedness and inability to protect believers from persecution by government officials, that led to the fact that "over the past 5-7 years, even the most moderate part of the community has finally lost respect for Spiritual Administration. People do not believe that the spiritual leaders of the republic in their current composition will lift a finger to help them or their loved ones, if something happened in their family that happened, for example, with that woman beaten by a policeman." As the author of the article emphasizes, "reproaching his opponents for splitting moods, the muftiate of the republic all these years behaved as if he himself had long divided all believers into "us/them". , which has the exclusive right to defend the interests of ALL believing Muslims of the republic, have long been fenced off by a stone wall from most of the religious community."

“A sober look at things suggests,” A. Zhukov concludes, “that while the current mufti will be a thorn in the eye of many at the head of the Spiritual Directorate, there will simply be no one to conduct a dialogue between the Salafi youth, with the exception, perhaps, of President Kanokov himself and its limitless resource of trust today."

Sources

• Zhukov A. Religious Schism and Political Solution: Will Public Dialogue Work in Kabardino-Balkaria? // Polit.ru. 2006. May 18.