Wahhabism Spreading in Russia

14 June 2007, 10:01

Prominent Islamic researcher warns against Wahhabism replacing traditional Islam throughout Russia

Moscow, June 13, Interfax - Ideas of Islamist extremism and intolerance towards other faiths are spreading today in many Russian regions, Islamic researcher Roman Silantyev maintains.

'There is a process of substituting Islam 'modernized' in the spirit Wahhabism for traditional Islam underway in Russia today. People often follow the Wahhabi ideology in the belief that what they confess is traditional Islam', Silantyev said in an interview with the Nashe Vremya weekly.

In the researcher's estimation, if before there were large Wahhabi enclaves in Dagestan, Chechnya and Karachayevo-Cherkessia, now 'there is an apparent spread of the Wahhabi infection from Chechnya to the whole of North Caucasus and even to the Russian population in the Stavropol region'.

Besides, he added, 'Wahhabi pestholes' have gradually appeared in cities and areas with a traditional Islamic minorities, such as Sakhalin, Orenburg region, Yamalo-Nenets cities, St. Petersburg, Tomsk, Omsk, Chita and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

'Whole Wahhabi villages have appeared in Mordovia and the Penza region. In the Olonets region in Karelia they (Wahhabis - IF) tried to lay Orthodox parishes under tribute', the expert maintains.

The present Islamic community in Russia, in his view, is 'in a state of the gravest crisis' and the ways out of it have not yet been found. The Russian umma 'has begun mutating' towards a gradual erosion of the dividing line between traditional and non-traditional Muslims.

'The Wahhabis tried to use arms to impose their views but failed. Then they changed their tactics and established control over most of the Islamic mass media and a considerable number of publishing houses', Silantyev has reported.

According to his data, the bulk of the Islamic literature existing in Russia, especially cheap leaflets on the rudiments of Islam, is translated into Russian and 'circulated by Saudi and Kuwait foundations', and 'the most innocent quotations from them are calls not to obey the laws of non-Islamic states'.

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