Posted on 09/29/2012 3:50:42 PM PDT by marshmallow
Until recently traditional Muslims and Salafists lived harmoniously side-by-side in Tatarstan. No longer
FOR years Tatarstan was held up as a model of stability and tranquillity as the Muslim-majority republics of the Russian north Caucasus became embroiled in a separatist conflict that spawned a still-continuing civil war along religious lines. More than half of Tatarstan’s 4m people are Sunni Muslims who have long enjoyed friendly relations with the rest of Russia. Kazan, the regional capital on the Volga river 450 miles (724km) east of Moscow, is a prosperous and attractive city.
That sense of calm has changed since July, when assassins shot dead a prominent Islamic leader, Valiulla Yakupov, and nearly killed Tatarstan’s chief mufti, Ildus Faizov, with a bomb detonated under his car. The exact motive remains unclear but many in Kazan seem to think it is related to the public campaign of both men to combat the rising influence of Salafism, a fundamentalist form of Islam.
In Soviet times, Islam in Tatarstan was largely a means of ethnic identification and had something of a “folk” character, says Akhmet Yarlykapov of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Yet in recent years Salafism, which has gained followers throughout the Muslim world, has made inroads in Tatarstan, especially among the young. Migrants from the republics of the north Caucasus and the post-Soviet countries of Central Asia have also spread more conservative interpretations of Islam.
Estimates of the number of Salafists in Tatarstan vary. A local mufti, Farid Salman, says the public figure of 3,000 is probably far too low. The older generation and those in official religious structures are wary of the Salafist groups, seeing them as imports and gateways to radicalisation. After he came to office in early 2011, Mr Faizov started to remove conservative imams and banned religious textbooks from Saudi....
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
It is.
What time frame and geography are we talking about? In the 50-s and 60-s the USSR was happy to promote every nationalism except on its own territory, due to its support of colonial uprisings. Was Chombe nationalist and Lumumba internationalist? They'd go with whoever asked them, and put ideological veneer on it.
In International period (20s-30s), yeah, that was the ideological imperative.
“Yet remember the we (stupidly) supported the Islamic leaders in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets and we still support the Saudis who are the font of jihadiism”
I fail to see how that was stupid,unless you wanted the Commies to have total control over the Middle East, though admittedly they pretty much have that today through proxies and they didn’t have to dominate these countries one at a time either. And it is a myth that Osama Bin Laden was trained or armed by us.
No, where Islam i made to leave, peace can follow..
No, where Islam is made to leave, peace can follow..
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