Research Papers: Landa (original) (raw)

Sufism in Russia Today

Robert G. Landa

The Sufi tradition continues to be important for the majority of Muslims in Russia today, especially in the Northern Caucasus and between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. It is possible to suppose that Sufi activities exist in other Muslim regions of Russia, for example, in Siberia and in the Steppes on the Kazakh border, in a secret form, because these regions historically were intensely influenced by Central Asian Sufism. In the fourteenth century there is a record of a certain Husayn Bek, a disciple of the celebrated Ahmad Yasawi, spreading Islam not only along the Danube, but also in the Urals, especially among the Bashkirs. Sufis also played a significant role in the Islamization of the Golden Horde because Berke Khan, the fourth ruler of the Golden Horde, was either converted to Islam or confirmed in its practice by a Kubrawi shaykh of Bukhara, Sayf al-Din Bakharzi. Uzbek Khan, under whose rule Islam became more firmly established, was associated with a Yasawi shaykh by the name of Sayyid Ata.

The Kubrawiyya Sufi order disappeared completely from the Volga-Urals region, but the presence of the Yasawiyya was prolonged. Zaki Validi Togan mentions the Yasawiyya’s activities in Bashkiria in his youth.

The Tatar disciples of the Mujaddidi shaykhs of Medina were, however, thoroughly overshadowed by shaykhs of the Khalidi branch of the Naqshbandiyya, itself an offshoot of the Mujaddidi tradition and perhaps the most vital and influential of all Sufi groups in the nineteenth century. The Khalidiyya was first implanted among the Tatars by a_khalifa_ of `Abdullah Makki, the representative in Mecca of Mawlana Khalid Bagdhadi. This was Fathullah b. Safar `Ali al-Minavuzi, who died in 1852 at the age of eighty in a village near Kazan. Another vigorous propagator of the Khalidiyya was Shaykh Muhammad Zakir Efendi of Chistav, concerning whom it was said, ‘There is no region in the lands of Kazan the ulama of which have not submitted to him.’

However, the undisputed leader among all the Khalidi shaykhs of the region was a Bashkir, Shaykh Zaynullah Rasulev. Eulogized at his death by the Orenburg biweekly journal Vakit as ‘the spiritual king of his people’, Rasulev has been unjustly neglected by most historians of the nineteenth century Tatar intellectual renaissance, who have consistently shown a predilection for figures identified as secularizing rationalists. According to one account, Zaynullah had, by the beginning of the twentieth century, ‘brought under his influence hundreds of mullas in many towns and villages of the Lower Volga, the Urals and Siberia.’ In the extent and depth of his influence Rasulev outweighed many of those figures, and his career bears witness to the continuing centrality of the Naqshbandi order among the Tatars and Bashkirs down to the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution.

To understand fully the significance of the Rasuliyya, it should be recalled that the Tatars of Kazan and the Bashkirs had been neighbours of the Kazakhs and, more distantly, the other steppe peoples since the sixteenth century. With the expansion of the Tatar mercantile class in the nineteenth century, Tatar merchants travelled ever more frequently in the Kazakh steppes and western Siberia, acting as agents of Islamization wherever they went. However, the cultural and religious influence of the merchants was inevitably limited, and it was through bringing Kazakhs to study in the Tatar and Bashkir madrasas that a deeper implantation of Islamic religion, culture and literacy was made possible.

The extension of Zaynullah’s influence and thereby that of the Khalidi branch of the Naqshbandi order into Siberia is of particular interest, for the earliest spread of Islam in the lands once ruled by the Siberian khanate had also been associated with the Naqshbandi order. According to a legend once widespread in western Siberia, Khoja Baha’ al-Din Naqshband dispatched some of his companions, in the year 1366, to propagate Islam among the shamanists along the Irtysh river, reinforced in their efforts by 1,700 warriors sent by Shayban Khan, ruler of the Qipchaq steppes. This legend probably derived from vague memories of the efforts undertaken by K�z�m Khan, ruler of the Siberian khanate from roughly 1570 to 1598, to propagate Islam in his realm, with the aid of Naqshbandi shaykhs sent by `Abdullah Khan, the Shaybanid ruler of Bukhara.

While Zaynullah’s following was extremely large by all accounts, relatively few of his prominent murids are known by name. `Alimjan Barudi, in addition to his political activities, was the director of the Muhammadiyya madrasa in Kazan, an institution that followed the new pedagogical methods and with its 300 to 400 students was the largest madrasa in the Russian empire. In May 1917, he became mufti of Ufa and the following year chairman of the Religious Department of the Muslim National Administration based in the same city. After a brief spell as mufti of Orenburg, he died in Moscow in 1921. He is said to have been not merely a murid of Shaykh Zaynullah but also his initiatic successor in the Khalidi Naqshbandi order.

Another prominent follower of Shaykh Zaynullah was Rizaeddin b. Fakhreddin, the prominent author and pedagogue who abandoned his career as qadi of Orenburg in order to devote himself to scholarship. The most important of his numerous writings is Asar, a biographical dictionary primarily of Tatar and Bashkir scholars and men of religion, as well as some Daghistanis and Central Asians. Rizaeddin’s respect for Shaykh Zaynullah is evident at many places in this work, and some entries are based entirely on the information he supplied. Rizaeddin returned to official life in December 1917 when he was named deputy mufti of Ufa, and he became mufti at the beginning of 1922 following the death of `Alimjan Barudi. In the same year, he headed the Soviet delegation to the international Islamic conference in Mecca. In 1931, he was invited by the Soviet authorities to attest publicly that religious freedom prevailed in the Soviet Union. His refusal earned him harassment and hardship for the rest of his life, and he died in April 1936, in conditions of great neediness and poverty.

Another individual known to have been a murid and khalifa of Shaykh Zaynullah was the father of the celebrated Turcologist and historian Zeki Velidi Togan, a religious teacher who gave instructions in his madrasa to about two hundred Bashkirs. Father and son would regularly visit Shaykh Zaynullah in Troitsk, and despite his general distaste for Sufis, whom he regarded as hypocrites, Zeki Velidi respected Zaynullah (together with a handful of other shaykhs) as ‘sincere men, models of morality and virtue’. Zeki Velidi’s father received an ijaza from Zaynullah to give initiation into the Khalidi Naqshbandi path, but he made use of this authorization only once, remarking - according to his son - that ‘this is no longer the time for Sufism’.

Shaykh Zaynullah died on February 2, 1917, just as tsarist rule was coming to an end. Among Zaynullah’s sons it was the eldest, `Abd al-Rahman Rasulev, who played the most visible role in the post-revolutionary period. He had been active politically in the years before the Bolshevik revolution, having served, for example, as member of a fifteen-man commission set up at the Third All-Russian Muslim Congress in 1906 to examine the reorganization of the administration of Muslim religious affairs. In 1941, under the pressure of the German attack on the Soviet Union, Stalin conceded anew to the Soviet Muslims some organized form of religious activity, and `Abd al-Rahman Rasulev was appointed mufti and director of the newly established Spiritual Directorate of the Muslims of European Russian and Siberia, with its seat in Ufa. Rasulev responded to this small measure of tolerance with a call for Muslims to support the war against Germany. He remained mufti and head of the Ufa directorate until his death in 1952. `Abd al-Rahman Rasulev appears to have been his father’s khalifa in the Khalidi Naqshbandi order.

His successor as head of the directorate, Mufti Shakir Khiyalettinov, whose tenure lasted until 1974, was also a former student of Shaykh Zaynullah, whether he was in addition his khalifa is unknown. In an article published in a propaganda volume that appeared in Moscow in 1971, Khiyalettinov evoked his years of study with Zaynullah in Troitsk and recalled a prophecy his teacher had allegedly made in 1909. Commenting on the injustice to which the Muslims were subject in tsarist Russia, Zaynullah reportedly said: ‘The patience of our people is as unbounded as our faith. But God is just and will compensate us for our sufferings. I will not live to see the day, but you, Shakir, will see a time when nothing can stamp out the light of the truth.’

If Zaynullah had indeed made such a hopeful prediction, it is doubtful that he would have seen its fulfilment in Soviet rule. It cannot in any way be presumed that the successive tenures of `Abd al-Rahman Rasulev and Shakir Khiyalettinov were a natural continuation of Shaykh Zaynullah’s legacy, comparable to the activities of `Alimjan Barudi and Rizaeddin b. Fakhreddin in the immediate post-revolutionary years. Nonetheless, the fact that from 1941 to 1974 the Ufa directorate was headed by persons who had once been close to Shaykh Zaynullah suggests they enjoyed a general prominence in the Muslim community which impelled the Soviet authorities to select them for the position.

Basing himself on an examination of Soviet sources, the late Alexandre Bennigsen more than once expressed the opinion that Sufism has effectively died out among the Tatars and Bashkirs, and it is indeed obvious that the Naqshbandiyya has not displayed among them the same manifest vitality it has had in Daghistan and Chechenia. It appears unlikely, however, that a tradition going back five centuries should have disappeared in a mere seventy years, however intense the repression may at times have been. Moreover, a number of recent Soviet publications dealing with the history of Sufism among the Tatars suggest that the subject has some contemporary relevance.

It is possible that the history of Sufism in the Volga-Ural region will be continued. According to recent sociological researches, in Tatarstan alone 34.1% of city-dwellers and 43.4% of rural inhabitants considered themselves to be believers in 1989. Five years later, in 1994 67% of city-dwellers and 86% of rural inhabitants declared themselves to be believers. In Tatarstan alone there were 19 officially registered Muslim communities in 1989 and about 700 in 1996. Among these communities there is one association named ‘Saf Islam’, which is, according to the opinion of a well-known Tatar historian Rafiq Muhametshin, the ‘Volga region’s variant of Sufi brotherhood’. It is closely linked, as Muhametshin assumes, with Sufi tariqas in Central Asia, especially with various branches of the Naqshbandiyya order. It is possible that some officially registered ‘informal’ associations linked with cultural and religious activities are also links in a secret Sufi brotherhood network. And now we can see a rise in interest in Tatarstan and Bashkortostan towards specifically Tatar Sufism and among such personalities as Abd an-Nasir al-Qursawi, Shihabutdin al-Mardjani, Yalimdjan Barudi, Rizaeddin ben Fakhreddin and Zaynullah Rasulev himself, as well as Musa Biguiev, the well-known Tatar thinker, who criticized and defended Sufism at the same time.

Stephanie Dadoignon, a French expert on Russian Islam, considers that ‘until the late 1980s Islam was generally perceived by new townsmen’ in Tatarstan and Central Asia ‘as the religion of their ancestors and intimately mixed with community customs and everyday life.’ This can explain to a certain extent ‘the limited political role of the Spiritual Directions (muftiyat) when they were not articulated … with a huge and powerful network of regional Sufi brotherhoods.’

A relative weakness of Sufism in the Volga-Ural region today is explained by many factors. Tatarstan (as well as Bashkortostan) is a country which is ‘deeply influenced by its binational population and the demographic, economical and political domination of Russian- speaking people’ in the towns, including also Tatars of urban ascent. The russification of towns is not a very strong barrier for the Muslim traditions, including Sufism. But sovietization of social life, industrialization, the importance of numerous ‘humanitary intelligentsia’ in diverse fields of activity (such as mass-media, academies of sciences, literature and modern education, high-level technologies) are the obstacles to the revival of traditions. As for Sufism, it also faced many difficulties in Tatarstan from the beginning of the twentieth century because the prominent Muslim reformists of those times, the Jadids, sharply criticized the Sufis’ activities. Today the Jadids are very popular in Tatarstan especially among the rationalist intellectuals and youth.

Nevertheless, Sufism remains in the Volga-Ural region, at least as a tradition and remembrance. But the situation in the Northern Caucasus is different. Here Islam has been dominated by Sufi tariqas since the fifteenth century. The Naqshbandiyya became pre-eminent in a society which continues to exhibit the characteristics of traditional segmentary ethnic and kinship networks. Before and after the Soviet period the tariqas have played an important role in defending local Muslims’ interests, whether by resistance or by cooperative manipulation. Today various forms of tariqatism are closely associated with the revival of local ethnic politics and the appearance of ethnocracy. It is necessary to take into account that tariqatism can function across state, community and ethnic boundaries. Through a hierarchical chain of adherence to the shaykh, the Sufi orders link local communities across many different regions, such as the Caucasus and Central Asia. The transnational character of Sufi brotherhoods reinforces their social role in each country, their cultural, political, ideological and psychological influence.

In the Muslim regions of the USSR distribution of political and social roles between families, clans, tribes and regional groups still relied strongly on tradition. Not only in Central Asia and the Caucasus but also among other Muslim groups all the middle-ranking and top positions in the administrative hierarchy were taken by people originating from families and clans traditionally connected with the Muslim religion and religious officials. For example, those having influence among members of the Tadjik and Uzbek nomenklatura, including the Party bureaucracy, were Fergana khojas who are lineal descendants of the four Rightly- Guided Caliphs. These khojas influenced very strongly the neighbouring regions of Bashkiria and Siberia. It is interesting to stress the permanent existence of the Sufi orders or brotherhoods during the whole Soviet period. In Central Asia, the Volga River and the Ural regions were relatively active areas for the Naqshbandiyya and Yasawiyya and the Northern Caucasus for the Qadiriyya, the Naqshbandiyya and the Shaziliyya. Their members had great prestige and influence on decision making in secular spheres.

The Naqshbandiyya and the Qadiriyya had also found their main support in the valleys of the Central and North-Eastern Caucasus and had great influence on Ingushes, Chechens and the Turkic tribes of the Balkars and Farachays. During the Second World War these brotherhoods were responsible for the anti-Soviet position of their supporters who had been deported to Central Asia in 1944, allegedly as a punishment for their reluctance to fight against the Germans. Stalin feared at that time an armed conflict with Turkey and found it too risky to have zealous Muslim communities so close to the Turkish border. It was possible that Stalin also did not like the Muslims of the Northern Caucasus according to the Georgian Orthodox historical and religious tradition, but it is more likely that the Soviet government would not tolerate even the possibility of the existence of Muslim nationalism or separatist movements among the mountain peoples.

Six Muslim nations were deported in 1944: the Chechens, Ingushes, Karachays, Balkars, some Cherkers and Muslim Ossetians (Digors) who differ from the Christian Ossetian majority. Approximately one third of these peoples perished during transportation alone. But in exile, as Alexander Solzhenitsin wrote in his Golag Archipelago, only ‘one nation refused to accept the psychology of submission’ - the Chechens. There were many explanations of this fact, such as strong blood-ties of patriarchal teips (i.e., clan-tribes) and other socio-historical traditions. It is necessary also to take into account the Sufi brotherhoods’ activities including not only the traditional branches of the Naqshbandiyya and the Qadiriyya but also the most influential among the Chechens Kunta-Hadji order, which is the most powerful _wird_of Qadiriyya.

After Stalin’s death the Northern Caucasus Muslims were permitted to return to their homeland but were not entirely rehabilitated. In Chechen-Ingushetia the control of the local organs of Soviet power and the Communist Party remained firmly in Russian hands without even a modicum of outward concessions allowed for national cadres, as in other Muslim republics. It was only in 1979 that the Soviet authorities allowed the opening of a few mosques in an unsuccessful attempt to stem the growth of the clandestine Sufi brotherhoods. There were in Checheno-Ingushetia 5 legal and 292 clandestine mosques. The majority of them were practically the centres of Tariqatism. In the whole of Russia comparative number of legal to clandestine mosques was 159 to 415 in 1979 and 195 to 412 in 1987.

It is obvious, however, that many Muslims gave the Soviet powers credit for modernization, even if some well-know Muslims from Russia, for example Zaki Validi-Togan, vigorously criticized the defects of this modernization. In the past 70 years the Muslim republics of the former USSR, including the Muslim regions of Russia, have undergone a rapid process of modernization. Factories, roads, railways, airfields, modern dwellings and power stations have been built. The education system of the Soviet Union was exported to all the Muslim regions. Many cities in the Muslims were first and foremost Soviet constructions, with broad streets and modern buildings. There was, of course, no political freedom, abut as long as the population did not oppose the ruling political system, they were left in relative peace.

But the Sufi orders were not politically autonomous. The Sufi brotherhoods network cannot function automatically in the new conditions of modern life. The shaykhs can use their moral authority and political influence without obstacle only in conditions of relative social peace, and where respect for traditions, traditional customs and habits and Islamic rules of moral and social behaviour is upheld. But from the beginning of perestroika social peace and historical traditions in Daghestan as well as in the whole of Russia and especially in all the republics of the Northern Caucasus were under threat. The all-Russian crisis had serious consequences for Daghestan. The general decline of production, morals and culture, massive unemployment and sharp polarization of Daghestani society engendered a rise in the crime rate, contract killings, a struggle for spheres of influence and redistribution of property, corruption, bribery and various forms of extremism, including religious and ethno-national extremism, which was very dangerous in such a country as Daghestan.

Historically Daghestan has been the major centre of Islamic culture in the whole North Caucasus. Daghestani intellectuals were known for their good knowledge of Arabic. Through the years of Soviet rule Muslims of Daghestan managed to keep their Islamic traditions alive. In Daghestan the Naqshbandiyya and Qadiriyya wield tremendous influence. Among the considerable number of holy places in today’s Daghestan (_pirs_in the south and ziyarats in central and northern regions) a special place belongs to those connected to the names of the Naqshbandiyya shaykhs. The most revered are the tombs of Muhammad al-Yaragi, Imam Gazi-Muhammed, Abdurrahman of Sogratli, Ilyas of Tsudakh, Shuaybafandi al-Bagani, etc. At present many Sufi brotherhoods and groups are headed by their own shaykhs with their own murids (Said Afandi in Chirkey, Badruddin Afandi in Botlih, Abdulwahid Afandi in Karamakhi, and others. The role of Sufis is especially important in preserving traditional ideas and in opposing the show of extremism. At present traditional Islam is represented by several dozen branches of _tariqa_fellowships. The largest numerically is the Naqshbandiyya fellowship, followed by the Qadiriyya fellowship.

In neighbouring Chechnya, on the other hand, the Qadiriyya is most prominent. This may be explained historically: Muhammad al-Yaragi, Gazi-Muhammad and Shamil had as their spiritual teachers the Naqshbandiyya or Khalidiyya shaykhs. But after the defeat of Shamil as chief of the Naqshbandiyya Khalidiyya and his capitulation in 1859 the prestige of Naqshbandiyya seriously diminished. Chechens considered him responsible for this defeat. But Shamil was Avar and Naqshbandiyya was ‘his’ brotherhood. From those times the majority of Chechens preferred to follow the Qadiriyya, which became the main Sufi brotherhood of the ‘mountain tayps (clans)’ of Chechnya and the Naqshbandiyya remained the tariqa of ‘plains tayps_’, less rebellious and more disposed to cooperation with the Russian authorities. It is interesting to note that the Chechen Muslims conserved their Sufi brotherhoods’ organization even in exile in Kazakhstan where they also created the new branches of the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya and the Qadiriyya. When General Dudaev came to power in Chechnya in 1991, many people asserted that his brother Bakmurza had been the leader of a Sufi order, but Dudaev and his supporters encouraged a new religious-political movement which people have come to call Wahhabism. The Wahhabis call themselves ‘unitarians’ or_salafis (followers) of pure Islam that existed at the time of the Prophet and under the reign of the first four caliphs. Sufi Islam is regarded by Wahhabis as a deviation from the rules of pure Islam. Members of tariqas, for their part, accuse the Wahhabis of sectarianism. It is possible that Chechen nationalists and their ideologist Mowladi Udugov disliked tariqatism as connected with old clergy who cooperated in Soviet times with the Russian nomenclatura. The new leaders of Chechnya need a new political and ideological organization of Chechen society. The is the main reason for their opposition to Sufi Islam and the creation of ‘jamaat’ - specific local associations of the Wahhabis functioning on the basis of Shari`a and the Qur’an.

After the first Chechen war in 1994-1996 the network of jamaat was reinforced. Meanwhile the official Sufi clergy followed the moderate religious and political views and were not against collaboration with the Russian government. The Muslim authorities and Sufi leaders tried to limit the influence of the Wahhabites.

In recent years the Wahhabites have persistently worked on establishing the Islamic order in regions where they have been feeling most self-assured since 1995/1996. They have been particularly active in Daghestan. Some Daghestani villages, such as Karamakhi, Chabamakhi, Qadar and Kirovaul, were proclaimed a separate Islamic territory governed by Shari`a laws. In 1997 this conflict was settled through an agreement between the Wahhabis and the Daghestan authorities, which brought the villages back under the political and administrative control of the government. But this agreement tacitly accepted the socio-cultural hegemony of the Islamists at the local level, leaving them free to apply Shari`a regulations in the villages. Ideological controversy could not be avoided in these villages. Religious disputes had been occurring even during prayer times in mosques, so it was eventually decided that the conflicting groups should pray separately. Recently a young researcher, Dmitri Makarov, gathered information in one of the villages controlled by the Islamists. He wrote that recourse to Islamic regulation was not something absolutely new in this village because its inhabitants had kept much of the traditional mountain dwellers’ respect for religious values, gut this did not prevent alcohol abuse from spreading. In addition, drug dealers from neighbouring Chechnya started to come, selling narcotics and recruiting local unemployed youngsters for their criminal networks.

The situation changed radically in summer 1999 when the armed forces of the Chechen Islamists attacked Daghestan territory. They had expected to receive support from the Daghestan Wahhabis, but they had miscalculated. Not did the Russian government troops repulse the Islamists, but so did the Daghestan Muslims themselves. After the retreat of the Chechen forces from Daghestan territory all the zones controlled by the Wahhabis were encircled by the troops and occupied after desperate resistance. The miscalculations of the Wahhabis and their Chechen allies can be explained by the unwillingness of the Daghestan Muslims to quarrel with the Russians or to participate in a ‘holy war’ declared by the Chechen Islamists, whom every Daghestani considers to be ‘bad Muslims’ who know nothing about Islam and especially about Muslim civilization. It is unacceptable to the Daghestan Muslims that they should be subordinate to Chechens and especially to the Chechen Wahhabis, because the overwhelming majority of the Daghestani Muslims, including almost all the political and religious leaders are tariqatists.

The difficult situation in Chechnya today has been largely determined by the economic, social and political circumstances of the last ten years from the beginning of the inaugurational meeting of the National Chechen Congress. Under pressure from the Congress, the Chechen-Ingush Supreme Soviet proclaimed the sovereignty of the republic. The aim of the Chechen nationalists, like that of the Tatars, was originally to raise the status of their country from autonomous to federal republic. In June 1991 General Dzhokhar Dudaev became the chairman of the National Congress and rejected, as he said, the ‘present miserly colonial freedom’. Dudaev was elected president and was sworn in on the Qur’an. Yeltsin declared a state of emergency and airlifted troops to Grozny to arrest Dudaev, but failed. Then Dudaev reinforced his positions and dissolved the parliament and the National Chechen Congress. Having made his career in the Soviet army (along with ex-colonel Mashadov and others), he asserted that the Chechen nation was robbed of ‘religion, language, education, science, culture, ideology and leadership cadres’. But Dudaev himself robbed the Chechen nation of education, science and culture, organizing the emigration of the Russian population, including the majority of teachers, scientists, etc. He used Islamic phraseology in his speeches, but refused to take into consideration the decisions of the Shari`a court. Moreover, he began to use these Islamic terms when he needed the support of the Muslim world, while at the same time declaring that he would agree to be a member of the USSR. Criminality reached a scale unknown in the history of Chechnya. At the same time the structure of _tayps_and wirds became sidelined and very often the structure of criminal gangs and robbery associations specialized in drugs and arms dealing, but also, which is worse, they were involved in trading slaves, kidnappings and exploitation of prisoners.

By 1994 Yeltsin’s government had lost patience and began military action against Dudaev. But Chechens under the guidance of the military professionals Dudaev and Mashadov repulsed the attack of the Russian army, disorganized and demoralized during perestroika. The high command of this army, headed by the Defence Minister, Grachev, was corrupt and incompetent. This is the main reason for the army’s failure in Chechnya. The other was the liberal movement, which condemned the war in Chechnya and Yeltsin, thinking about the presidential elections in Russia, decided to make peace in Chechnya.

However, with much of Chechnya’s economic, cultural, medical, scientific and educational infrastructure destroyed by the war, the majority of Chechens faced inevitable financial difficulties. Violence and cruelty became commonplace and directly influenced public opinion and traditional religious, moral and behavioural rules. Kidnappings, slavery and savage murders constituted a frightening post-war syndrome. Spiritual life was being penetrated by Wahhabism, which is contrary to Sufi Islam. Having taken part in the military operation against Russian troops the Wahhabis gained the aura of defenders of Chechnya and warriors of Islam. The military clashes between the Wahhabis and the tariqatists began during the war in 1995. The determination of Zikrists, the most numerous Sufi brotherhood in Chechnya (followers of Kunta Hadji) cooled the intentions of the Wahhabis.

In 1996, after the death of Dudaev, the acting president, Yandarbiev, made Soviet and Russian laws invalid in Chechnya, abolished the secular courts of justice and created the Supreme Shari`a Court with its regional branches. The Criminal Code of these Shari`a courts was copied from the Shari`a Criminal Code of Sudan. But a considerable proportion of the Chechen Muslims were indignant at the frequently unjust punishments meted out in Shari`a courts. But it seemed hard to believe that Islamisation of the state could be a solution without a range of problems being solved - rebuilding the economy, ending crime, achieving internal unity and clearly defining the political relationship with Russia. The presence of traditional Sufi culture also made the establishment of such a rule more difficult. So in 1999 the second war in Chechnya began and we cannot now say when it will be finished. Today the situation is being changed not each day, but each hour. The keys for resolving all problems of Chechnya now remain in the hands of the Moscow government. But nobody can say what solution will be proposed.