The Foreign Service Journal, April 2007

Russian leaders have come to brand all followers of Salafi Islam, regardless of their political views, as radical Wahhabis who seek to create Islamic rule. Authorities believe they are the main source of religiously in- spired violence in the North Caucasus and Russia as a whole. The rise of Salafi Islam was spurred in part by the col- lapse of the already limited system of Islamic education in Russia. Under Soviet rule, Muslim education was per- mitted only in the Bukhara Medrese and the Tashkent Islamic University, both of which were located in Uzbekistan and ceased to function as educational centers for Russian Muslims once the Soviet Union collapsed. Yet, at the same time, the number of Muslim religious communities that needed educated clerics and religious schoolteachers mushroomed. The initial result was the promotion of numerous poorly educated Muslims to leadership positions in local mosques and even at the regional level. This was followed by the proliferation of Muslim educational institutions with questionable cre- dentials and few standards. The low level of religious education among establish- ment Muslim leaders drew the derision of younger pious Muslims, especially those who were educated in Salafi schools, either within Russia or (increasingly) in the Middle East. Many of these students came to believe that Salafism constitutes a purer form of Islam and reject- ed the traditional Islamic practices of the region. The Arc of Instability Although Salafi Muslims are found throughout the Russian Federation, the majority of the movement’s Russian followers live in the North Caucasus. It is there- fore not surprising that Moscow’s relationship with the Muslim population has been dominated for the past sev- eral years by the North Caucasus. This has been increas- ingly the case since the start of the first Chechen War in 1994. For several years, the Russian government was able to contain this brutal conflict mostly within Chechnya, though occasional terrorist attacks occurred outside the republic. Over time, however, the conflict has shifted in nature and scope, especially during the sec- ond Chechen War. That war began in 1999 with an invasion of Dagestan F O C U S A P R I L 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 43 Office of the Geographer and Global Issues, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, U.S. Dept. of State.