Publication |
2009.
|
Summary/Abstract |
The "post-perestroika" separatist-minded elites that came to power in Chechnia in the early 1990s and aspired to achieve ideological consolidation of the Chechens made an attempt to revive some of the elements of the old traditional social system based on blood kinship. At the grass-roots level there were clans of close blood relatives (from the bottom up: d'ozal, var, varis) and larger social structures (taips and tukhums) that together formed the Chechen nation-nokhchi k'am. The great number of taips and tukhums and the fact that the Vainakhs lacked any statehood experience buried the idea. The Chechen leaders had to place their stakes on the ideology of traditional "local Islam" of the Sufi virds Kunta-hajji and Vis-hajji that belonged to the Qadiriyya Tariqah (known in Chechnia as Zikrizm). This did not create the desired ideological cohesion for the simple fact that the Chechens are scattered throughout several dozen Sufi structures (Vird brotherhoods). This moved "integration Islam," which rejected everything that might divide the Muslims-races, ethnic groups, taips, and other local ethnic and confessional groups-to the frontline. In the Northern Caucasus it is known as Wahhabism (Salafism).
|