The threat of Islam or the threat to Islam
"Violent, extremist Islamists invoke on their own head the true jihad. Challenging all the peoples of the Earth, and first of all traditional Islam, professed by the overwhelming majority of the Islamic world, these forces put themselves in opposition to Islam. And reacting against them is a religious, moral, social and political duty of each Muslim."
A speech by Sheikh-ul-Islam, Talghat Tajuddin, Supreme Mufti, Representative of the Central Spiritual Board of Muslims for Russia and the East-European countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States
Moscow, June 28, 2001

1. Extremist heresies in the history of Islam
The Islamic tradition has a centuries-old history. This history had different stages. The world of Islam is multifaceted and dynamically evolving. Sometimes not without contradictions. We know that since the very beginning there were oppositions between Shiites and Karidjites. There were many doctrinal disputations. The Shiites themselves were split. The same historically occurred to the followers of other confessions. Gradually in the Islamic tradition four madhhabs (doctrinal schools) were established. Each of them represents the traditional Islam. The historically traditional Islam was opened to cultural and spiritual customs. It honoured the Abrahamic ones – Judaism and Christianity. It accepted the traditions of other peoples, honouring their belief in the Only Creator. Canonical expression of Islam became the tariqat, the brotherhoods, the sects, the mystical orders.

But sometimes at the rim of this world there were heretical movements and sects. They lay outside the borders of traditional madhhabs, advancing religious and political theses withdrawing from a traditional Islam on impermissible critical spacing intervals. Such were the Fatimide khalifate, the Mahadist rebellion and other manifestations. Sometimes heresy did arise in the Islamic world, as a rule in the form of violent, terrorist practices. It meant the rejection of the traditional madhhabs, the exit from the borders of orthodox Islam. It was innovation, display of arrogance, which pushed the fanatics’ leaders to deny the Islamic rules, setting aside their fidelity to the original Islam, as a matter of fact introducing innovations in the true religion. In practice this was accompanied by fanaticism, religious intolerance, coercion, cruelty. Fanaticism, intolerance and coercion in belief are already in themselves distinctive signs of a break with a Islam, with our tradition of the Prophet Mohammed (a.s.s.) – see how the Sacred Koran insists «There is no coercion in belief», and the forerunner of the Prophet, about their adult children who accepted Christianity before their parents accepted a Islam, he invokes the people to lean not on ignorance and fanaticism, but on a weighted and reasonable judgement of the world created by the Most High God by the Creator and realised according to His omen. «Will you really be equal, you who know and those who do not know?» «May you understand!» (Koran) […..]

2. Contemporary extremism with the Islamic face
Also in the contemporary world there is such contribution of heresies to Islam, which contradict our belief both in the letter and in spirit, both in theory and in practice. It is difficult to distinguish at first sight this fabrication from Islam. It satanically enters the ranks of Islam, it makes use of its symbols. But in spirit it has nothing in common with the true divine Islam. Such radical doctrines are concretely the doctrine of the “Muslim Brother” Hasan al-Banni, Wahhabism, Salafyism, the Pakistani Tabliq sect, originating the Taleban movement, and other similar phenomena. These phenomena are doctrinal heresies, they introduce into traditional Islam no lesser innovations than the so-called “islamic modernists” do. They affirm that all present forms of Islam are false, and only their doctrine, insisting on the literal execution of the orders of their leaders, is true in the last resort. Spirit of reasonable choice, personal dignity of man, spontaneity of belief, respect for the peoples of the “Scriptures” and all the others – all this is simply absent from these movements, which might be called as totalitarian sects of pseudo-Islamic kind.

They also change the social meaning of the Islamic world-view. This is not simple “politicised Islam”, it would be wrong to consider it so – it is “politicised heresy”. Islam does not insist that all Muslims compulsory follow definite rules of moral, ethics, conduct, being guided in private and public life by the religious establishing of traditional Islam. Extremist fanatics change this quite traditional setting into compulsory godliness, into a completely different pattern: they require literal observance to their own rules, invented by them, and call violence on everyone who does not obey them.

Every Islamic term is exposed by them to a distortion. In Islam there is the concept of “jihad”, of “holy war”. First of all it means “al-jihad-ul-kabir”, the Great War, which each Muslim believer must wage inside himself against defects, ignorance and evil. The “Small holy war” (“al-jihad-ul-sagir”) is led against those who brings violence and anger into the world, who deny belief and truth, who introduce lie, cruelty and intolerance, who aim at oppressing the peoples, at depriving them of their freedom. An example of real jihad was for the Muslims the Great Patriotic War, the war against the Nazi occupiers. And the first to set the banner of “Victory” above the Reichstag were the Muslim-Russians from Bashkortostan, and this despite of the 14,5 thousand mosques destroyed during the Stalin years. So in the course of the centuries the devout Muslims shared joys and sorrows of the Great Russia Homeland with their Orthodox fellow countrymen.

Jihad is always war against evil and violence. The sectarians-fanatics completely overturn this concept, proclaiming the so-called “jihad” against everyone who disagrees with them, so against the whole world. This has no more relation at all to Islam. Islam allows to use violence only as a means of last resort, and only against those who clearly showed their evil intents, and this means aggressors, rapists, killers. In all the remaining cases, the shariah calls for indulgence and exhortation. This is not at all the case of the extremists. Violence here becomes the fundamental law, violence against their own, against the others, against practically everybody. Without noticing it, the so-called “islamists” invoke on their own head the true jihad. Challenging all the peoples of the Earth, and first of all traditional Islam, professed by the overwhelming majority of the Islamic world, these forces put themselves in opposition to Islam. And reacting against them is a religious, moral, social and political duty of each Muslim.

Alas, in some Islamic countries – particularly in Saudi Arabia – there is a tolerant attitude (to say the least) towards the representatives of this tendency. Thus there is a precedent of indulgence and even connivance to these regimes which – in the unstable, crisis-bound regions of the Islamic world – results in criminal consequences: surging terrorism and violence, large scale war and even genocide. The departing from the traditions of true Islam in theoretical questions necessarily results in such destructive consequences. It is necessary to affirm unequivocally: the deviation from traditional Islam, from the bases of our belief, the aspiration to reinterpret in one’s own way the provisions of the Koran and the Sunna, to distort the sense of the shariah laws to the benefit of an aggressive extremist minority – this is even more dangerous than the process of modernisation of Islam.

Aiming at defending Islam from the entry of non-Islamic factors, Islamists themselves quit Islam, break away with tradition, follow the fire of arrogance which has always been the main instrument of Ibliz-devil. The Taliban have blown up the ancient Buddha statues. In this way not only they profaned a relic of many Buddhist nations of the world, not only they deprived mankind of unique monuments of ancient culture; they also put themselves above their own ancestors and the million Muslims which lived in the territory of Afghanistan for centuries and whose spiritual exploits and achievement are by no means comparable with such aggressive half-learned maniacally ambitious rabble, forming the core of Taleban. But the also broke the prohibition of Allah, so that their adoration will offend the Most High God Allah and sin will fall on those who – on a sacred land, where the envoy of Allah and his forerunners stepped – became the reason of this blasphemy. And are they not – under the slogan of “protecting” Islam – sending tons and tons of narcotics to Russia, the CIS, and even farther, pretending, in this way, to be corrupting the enemy?

But you see, for Islam all people since the beginning of the Koran envoy are “Ummatut-da’va” – the community of the invoking, even those did not believe. That is why the Wahhabite and Salaafyite extremist fanatics blast tombs of Islamic saints and mazars – both in Afghanistan and in Dagestan, in Chechnya and in Tajikistan. The sacredness of the ancestors for them is nothing, just a living rebuke. These fanatics not only attack and destroy the religious attributes of other faiths, but also the same Islamic relics.

So how it is possible to talk about an Islamic threat? When the world is filled with heroin not only from Afghanistan, but from Southern America and Southeast Asia! So, who is the director? The threat really exists, but it stems not from Islam but from completely different sources, and this threat is terrible above all for the Muslims, just because it is manifested to the whole world under the name of Islam.

I shall account the reasons why:

- The fanatics-extremist of Wahhabite kind use their charisma to recruit young people whose soul is not yet strong, aiming to exploit their warm belief, tempting them with aggressive propaganda, simplifications of primitive concepts, material subsidies from the clergy and the so-called centres. So we, the Muslims, lose best part of our people, the younger, who perish in the net of Iblis;

- These forces, acting ostensibly under our slogans and banners, actually discredit Islam as such, cause the non-Muslims to refer to the Muslims with diffidence and fright, throw a shadow on all Muslims, handicap out active cooperation with other peoples;

- They distort the essence of our belief, give away our true tradition, high divinity and spiritual rituals in exchange for quickly blinding substitutes, primitive prescriptions, blind following behind the leaders.

To the other faiths this is easier, they see this threat from the outside. Such threat can be insulated, exiled, suppressed, eventually, by forceful methods. To us, Muslims, this terrible illness comes also from the inside. Therefore we must be the vanguard of the fight with extremist pseudo-islamic tendencies and become a barrier against the odious plans of the international narco-business and other benevolent sponsors of “holy war”. Killing the infection to the roots, not waiting while the Wahhabites will declare this or that zone as a territory under their own control, untying terror and violence and spreading blood.

These tendencies are necessary for counteracting also at the theoretical level, in its embryo stage, not permitting in our mosques and bookshelves the extremist propaganda – not only open, but also veiled. Even the idea of the so-called “pure Islam”, “Salafiysm”, the idea of Wahhabism and other similar currents already hide the attempt to deeply corrupt Islam. Denying traditional Islam, appealing for its radical reform, Salafiys and Wahhabites break the thin balance of Islamic tradition between spiritual and secular, formal and inner. And terrorist activity is just the straight consequence. If we want to cope with this threat, we must fight it in the embryo stage.

3. The role of traditional Islam in the settlement of the Caucasian crisis
The situation in Chechnya results from many factors - social, historical, national, cultural and psychological. The conflict has a long history and was differently formulated at its different stages. It must be noticed that actually the Islamic element appeared on the foreground in Chechnya rather late, when the conflict was already in ignited. Nevertheless, it was just the interposition of militants of heretical Islamism, the activation of pseudo-Islamic extremism of sects of Wahhabite kind, that added the whole situation its dramatic, bloody character, and created a situation of virtual civil war in the Caucasus.

Wahhabites and Salafyites introduced in the complex Chechen situation the element of fanaticism and extremism, formed an autonomous pole which from a certain time became a self-supporting and inextinguishable source of bloody military conflict. Precisely due to the Wahhabite influence, Chechnya became a gravity centre for the most fanatical and heretical pseudo-Islamic groups. And when the situation became more or less stabilised, this Wahhabite pole was responsible of a new surge of violence, the aggression against Dagestan.

Wahhabism and Salafyism are completely alien to traditional Chechen Islam, which, in contrast, is distinguished by fidelity to the traditions of the ancestors, the cult of virds, the universal diffusion of Sufi brotherhoods, and its taypi [tribal] organization of society. All this is incompatible with Wahhabism, and against this traditional Chechen Islam was directed the aggression of those who took the lead of armed resistance. In this case the extremists have come to the correct (for themselves) conclusion: without the destruction of traditional Islam in Chechnya, it would be impossible to subordinate this people to their will, to make of them a pawn in the complex geopolitical game. We see a symbolical fact: leader of flatland Chechnya became the representative of Muslim clergy, mufti Ahmad Kadirov, conscious that the threat to Islam in Chechnya stems from this Wahhabite extremism, and that Russia acts in this case not as an opponent of Islam, but as its ally. And Russia ha acknowledged this in practice, having made of the Head of the Chechen Muslims the first person in the Chechen Republic.

But also in Mountain Chechnya – where today acts of war against federal forces continue – the Wahhabites’ victory is only superficial. The majority of the population, and even of the armed squads, belong to traditional Islam. Now it is their turn to realise the threat which lays inside this politicised heresy, this totalitarian sect – with its multinational mercenaries and international terrorist groups – against the people of Chechnya. More and more Muslims realise in what trap they have fallen. Our problem, of all Russian Muslims, as Central Spiritual Board of the Muslims (CSMM), and Coordination Centre of the Central Spiritual Board of the Muslims of Northern Caucasus, and in a broader sense of all the Muslims of the CIS and foreign Islamic countries, where the majority professes the traditional Islam, is to help settling this bloody conflict and establishing peace and consent. Our brotherly Muslim Chechen people, traditionally professing our belief, became the victim of a totalitarian sect, its blood continues to be poured. And how is it possible to speak about the threat of Islam, when victims of the extremists under Islamic banners become predominantly the Muslims, in this case the Chechens?

The international mercenaries come and go at their own will, but what can the people do, who lived for centuries on the Chechen ground and wants to live there for centuries on? We, Muslims, cannot stay indifferent to this question. Our belief, Islam, demands that we actively take part in the settlement of the conflict, especially since there is already a very correct - in my view - solution to this conflict – a Eurasian solution. Its sense is granting the Chechen people a large degree of cultural, ethnic, spiritual and even juridical autonomy in the composition of a united Eurasian State – Russia. Each side will reach the purpose, but most of all the winner shall be the Islamic world, the ummah, in which Russia will show the whole world the true, shiny and humane face of Islam – the resignation in the hands of the Most High God Creator, the complete love of God and His creatures; a deep and original Islam, coming to rescue whenever they distort his sense, subvert its tradition, turn religion into heresy and substitute its true contents with a false one here, in Russia, on the soil of our Homeland, the granary of our eternal life.

 «The State has an irredeemable debt to you», - declared President Putin recently during his meeting with the Presidium of the Russian CSBM in the Ufa counciliary mosque “Lyalya-Tulip”. But we, Muslim Russia, we are not from Africa, our Homeland is here. We wish peace and consent and prosperity on its sacred soil, and pray for this the Most High Allah. The rest is in the hands of Allah – to Him we belong. The threat of pseudo-Islam or “islamism” is a threat first of all to Islam, and our duty is to courageously answer this threat.

Together with Russia, together with Eurasia, together with all the people of good will Islam is not threat, but the offer of choosing the truth. The most effective remedy against false Islam is true Islam. Allah akhbar! Glory to the Most High Allah.  The Creator of the worlds does not have enmity, except for those who commit outrages and sow hatred, wrath and violence.

Translated by M.Conserva