Astonishing Chechnya

RT is airing an incredible documentary on the Republic of Chechnya, known to the outside world for having been practically destroyed by repeated separatist wars with Russia.

According to Wikipedia, the Caucasus mini-state  is returning to sharia law and all its accoutrements, with some resistance to Russian rule still remaining in the mountains.

The RT documentary  presents a very different picture which does not necessarily contradict this information. It describes a Muslim society deter-mined to appear ‘modern’.  With the help of Qatar, which is the most visible of the Gulf monarchies (think Al-Jazeera), the capital Grozny, has been rebuilt to resemble Doha, with illuminated skyscrapers, shopping malls, fancy restaurants, glitzy spectacles and fireworks – Putin’s version of war benefitting construction investments. But the skaking rinks are sexually segregated.

A new fashion industry is dedicated to luxury wear for the head-scarfed woman and eager to attract wealthy clients from other Muslim countries with strict female dress codes. The models parading gracefully down the catwalk will soon marry, after which they will be expected to remain at home, according to Islamic custom.  Unmarried women cannot travel abroad.

If this all sounds terrible, note that the brand of Sunni Islam practiced in the Caucasus is Sufism, which is accompanied by much rhythmic singing and dancing.

However some families are still sending their sons to madrassas where they are taught the Koran, wrestling and boxing (sports in which it is prohibited to attach the adversary’s head under Islamic law), and Dubai made an exception by sending some of the Prophets personal items to the Russian Islamic republic that boasts the world’s largest mosque.

Putting these pieces together, what emerges is a picture entirely in keeping with what I described in a previous blog as Putin’s cultural policy.  (“March 18th: …the Russian leader appears to also hanker after an era when ‘fun’ was ‘clean’ and families were intact.  The Pussy Riot trial is less a defense of religion than the belief that all freedoms have limits, in contradiction to Washing-ton’s unqualified commitment to the First Amend-ment.”)

Putin’s cultural policy as practiced in the Russian Republic of Chechnya seems intended to assure Muslim populations that a) their religion is entirely respectful; b) while practicing it they can be part of the modern world; and c) that ‘clean’ modernity is better than vulgar modernity.

In centuries past, Chechen Sufi leaders were already dreaming of a vast califate. With the Kremlin’s help, their modern descendants are busy creating a ‘modern’ Islamic society. Putin is shrewdly betting that if the larger mainly Islamic states on its periphery (the ‘Stans’) bring ‘modernity’ to their masses, they will be less of a threat than if they maintain them in a feudal time warp. It will be interesting to see whether the young women of Chechnya and other Islamic societies will long be willing to sacrifice their independence for the sake of Western glitz.  In any case if Putin’s policies can displace dour Wahab-bism from Saudi Arabia, that will be a good thing.

When discussing the ‘threat’ of the Islamization of Europe, it is useful to be aware of some historical facts, as well as of 20th-21st century South/North population pressures.

What is known historically as the Muslim conquest lasted from the 8th (eighth) century to the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1922.  By 750 A.D., successive Muslim Empires encompassed North Africa and the Saudi Arabian peninsula, whence they stretched to Northern India.  Muslims conquered India between the 13th and 16th centuries, converting part of the population from Hinduism.  (In 1947, after India became independent, part of India’s Muslim population was transferred to the new sovereign state of Pakistan.)

Between 1095 and 1291 European Catholic monarchs organized no fewer than seven Crusades in a futile attempt to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim rule.

Undeterred, Muslims conquered Eastern Europe all the way to Hungary: anyone having lived in Hungary cannot escape learning that two fateful battles against the Muslims were fought in the town of Mohacs, in Southwestern Hungary in 1526 and 1687, marking the beginning and the end of Ottoman domination of that country.

What relevance do these facts have for current efforts to prevent the Islamization of Europe?

The first is that by the time the Ottoman Empire fell, Islam had been a powerful force for more than a thousand years.  The second is that at present, after a decline of less than a century, Islam is once again a rising force, as the second largest world religion (23% of the world population versus 33% for Christianity).

Add to this South/North population pressures, and it is difficult to believe that Europe will remain a predominantly Christian region forever.  Islam is the largest religion in Africa, just across the Mediterranean, which is home to one fourth of the world’s Muslim population.

Presently, the French presidential election nears, in which immigration, mainly from Africa, is a hot issue; a Norwegian stands trial for having assassinated some 70 people in cold blood to ‘protect’ his country from multiculturalism; the United States continues to indulge in wars against Muslim countries of the Middle East and Southeast Asia, while its citizens are protected from prosecution by ‘stand your ground’ laws that facilitate racial killings, a few more statistics may possibly help forestall at least some bloodshed:

I have written elsewhere that Caucasians constitute an absolute minority on the face of the earth.  But the world Caucasian is a loaded term, but let us say for the sake of argument that it refers to populations who are neither Asian, Indian nor Black.  A website called nationsonline.org divides the world population according to continent:

For a total world population of just under 7 billion, Africa accounts for over 1 billion, Asia over 4 billion, the Americas, 900 million, Europe, 739 million and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand) 35 million. That makes ‘Caucasians’ barely 2/5ths of the world’s population.

Besides being the dominant religion in the Middle East, Islam is the religion of forty percent of the population of southeast Asia, and is the fastest growing religion worldwide.

In its quest for dwindling resources the world needs to avoid waging what is surely destined to be (once again) a losing battle over God.

The piecemeal nature of the information that reaches the American public prevents us from seeing discrete events within a larger framework, the ‘big picture’ that I have been writing about for years, and which, by the way, is now the title of Thom Hartmann’s excellent show on Russia’s English language TV channel, RT.

What is happening across the Middle East?  1) Our client governments use increasingly brutal methods to keep their people down; 2) The United States tries to prevent these governments from losing power, not mainly because we need their oil, but because a radical shift toward any kind of people power in that region puts Israel in real danger (as opposed to the boogeyman dangers it has been crying wolf about for decades: first Iraq, now Iran).  (Likewise, Russian support for Syria may be about retaining port on the Mediterranean, or a carved-in-stone policy of not supporting enemies of the state, but it is also about supporting the ‘front-line state’.)

One can only wonder why Israel is focusing so obsessively on Iran’s  putative nuclear program, when it is surrounded, if not by hostile regimes, then certainly by hostile populations.  Israel has been brutally occupying Palestinian lands for decades, acting as a veritable Goliath vis a vis a weaker Arab people, and the Arab street know that its rulers have been American puppets for decades, as part of the U.S.’s commitment to defend Israel.

As they fixate on the supposed deleterious influence of Islam, our politicians take no account of ideology. Across the Muslim world, the 99% wants more equity, while we want docile regimes run for and by the 1%.  On Israel’s southern border, it is no surprise that the Muslim Brotherhood is defying the military rulers of Egypt after seeming to support them after Mubarak’s ouster: the Brotherhood’s new generation of leaders are more interested in seeing their country break free of American domination than in checking on headscarves, while the military would be inclined to continue Mubarak’s subservience to the U.S., its weapons supplier.

As far as I have seen, no news channel has viewed the Syrian crisis in terms of the Arab world’s greater or lesser hostility toward Israel.  The Assad regime has constituted a resolute enemy on Israel’s northern border, and Israel would feel more secure if Syria were run by American puppets.

American nervousness over the composition of the rebel movement is not about whether it is democratic, but about the attitude toward Israel of those who could replace Assad.  We would like to cherry pick the political figures who will replace Assad, but we really have no way of knowing which ones will go along with Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.