By Musa Musayev, exclusively to VK
Makhachkala hosted the first forum of the Dagestani Spiritual Muslim Administration, the ‘Akhlu-Sunna’ Scientific Union and spiritual leaders from different districts of Dagestan. For the first time the participants of the forum met and discussed their differences together, without mediators, in order to eliminate all the sources of misunderstanding and hostility. According to ‘Akhlu-Sunna’ member Ziyavudin Uvaisov, the meeting was gathered to resolve the differences between the two main groups of Dagestani Muslims.
Without unity Dagestani Muslims won’t be able to resist extremism or resolve important socio-economic tasks. In the past few years the Dagestani authorities have been working on ensuring constitutional rights for those Muslims who oppose the official doctrine.Over the past 20 years the partisans of two branches of Islam - Sufism (the official doctrine) and Salafism - were in a state of conflict with each other. Both parties accused each other of lack of faith or of extremism. In Dagestan the law on banning any ‘Wahhabi’ activity was imposed in 1999. Due to the officials' ignorance, they deemed all Salafi or others who in any way dissenting from the official doctrine to be Wahhabis. Salafi Muslims found themselves in the position of illegal activists, which played right into the hands of the real extremists, who gained more support among the religious youth opposed to the official doctrine or state authorities.
However, in the past few years the authorities have been trying to establish a dialogue with the Salafi. As the President of the republic Magomedsalam Magomedov said, officials should open a dialogue with all Islamic groups that don’t call for violence or the overthrow of the current regime. Before that, people got arrested for reading ‘wrong’ spiritual literature or wearing the ‘wrong’ type of beard. There were even rumours that imams were giving away the names of the ‘Wahhabi’ to the police.
A special expert group was acting under the Dagestani Spiritual Muslim Administration, which allowed sales of spiritual literature. Books not recommended by the group were banned. However, the group is dissolved now. The members of different Dagestani religious communities have opened up an active dialogue, as their leaders say, ‘in the name of Almighty Allah and in the name of peace’.
