The subject of this study is the propaganda documentaries "Ordinary Wahhabism" and " Ordinary Sufism ", made in the genre of Islamic appeal (da'wa) by opponents and supporters of radical politicized Islam in the Russian North-Eastern Caucasus at the beginning of the XXI century. Comparing their scenarios, texts and images, the author sought to understand how the opposing factions imagine "true" Islam and try to convey their ideas to the post-Soviet youth through video and the Internet. Special attention was paid to the legacy of the Cold War, anti-American and anti-Semitic trends in Islamic documentary video, its creators and consumers, and the attitude of modern North Caucasian youth to the films and clips analyzed.¹

Keywords: Islamic appeal, discursive analysis, video sources, cold War, anti-Americanism, Caucasus, Dagestan.

Scholars who study Islam are used to working with texts. Meanwhile, over the past decade and a half or two, new types of sources have spread among Muslims, in which text accompanies, and sometimes replaces, pictures and videos.² Twenty years ago, Islamic video was unthinkable in the former Soviet Caucasus. Today there are dozens of Internet sites in Russian and Caucasian languages. With the spread of satellite television and video recorders back in the 1990s, polemical, mostly amateur, low-quality video on cassettes is gaining popularity among former Soviet Muslims. Later, it is replaced by a professional propaganda film in the genre of Islamic appeal (da'wa). This ancient and well-worn genre remains one of the most popular. Islamic stores in Dagestan are packed with Islamic DVDs. There were Islamic "soap operas" and even Islamic cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad, the era of the Arab Caliphate and other subjects.

¹ Materials for this article were collected in the North Caucasus and Moscow during the Volkswagen Foundation project " From Kolkhoz to Jamaat. The Politicization of Islam in the Rural Communities of the Former USSR: An Interregional Comparative Study, 1950s-2000s", руководители Stephane A. Dudoignon, Christian Noack. The expanded version of the article was published first in English in the journal Religion, State and Society (Oxford). The author is grateful to the Dagestani Arabist Shamil Shikhaliev, French Orientalists Stephane A. Dudoignon and Cloye Drie for valuable advice and comments on the draft version of the article.

² This principle is also typical for some more traditional genres of Muslim art production, for example, shamaili-calligraphic images on religious themes that appeared in Iran and the Ottoman Empire, and at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries developed into a special genre in the Volga-Ural region [Tatar shamail, 2009, p. 9].

Video sources are increasingly used in research on Islam and modernity along with the usual texts [Knysh, 2010]. However, their form and genre features in the North Caucasus are still poorly understood. Political scientists working on these subjects are mainly interested in the topical content of Islamic videos, the connection between information and reality [Ignatenko, 2004; Medvedko and Nechitailo, 2008]. This approach, in our opinion, simplifies and distorts the picture of the virtual Muslim space of the beginning of the XXI century. Virtual and real historical time and space should not be confused [Reichmuth and Werning, 2006, p. 46-47; Heeren, 2008, p. 20-21]. We should not forget about the propaganda nature of these materials. Internet clips deserve special study in connection with the virtual Islamic space, about which a lot of people have written [Bruckner, 2001, p. 17; Aouragh, 2003, p. 42-43; Ignatenko, 2004, p. 67-76; Pierret, 2005, p.50].

When analyzing Islamic video in post-Soviet Dagestan, serious developments made in this area by ethnologists based on materials from the foreign Muslim East help. These are primarily the works of Clifford Geertz on narratives popular among Moroccan Muslims, as well as the works of Leila Abu-Lughod on "soap operas" in the Egyptian countryside, the reaction of rural women to the ideals of the national culture of the city's political elites propagated by television [Geertz, 1973, p. 3-30; Abu-Lughod, 1993, p. 493-513; Abu-Lughod, 1997, p. 109-134; Abu-Lughod, 2007]. For Geertz, the method of" thick " narratives applied by Abu-Lugod to television and film is important. In his spirit, the latter sees television serials as an important social practice, without which today it is impossible to imagine the life of various social strata and groups, including women from remote villages in Upper Egypt [Abu-Lughod, 1997, p.128].

Neither Abu-Lugod nor Geartz specifically worked on documentaries and youth, which, however, does not prevent them from applying their approach to youth documentaries and the Internet in the post-Soviet historical context. The audience of the video resources analyzed in this article, as well as the objects of research of both ethnographers, belongs to the lower strata of society (subaltern), which, like the Egyptian fellahs, depend on the ruling circles trying to monopolize the reproduction of knowledge about Islam in Islamic educational institutions controlled by muftis [Bobrovnikov, Navruzov, Shikhaliev, 2010, p. 148 - 149]. A "thick description" helps to understand the connections of knowledge in Islam and about Islam with power. My field materials show that in the North Caucasus, it is the Internet that is becoming the main channel for obtaining knowledge about Islam. Together with video, it plays the same role in society today that television and, in part, dissident samizdat played in the late Soviet era. Through it, the ideas of competing national and political discourses penetrate the youth environment. Both the Muslim elite recognized by the authorities and the Islamist opposition, deprived of access to print media, are trying to use the Internet and cinema to introduce their views on Islam to young people. Young people can no longer do without video, they watch it often and a lot, almost every day.

Unlike Girtz and Abu-Lugod, the emphasis in this work is not on the perception of Islamic video, but on the process of reproducing knowledge about "true" and "false" Islam by means of documentary films, starting with the development of the plot from written text to video, through a discursive analysis of the current historical context of disputes about Islam between rival factions "Wahhabis" and "traditionalists", the study of the epistemology of Islamic polemical cinema, which is rooted not only in the Islamic, but also in the Soviet atheist tradition, and, finally, the creation of a portrait of young authors and consumers of this genre of video products. The research is more historical than sociological in nature.

SCRIPT AND EDITING

Let's start with the script. In this respect, "Ordinary Wahhabism" represents considerable progress in the short history of Islamic polemical cinema in the North Caucasus. This is almost the first true documentary of this genre in the region. Before him, there were videos of Sufi dhikrs and collective prayers on ziyarats, Friday sermons (khutbah), lectures and disputes between representatives of the Muslim spiritual elite, the first of which appear in 1995-1997. This production was also poorly shot. The lack of plot and intrigue made watching it extremely tedious. It was not widely used. To some extent, the official ban on any Wahhabi propaganda in 1999 served as an incentive for copying videotapes [Law of the Republic of Dagestan, 1999, p. 1; Bobrovnikov, 2001, p. 259; Yarlykapov and Bobrovnikov, 2006, p.91]. In turn, opponents of the Wahhabis promote recordings of speeches by Sufi sheikhs, in particular the now influential Naqshbandi and Shazili Sheikh Said-Afandi Atsayev (born in 1937) from the village of Chirkey.

"Ordinary Wahhabism" was filmed in the form of a journalistic investigation. It is directed by director Abdulla Alishayev, who also wrote the script for the film. The storyline of the film is based on one idea: to present on the screen the essence and history of the emergence of the Wahhabi movement in Dagestan and the world. During the presentation of the film, which took place on October 19, 2005 at the National Library. Rasul Gamzatov in Makhachkala, Abdulla Alishayev stressed that " the shooting was carried out on the territory of Dagestan, but geographically the whole world is covered. The time frame covers the period from the beginning of the 1990s, when emissaries of Wahhabism came to our republic frequently, to the present day... I was not going to show a specific Wahhabi, my task was to show the essence of the ideology of Wahhabism. So if I were to use all the material I have in my hands, the film would be about three hours long, and so it runs for an hour and fifteen minutes. How it turned out is for the audience to judge " [http://i-r-p.ru/page/stream-event/index-1180.html, last visited on 20.02.2011].

From the first shots of the film, we see the author in the foothills of the village of Tarki above Makhachkala. Rocky mountains and the Caspian Sea are on the horizon. A thoughtful young man in his early thirties, wearing black trousers and a blue shirt with a microphone attached, is standing by the cliff. His head is covered with a dark skullcap [Common Wahhabism, 2005, 00:00:19 ³]. In short, a pious Islamic journalist. Throughout the film, we see a long gallery of faces: politicians, officials, muftis, imams of mosques, doctors, military personnel, journalists, ordinary rural workers. They are divided into two camps: on the one hand, they are witnesses for the prosecution against Wahhabism and its victims, and on the other, they are propagators of this trend. Their speeches are accompanied by the author's commentary, whose calm, balanced voice is heard either from the screen or behind the scenes. He positions himself as a devout Muslim who is not like his secular colleagues, for example, the host of the TV program "Another Dimension" Zaur Gaziev, the author of the documentary film "Kadar Triangle" by the TV and radio company "Dagestan" against Wahhabis, filmed hot on the heels of the invasion of Sh. Basayev in 1999. The latter appears in front of us in a short-sleeved shirt, tie and bareheaded. Alishayev also shuts out the ostentatious piety of the Wahhabis, with their gloomy faces and shaved moustaches framed by thick black beards. He's clean-shaven and doesn't have a beard or moustache. These details give the viewer the image of an unbiased observer standing "above the fray."

The investigation leads the author to "a well-known village in Dagestan", where in the mid-1990s he witnessed a fierce dispute between the deputy head of the Dagestan police Department.

³ Numbers in video links indicate hours:minutes:seconds of quoted frames and episodes.

Mufti of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Dagestan (DUMD) Kura-Muhammad-Hajji Ramazanov (1956-2007) and Wahhabis [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:00:26]. This village is not named in the film, but from the scattered hints it is easy to guess Karamakhi-the center of the famous "Kadar zone", from which the Wahhabis expelled representatives of the Russian authorities in May 1998 and turned it into a territory that lived "according to Sharia" before the defeat of the movement by federal troops in September 1999 [Bobrovnikov, 2001, p 29; Bobrovnikov, 2002, p. 278]. Abdulla Alishayev begins his story here and returns here in the final part of the film. Almost half of the interviews that formed the basis of the film were taken in Karamakhi and Kadara. The author emphasizes that the Wahhabis were not able to enter Qadar, because "almost everyone" here "adheres to the tariqa" according to the wird of Sheikh Said-Afandi. The imam of the village wears the distinctive green skullcap of Murid Said-Afandi with a white belt. Towards the end of the film, the camera shows the ruins of the Wahhabi Juma mosque destroyed during the storming of the Karamakhi mosque in 1999., 2005, 00:53:44]. After that, the screen shows the minaret of the ancient Friday mosque of Kadar, built, according to the author, about 500 years ago. It visibly symbolizes for the director the inviolability of the Islamic and Sufi traditions of Dagestan. In the middle of the film, the author makes a big historical digression, telling about the origins of Wahhabism in the Arabian Peninsula, which since the XVIII century was the scene of the movement's founder Muhammad Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab and his patrons from the Saudi dynasty, who seized power in the region and created the "Wahhabi" kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

What sources did Alishayev use? First, 11 interviews with witnesses of the emergence of Wahhabism in Dagestan. They all blame the Wahhabis. Fragments of interviews ranging in length from a few seconds to two or three minutes are artfully embedded in the fabric of the narrative. Often, one interview passes into another, answering the questions posed in the previous one, repeating the author's thoughts with a refrain. The most unusual feature is the latest interview with Said-Afandi Chirkeisky. The director refused to include recordings of the sheikh's speeches in the film. Already at the end of the film, a photo portrait of this authoritative ustaz (Sufi mentor) appears on the screen [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 01:13:14]. In the background, the distorted faces of Wahhabis and Soviet leaders flash by. They are replaced by quotes from the sheikh's speech, which is read off-screen by the author of the film. Stylistically, the image of the sheikh is close to the conventional portraits of his Sufi predecessors of the Naqshbandiya-Mahmudiya branch, whose gold chain (silsila), according to the followers of the Sheikh, binds Said-Afandi and the Prophet Muhammad. A series of these portraits, beginning with Sheikh Mahmud of Almaly (1810/11-1877), through the first Shazili sheikh in Dagestan, Saypulla-qadi (1853-1919), Hasan of Kahib (killed in 1937), his son Muhammad - ' Arif (died in 1977), Sa'du-Hajiyasul Muhammad of Batlukh (1915-1995), along with a photo of the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah, completes the appendix to the film entitled " Ordinary Wahhabism. No comment" [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 01:56:49 - 01:57:04, 01:59:04].

Alishayev's film, like all the Islamic polemic produced by both warring camps, is extremely biased. At the same time, the author tries to convince the viewer of the objectivity of his judgments. For this purpose, he is editing excerpts from the Wahhabi-traditionalist controversy, shot on amateur video in the second half of the 1990s. This is the speech of Bagauddin Magomedov (born in 1946) at the dispute between Wahhabis and traditionalists, organized in 1994 in Makhachkala by Said Amirov, the mayor of Makhachkala and then Deputy chairman of the Government of the republic [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:01:42 - 52], Bagauddin's disputes with imam of Khasavyurt mosque Muhammad-Said Abakarov (died in 2004) and Sufi Sheikh Tadjuddin (Ramazanov, 1919-2001) from the village of Ashali [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:06:40 - 00:09:07]. In addition to them, the film includes excerpts from the press conference of the Kavkaz Wahhabi training center [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:09:08 - 39,

00:09:51 - 00:10:13, 00:12:18 - 33, 00:14:15 - 35], as well as a large excerpt from Bagauddin's failed dispute with Mufti DUMD Said-Muhammad Abubakarov (killed in 1998) and representatives of official Muslim structures hostile to Wahhabis in Ukraine and abroad. Lebanon [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 01:14:31 - 01:53:41]. These performances, however, are deliberately "cut off" by the director. To defame his opponents, he resorts to the same technique: after each speech, he shows an excerpt from the chronicle of terrorist attacks and battles with Wahhabis that contradicts him. At the same time, he is not concerned that the comparable events are often separated by three or four years, during which initially unrelated Chechen field commanders Salman Raduyev (1967 - 2002), Shamil Basayev (1965 - 2006) and Khattab (1969 - 2002), a native of the Circassian diaspora of the Arab East, joined the Wahhabis [Yarlykapov, Bobrovnikov, 2006, pp. 88-91].

The director skillfully incorporates into the narration excerpts from documentaries of his secular colleagues-the never-released television film "Kadar Triangle" by Zaur Gaziyev [Kadar Triangle, 1999; Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:17:50 - 00:18:50, 01:09:19 - 01:10:06]; stills and excerpts from Yuri Zaitsev's four-part film " Lubyanka. Ordinary terrorism: Jihad. Basayev. Raduyev. Nord-Ost" [Lubyanka. Ordinary Terrorism, 2004; Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:04:46 - 00:05:11, 00:09:38 - 58, 00:10:14 - 30, 00:10:36 - 11:11, 00:11:26 - 12:17, 00:12:34 - 46, 00:12:56 - 00:13:02, 00:13:07 - 00:14:30, 00:47:57 - 00:48:11, 00:49:43 - 51 et seq.]; the infamous film critical of the Bush administration "Fahrenheit 9/11" by American documentary filmmaker Michael Moore [Fahrenheit 9/11, 2004], who, however, changed his name from Alishayev to James [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:38:58 - 00:39:13, 00:39:18 - 35, 00:41:21 - 00:44:30, 00:44:38 - 00:46:53, 00:47:51 - 56, 00:49:19 - 36]. His last work was translated into Russian before Alishaev and published in Dagestan as a separate "pirate" publication called "America after 9/11: Bush Terrorist No. 1. Ben-la-din Terrorist No. 2" ⁴ [America after 9/11, 2004]. From the Russian-Dagestani films mentioned above, excerpts of videos of Chechen resistance from the websites of Kavkazcenter and others were also transferred here. [www.kavkazcenter.com; http://hunafa.com]. Here the author also inserts pages from popular Internet sites, primarily the Russian-language version of Google. When it comes to the past and the "Wahhabization" of Arabia in the 18th - first quarter of the 20th century, the director's chronicle of the First World War and the British Colonial Empire of the second third of the 20th century comes to the rescue. [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:30:55 - 00:31:09, 00:37:31 - 40, 00:37:47 - 00:38:03], which the author, however, anachronistically transfers a hundred or a hundred and fifty years ago, and in some cases-and A historical film drama like David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia [Lowrence of Arabia, 1962; Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:30:40 - 48, 00:31:22 - 42, 00:33:12 - 16, 00:34:21 - 55, 00:36:01 - 14].

The Islamic call (da'wa), to which "Ordinary Wahhabism" can be attributed, attaches great importance to the written word in Arabic. That's why the film has a lot of quotes, mostly in Russian translation. Joining the opinion of the Egyptian scholar Muhammad Sa'id al-Buti on the inadmissibility of jihad among Muslims, the director refers to pages 174-193 of his work "Al-Salafiya", which in the film turned into "Al-Jihad" [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:50:23 - 56; al-Buti, 1998; al-Buti, 2004]. Statements and verses (nazm) of the Chirkey sheikh are given. The accusation of Wahhabis is based on the publications of the muftiate's newspapers "As-Salam" and "Nurul Islam". But, of course, at the forefront, as befits a devout Muslim, Alishaev puts the evidence of the Koran and the pious Muslim tradition (sunnah) coming from the Prophet. In a dispute with Bagauddin, who denies the meaning of reading the Qur'an to the souls of the deceased (talkin), Muhammad-Said Abakarov from Khasavyurt refers to

⁴ Spelling and punctuation of the original are preserved.

on the ayat from the Qur'an and the tradition (hadith) of the Prophet. At the same time, he shakes a small book that resembles the popular collection of 40 hadiths of Imam al-Nawawi in Dagestan [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:07:30 - 00:08:26]. The heated argument that broke out between them is in Avar with Russian subtitles. Trashing the" false Wahhabi " pamphlet of Muhammad ibn Jamil Zina for quoting hadiths in a truncated form, the author goes to a local Arabist scholar from among the supporters of the muftiate, who gives him the full text of the hadith from the Sunan collection of Muhammad ibn Yazid al-Qazvini [Zina, 1993, p. 56, 112; Ibn Maja, b. g.; Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:20:45 - 00:22:51]. Sometimes, however, the interpretation of hadiths is free. So, the director connects the activities of Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab in Nejd with the refusal of the Prophet to bless this area of Arabia, along with Syria (ash-Sham) and Yemen, because from it "the horn of Shaitan will appear". Under the ominous music, a map of Arabia appears with the horn of Iblis growing up on the site of the capital of the future Saudi Kingdom [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:29:49 - 00:30:18]. Among the arguments against the Wahhabis, there are also fakes, such as the fake memoirs of Humphrey, an English spy in Basra, who allegedly studied with Ibn 'Abd al-Wahhab [Ordinary Wahhabism], translated into Russian from Turkish., 2005, 00:32:02 - 00:33:40; Who benefited from the emergence of Wahhabism, 2000].

Filmed in defiance of "Ordinary Wahhabism" and posted on websites muslimka.ru and on YouTube, the documentary "Ordinary Sufism" is mainly devoted to the texts of hadiths and fatwas commented on behind the scenes in Arabic. For 44 short episodes, 6 to 8 minutes each, we see only texts and nothing more. The content of the film is very monotonous. First, the voice-over reads excerpts from the commentaries on the fundamentals of faith (Usul ad-din) in Arabic, and then translates them into Russian and comments. Occasionally, we see a hand that moves a pencil along the lines. This technique is intended to show the ignorance and deception of supporters of the officially recognized DUMD and Sufi sheikhs of Dagestan. The author of the film decided to play out one episode from Alishaev's film, where he trashes Zin's pamphlet in Russian, resorting to authoritative Arabic editions of hadiths. Similarly, in Ordinary Sufism, the thin pamphlets on Da'wa published by the DUMD do not stand up to criticism next to the bulky volumes of recently printed Arabic normative texts and commentaries. The film itself against Sufis turned out to be weaker in form. It is very long and boring, which even his fans complain about in Online blogs: "BismiLLAH, the film is very long, and we wish you patience to see it through to the end" (sic!) [www.youtube.com, Sitamuslima, 10.05.2010, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jYOUNjBCdU, last visited on 20.02.2011].

Video clips of anti-Russian jihad in the North Caucasus are more vivid, though more primitive. One of the most popular among them was released in July 2010 in memory of Shahid Alexander Tikhomirov (1982-2010) from Ulan - Ude, who was killed in battle with Russian troops, who converted to Islam under the name of Said Abu Sa'da Buryatsky and until his death on March 5 in the Ingush village of Ekazhevo was one of the ideologists of the armed Islamic underground in the North Caucasus. The video was directed, it seems, by one of the students of the madrasah of Said Buryatsky. He posted it on the site guraba.net The video includes a video sequence with musical accompaniment on the theme of the famous Koranic ayat that glorifies the fate of the martyr Shahmd: "Indeed, Allah has bought from the believers their lives and possessions in exchange for Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah, killing and dying. This is His promise and commitment in the Taurat, Injeel ⁵ and the Qur'an. Who fulfills their promises better than Allah? Rejoice in the bargain you have made. This is the great success" [Quran 9: 112/111]. It is followed by

⁵ The Torah and the Gospels.

quote from the surah "The Family of Imran" that Muslims should rejoice in the death of a shahid, who is inevitably waiting for paradise [Qur'an, 3:163/169-164/170] ⁶.

Said Buryatsky is transformed in the video into a staunch "Muslim soldier"who died with faith, but was not defeated. It is also interesting how the director used Russian photos of the murdered preacher, covered in blood and mud, with bullet wounds on his face, for counter-propaganda. In the video, they turned into a tool to glorify the deceased [Said Abu Sad..., 2010, 00:00:07, 00:00:36, 00:01:41, 00:02:41]. After all, as you know, the wounds of a shahid are painted and, according to Islamic tradition, his body does not need to be washed. In addition to pious formulas (tasliya), Quranic quotations [ibid., 00: 03: 163-169] and Buryatsky's letters about jihad, the video is decorated with photo portraits of the shahid, presented as a mentor of Mujahideen and a pilgrim, taken during the hajj. At the same time, the faces of his Mujahideen companions are lit up for conspiracy purposes [to Said Abu Sad..., 2010, 00:03:05, 12, 35, 43], probably, like the face of the reader from "Ordinary Sufism". The video ends with verses dedicated to Shahid by his wife Umm Sa'd [Said Abu Sad..., 2010, 00:06:23 - 43], and a prayer-du'a.

What can we say about the Islamic background of the content and images of the controversial video of the 2000s? The dispute here is not between supporters and opponents of Islam, but between rival factions of Muslims, each of which accuses opponents of moving away from Islam. In the Islamist underground, the criterion for belonging to Islam is participation in jihad. For his supporters, the entire Russian Caucasus belongs to the territory of war (dar al-harb), where real Muslims are obliged to fight against infidels and hypocritical Muslims who support them (munafikun). The main topic of Islamist websites guraba.net and hunafa.com that leaves armed jihad. Wahhabis struggle primarily with the local Muslim tradition. They deny the Islamic nature of Sufism, a funeral cult with the rite of reading the Koran for the dead (talkin), and honoring graves (ziyarat). "saints" (awliya'), the cult of the Prophet, panegyrics in honor of his birth (mawlid), and so on. 10 years after the military defeat of the movement, Bagauddin Magomedov, now from Saudi Arabia, is again lecturing on the errors of Sufis, for example, in understanding intercession (shafa'a), without calling for jihad [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3HbfBL19Q&feature=related, last accessed 20.02.2011]. In turn, traditionalists cannot imagine Islam without "absolutely natural things for Muslims, such as reading the Koran over the dead, holding mawlids, honoring saints" [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:01:57 - 00:02:07]. This explains the ending of Alishaev's film to the disturbing music of E. Grieg's suite "In the Cave of the Mountain King" ⁷: Bagauddin, who rejected the nature of Islam, disappears in the flames of hell that previously consumed the followers of Ibn ' Abd al-Wahhab in Arabia [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 01:56:06 - 16, 00:37:29].

THE LEGACY OF SOVIET FILM CLASSICS AND ... THE COLD WAR

None of the trends in post-Soviet Islam need particularly love the Soviet past, when the free exercise of faith was difficult, Muslims and believers of other faiths were persecuted, shrines were violated, and ties with fellow believers abroad were cut off. At the end of Abdulla Ashirov's film, Sheikh Said-Afandi Chirkeysky clearly expressed this natural point of view in his interview: "For 70 years, the Soviet government banned religion and many other things that are natural to humans, even banned them... trade. And hers... it didn't work out, because at the heart of it

⁶ The author of the video quotes the Koran according to the Azerbaijani arabist Elmir Guliyev, whose Russian translation, rejected in academic circles for frequent inaccuracies, is very popular among Muslims in the Caucasus.

⁷ The author is grateful to Alexander Zheglov for his help in identifying the soundtrack sources.

it was a lie!" Unwittingly paraphrasing Solzhenitsyn's famous call to "live not by lies" [Solzhenitsyn, 1974], the sheikh compares the" deception " of believers by Wahhabis with the struggle against the religion of the Soviet government [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 01:13:18 - 01:14:01]. For the Wahhabis and the armed Islamist underground, the Soviet past is not important at all. They are interested in the eternal truth of Islam and the true destinies of Muslims. The Soviet past is forgotten, overgrown in the cultural memory of modern Muslims with a lot of fantastic details. Confusing Kolyma and Auschwitz, Bagauddin Magomedov writes in the autobiographical introduction to his latest book about the horrors of communist concentration camps, in which "prisoners were ground in mills intended for people, placed in gas chambers..." [Ad-Dagestani, 2006, p.5].

Nevertheless, the study of the life and works of the spiritual elite of the Muslims of Dagestan and the North Caucasus suggests that the region will not have enough of the legacy of the Soviet past for a long time. It is especially strongly felt in the Islamic polemical cinema. The director of" Ordinary Wahhabism " does not hide the influence of Mikhail Romm's famous Russian documentary "Ordinary Fascism", which was released in 1965, exposing the totalitarian Nazi regime that led to World War II. Judging by the film, Alishaev was close to Romm's idea to warn about the recent past of young people who knew firsthand about the horrors of this bloody war. The name itself evokes an association with "Ordinary fascism". On the one hand, Abdulla Alishayev was not averse to equating the odious fascist movement banned in Russia and abroad with the Dagestani Wahhabis, on the other hand, he creatively used the example of a Soviet documentary filmmaker. They have a lot in common. This is, first of all, the method of editing using captured chronicles (in Alishaev's case, after the defeat of Wahhabi communities and centers in 1998-1999 through the DUMD channels) and amateur filming. Following Romm, Alishaev confronts contrasting editing shots of the present and the past, defames the speeches of ideological enemies (cf.: [Ordinary fascism, 1965, 58:34 - 43]), by commenting on their content behind the scenes. From Romm, he also takes a number of concepts, first of all "totalitarianism", turning Wahhabis into a "totalitarian sect" [⁸] [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:19:23].

Near the end of the film, Romm talks about neo-Nazism, warning viewers about the danger of a resurgence of totalitarianism defeated in 1945 in the capitalist West, which is trying to overtake the Soviet Union in the arms race [Ordinary fascism, 1965, 01:59:32 - 02:01:13]. This was the official view of Soviet propaganda during the Cold War. The Cold War is long over, borders are open, and fears of aggression from the West seem to have dissipated. However, "Ordinary Wahhabism" shows that many Soviet-era phobias are still alive in the Russian Caucasus. Wahhabism is certified here as "ideological sabotage in Islam" [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:00:42]. A quote from the Nurul Islam newspaper (with minor corrections) can be mistaken for an editorial from Pravda in the 1960s: "The United States made a serious bet on Wahhabism as a tool for the collapse of Russia. Wahhabism is successful (sic! - V. B.) in that with its help, a person can be zombified to such an extent that he will allegedly kill innocent people on behalf of the Almighty, becoming a blind tool in the geopolitical games of the United States and Zionism " [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:40:11 - 33; Abdulaev, 2005, p. 2]. A little earlier, the director, with reference to the Dagestani doctor Kamil Arbuliyev, quite seriously claims that the World Assembly of Islamic Youth (WAMI) in his pamphlets, he hypnotizes the reader with the help of "neuro-linguistic programming" (NLP), transferred by the American special services in the 1990s to "non-traditional sects" and Wahhabis for introduction to Russia [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:23:03 - 00:29:00].

⁸ Definition of Zaur Gaziev.

From the" cold war " in the works of the Islamic appeal remained undisguised anti-Americanism. The set of enemies of Russian Muslims among Dagestani authors writing in this genre has not changed since the mid-20th century. These are the United States and Israel, whose special services are plotting against Muslims, as well as the regimes of pro-American Arab countries, primarily Saudi Arabia. At the beginning of the story about "ordinary Wahhabism", we see such an enemy in the guise of a fat Arab emissary from the West, whose ominous shadow obscures the map of Dagestan [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:01:19]. The historical part of the film is about the connection of Wahhabism with the "active colonial expansion of Western countries to almost all regions of the world" in the XVIII century., 2005, 00:30:27 - 33] copied from Soviet textbooks on the modern history of the East (cf.: [Huber, Kim, Heifitz, 1982]). The continuity of cliches here to some extent goes through representatives of the Muslim spiritual elite, some of which "gently" passed to the Dagestan Muftiate (DUMD) from the Soviet muftiate of the North Caucasus (DUMSK). Some passages from the middle and end of Alishaev's film are strikingly reminiscent of the statements of the DUMSK leaders about the peacemaking activities of the Soviet Union, the struggle of Soviet Muslims "against the Israeli and American militarism "[Sovet shark mulmonlary, 1974, p. 3], and the training in the Soviet North Caucasus of "spiritual cadres who could purely and without any Jewishness (sic!. - V. B. and heresies to reveal and comment on the spirit of Islam and its values, to direct the spiritual activities of Muslims in accordance with the Islamic Sharia and Soviet legislation on religious cults" [Report of DUMSK Chairman Mahmud-Hajji Gekkiev, 1980(7), p. 2]. The struggle against Zionism became even more acute among propagandists of the 1990s. anti-Semitism. For the director, the connection between terrorist No. 1 Bin Laden, US President George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is beyond doubt. Under the soundtrack of the popular 2002 Russian TV series "Brigada", he combines these three portraits into one triangle [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:44:37].

Despite the mutual hostility of traditionalists and Wahhabis, supporters and opponents of the Muslim underground, they are united by hatred of the United States and Israel. Islamist websites - hunafa.com and guraba.net. - it is distinguished by the sharp anti-Russian orientation of the materials. On the last page, under the heading "Know the enemy", a photo montage was published on September 1, 2009, representing Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the head of the" Chekist-Zionist Cahal " in an embrace with the horned Iblis. A long expletive-filled article against the "Zionist-Chekist fascist" at the head of Russia concludes with the equally lingering poem "Message of the oligarchs to the Russians" about drunken and smelly Goyim-Stinkers who kill Muslims in the Caucasus on the order of the Jews who deceived them. The ruling "fiends of hell" self-critically assess themselves as follows::

 
 
 We are a gang of fascists, the spawn of "Kagal" 
 We are the greedy jackals of Zion! 
 We plunder resources so that you don't get them, 
 So that no more Goyim children are born. 
 
 In Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan 
 The enemies of the Zionists live-Muslims. 
 Kill them, Stinky9-Kagala Mercenary, 
 To rob you, they did not interfere with us. 
 
 They are "terrorists" and we are your friends. 
 Don't you dare contradict us - we'll send you to the bunks... 
 
 

[Satan's Mafia's Message to Its Slaves, 2009]

⁹ The shocking wordplay here is intended to show the moral impurity of modern Russia's policy towards Muslims in the Caucasus.

In this "creativity", designed in the style of shocking the user , which is generally characteristic of this site, published in Russian and Avar languages, one should note the orientation towards an alliance with Russian nationalists against Americans and Jews. Here, Islamic nationalist " literature "reverses generally accepted definitions, using labels taken from the Soviet Cold War arsenal - "fascist"," Zionist "and so on-to defame ideological opponents. Perhaps these verses and the headline about "Slavonic slaves" indicate a continuity with Soviet slogans, among which the slogan from elementary school comes to mind: "We are not slaves, slaves are not us!" The page contains a large selection of anti-Semitic and anti-American excursions: "Enemies of Islam. A few strokes" [www.guraba.net/ras/, 15.07.2009] with the annals of crimes against Muslims in Russia and Western Europe; "Jewish background of the Battle of Jamal and the Battle of Siffin" [www.guraba.net/rus/, 09.07.2009]; "A few words about the Jewish 'aqeedah" [www.guraba.net/rus/, 30.05.2009]; "What biorobot Jews say about themselves" [www.guraba.net/rus/, 07.05.2009] with a portrait of Bush Jr. ¹⁰.

Internet videos about martyrs show the influence of post-Soviet pop culture. So, in the video about Saeed Abu Sa'deh, the paradise waiting for Shaheed is presented as a picture of a travel agency: paradise coral island with palm trees in the middle of the endless azure ocean under a blue sky [Saidu Abu Sadu..., 2010, 04: 21]. This image seems to represent a disquoted video quote from an old French action movie starring Belmondo, which was held at the Soviet box office under the title "Private Detective" [Private Detective, 1976, 01:20:21 - 29]. The detective, nicknamed the Hunter, operates where the usual methods of justice do not work. Only he can neutralize a dangerous gangster named Hawk, who uses young unemployed guys to rob banks and jewelry stores, leaving no trace and killing all his accomplices. In one of these cases, Hawk's accomplice Costa Valdez miraculously survived, but does not want to give evidence to the"cops". The hunter is put in the same prison cell with him, and soon they organize an escape. The following conversation takes place between them:

"Look, you must have made a lot of money," Costa says to the Hunter.

"Yes, there is some," he says.

"What did you buy?"

- The island...

"And you're alone in there?"

"Of course.

"Is your island beautiful?"

- Everything is as it should be: blue sky, azure sea and white sand. Picture.

"Listen, let's go to your island... [Private Investigator, 1976, 01:08:35 - 01:09:11].

Costa tries to buy such a picture island for himself with the treasures accumulated by the Hawk, but he unexpectedly catches and kills the guy... This film, which was raved about by many of the Soviet generation of the 1960s and 1980s, may have influenced the style of Islamic polemical video. Western action films, as well as Indian melodramas, which have been extremely popular in the Caucasus since the 1960s to the present, have also contributed to the musical accompaniment and style of Islamic cinema. It is not for nothing that the "pirate" CD with the Russian version of Michael Moore's anti-Bush film "Fahrenheit ^9/11" also includes the 2006 Turkish action film "Iraq - Valley of Wolves", about the US war in Iraq in 2003 - 2010, sustained in the spirit of Indian melodramas. and bad American mercenaries, with whom heroic freedom-loving Muslims are fighting

¹⁰ http://guraba.net/ms/content/blogsection/21/106/, last visited on 20.02.2011.

¹¹ Kurtlar vadisi - Irak.

and Muslim women [America after 9/11, 2004]. Da'wa's heroics also did not escape the influence of images of "fiery revolutionaries" of the Soviet era, most notably the Latin American "gangster" Che Guevara, who seems to have been imitated by Said Buryatsky in photographs depicting him as a mujahid guerrilla in Chechnya [Said Abu Sad..., 2010, 09:07, 09:13]. The Soviet style also permeates the ending of Abdulla Alishayev's film. Said-Afandi ¹² appears in it as a wise leader, a kind of Muslim Lenin, whose precepts should help Muslims defeat their enemies and achieve paradise. The film's crowning quotes from the sheikh's speeches are stylistically similar to the sayings of Communist Party leaders on Soviet posters.

The legacy of the late Soviet era largely determined not only the form, but also the content of Islamic documentary films. Under its influence, the only argument in disputes with ideological opponents is recognized only by the Koran and the Sunnah of the Prophet. Later Islamic tradition (taqlid), especially of local origin, is not taken into account. Wahhabis generally go beyond the religious and legal schools (madhhabs) of Sunni Islam. This feature is clearly visible in the films discussed here. Thus, the director of" Ordinary Sufism " uses texts from the Koran to break down Said-afandi's arguments about the need for a Muslim spiritual mentor [Ordinary Sufism, 2009: 27, 03:08]. In other cases, he refers to authentic hadiths, accusing Sufis of ignorance. Similarly, the director of "Ordinary Wahhabism" behaves, asking to translate and comment for him a reliable hadith from the collection of "Sunan Ibn Majah" [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 00:20:45 - 00:22:51]. This argument was adopted in the fatwas of regional muftis that emerged in 1943-1944, including the DUMSK, whose decisions were justified only by references to the Koran, hadiths, and individual fatwas issued on their basis (for example, by Ibn Hajar and Soviet legislation). [Fatwa..., 12.11.1959, p. 129] or commentaries to the Koran [Collection of fatwas..., 1987, p. 3-4]. So, the reasons for the "Wahhabization" of the region should also be sought in the activities of Soviet muftis.

Another consequence of the Soviet transformation of knowledge about Islam is the attempt of the Muslim elite to base their faith on the foundation of the achievements of modern science (cf.: [Majidov, 1983, pp. 236-237]). Many pages of post-Soviet pamphlets about Islam and films in the da'wa genre seem to be copied from Soviet models. Like the militant atheists of the Soviet era, their authors also clumsily try to rely on the achievements of natural sciences to confirm their positions. Thus, in the introduction to the pamphlet "Namaz" Bagauddin Magomedov justifies the cosmogony of Islam with facts from physics and genetics, quotes from Francis Bacon, physicist Thomas Kelvin. The author's scientific constructions make a pitiful impression, such as the thesis that "geneticists' research has proved that all races and peoples of the Earth descended from one woman!" [Bagauddin, 1999, pp. 3-6]. Like the militant atheists of the Soviet era, Bagauddin likes to denounce the ignorance of believers in miracles associated with the tombs of "saints". This desire is also noticeable in the style of the films being analyzed. Let's recall the frame with the rings of Saturn in the video about Said Buryatsky, depicting the preparedShaheed's path through very realistic space to paradise [Saeed Abu Sad..., 2010, 5:56 - 7:02]. The authors of works in the spirit of the Islamic appeal also borrow techniques for criticizing ideological opponents from Soviet fighters against religion. Soviet propagandists attacked not so much the teaching of Islam as its popular forms and Muslim rituals [Bobrovnikov, 2011, p. 77-78]. They smashed the greed of the Sufi sheikhs, the ignorance and superstition of their murids. All these topics have been smoothly translated into the writings and video performances of modern Wahhabis.

¹² Chirkeysky.

DIRECTOR AND PRODUCERS

What can you say about the production of an Islamic polemical video? Almost nothing is known about those who prepared and recorded "Ordinary Sufism". You can only notice the strong Darghin accent ¹³, with which the announcer, and possibly the director at the same time, reads out quotes in Arabic and Russian. The credits to the first part of the film say: "This film-the work of many brothers-does not set out to ridicule or denigrate anyone, is purely educational in nature and was shot in order to show the inconsistencies that we encounter every day on the shelves of Islamic stores with the Holy Quran and the Sunnah of our Prophet (SA). V. ¹⁴). And may Allah Most High make this film useful for those who watch it, and may everyone, if the Lord of the Worlds so wills, benefit for themselves" (spelling and punctuation of the original are preserved) [Ordinary Sufism, 2009, ch. 1, 00:00:12 - 57]. The video dedicated to Shahid Said Abu Sa'd Buryatsky, as well as other propaganda clips of the Islamist underground, was made by his students and posted on guraba websites specializing in jihad.net and hunafa.com. The names of the directors and other people who worked on them are unknown to us.

The history of the emergence of "Ordinary Wahhabism"is better known. "The film was created by order of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Dagestan", as stated in the credits [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 01:14:06]. It was shot at the private Dagestan film studio Vostok. Like other Islamic documentary video productions, the film didn't cost much. The cost of its production was paid by TV-Chirkey (now Makhachkala-TV), where the director worked for several years as editor-in-chief. The cameramen were Magomedrasul Abarakov and Magomed Medzhidov. The fate of the film's director is curious. By education, he was an orientalist: he graduated from the Faculty of Oriental Studies of Dagestan State University, where, among other things, he studied Arabic. Even before graduating from DSU, Alishayev chose the field of Islamic journalism, which originated in the republic in the 1990s. He collaborated with the newspaper DUMD "As-Salam", then led the Islamic channel TV-Chirkey program "Peace to your home". After finishing his work on "Ordinary Wahhabism", in 2006 he made another documentary for TV-Chirkey - "Peace to your Home", in which he spoke about Muslim converts who came to Islam by joining the Shazili tariqa and becoming murids of Sheikh Said-Afandi. This topic was close to Alishayev, who himself converted to Islam in his youth. At the same time he changed the birth name of the founder of the German Communist Party Thelmann to the Muslim name Abdullah [http://rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2924256, last visited on 20.02.2011]. Already in the following year, 2007, Alishaev is working on a documentary about young people who are faced with the problem of drug addiction and AIDS. The problems that arise among young people who have contracted AIDS are analyzed by the director as symptoms of the general spiritual and moral crisis of post-Soviet society. The journalist's name was widely known in Dagestan.

With the undoubted talent of a documentary filmmaker, the author of "Ordinary Wahhabism" was not awarded the laurels of Romm. However, his film participated in several Russian documentary and feature film competitions, was last shown at the Moscow Film Festival in 2010 and even won the "Professional documentary film" nomination at the Second All-Russian Film Festival "Man and War", held in Yekaterinburg in 2009. [http://www.kinoglaz.fr/u_fiche_film. php?lang=ru&num=5791, last visited on 20.02.2011]. But its meaning is still exclusively local. No wonder on the site " afisha.<url> " he did not receive a single review

¹³ The author is grateful to Shamil Shikhaliev for drawing his attention to this detail.

¹⁴ In the Islamic tradition, pious well-wishing (tasliya) is performed after mentioning the name of the Prophet. The abbreviation means "peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him"in Arabic.

[http://www.afisha.ru/movie/201272/, last visited on 20.02.2011]. Even less well-known outside the North Caucasus are "Ordinary Sufism" and videos about jihad from Islamist Dagestani websites. These works were created not only about young people and with the participation of young people, but also for Muslim youth, in order to explain to them what "real Islam" should be and what dangerous deviations from it are. This conclusion is easy to make by summarizing the materials outlined above.

YOUNG PEOPLE WATCH AND COMMENT ON ISLAMIC VIDEOS

How did the youth of the Russian North Caucasus respond to Alishaev's video production? To some extent, this can be seen from Internet blogs. The first of the reviews, which appeared on January 7, 2007, is clearly not favorable to the film: "00: 34: 00. I look at the DVD kinishka "Ordinary Wahhabism", shot by the Duma of the Republic of Dagestan. Drizzle, of course... The film ended - they show Bagautdin's conversation with the muftis... It's hard to watch... tedious... + throughout the movie, both sides are drizzled ¹⁵. I'll check it out and have an opinion... insha Allah, upd: Converted all five parts and fill in here. Who needs it - take it" [http://shlakoblock.livejournal.com/262466.html].

15 comments were made to this ad in chat rooms. Some contain requests to suggest where to buy or" download "the original film:" rashid_dagh, where is it sold, by the way? In the kiosks of Makhachkala, I still did not find this film." - "k_assir, How did you not find it? - "shlakoblock, I can't know - they gave me someone else's disk to look at (and not even the one who gave it to the one who gave it to me...), in short, I'm currently converting it to avi... and insha Allah will post on the site, (the post is for this and posted, so that if anyone needs-tsynkanuli. tsink ¹⁶ passed in three minutes...so..the first part is already on the way)". - "rashid_dagh, ok. post it, let's see insha'allah". Between the blogger who posted the film and visitors to his page, a chatter ensues "for life", about what he has seen and what else you can see and read about" real Islam": "ahmadabdulvahid, Al-Salamu Alaikum. Well, yes, there is also an unusual Wahhabism. There is also a magic one. Although in fact there are witnesses of "toy Wahhabism"." - "shlakoblock, Vaalleikumassalyam. Well, I'll fill it up - you'll see, insha Allah... well, they screwed up there... the Muslims were badly exposed... and with Beslan and in general, mistakes were made... and the suffixes are^{We played it well}... moreover, it is good that they have stuffed a lot of lies, and they will pour it out on the prepared Dagestani electorate." "ahmadabdulvahid, it's a pity that neither of them are studying... Al-Salamu Alaikum, Ahi. See "The Morality of a Muslim" 1st chapter end of the 4th paragraph. "- ... "shlakoblock, Waalleykumassalyam. ..." For example, the obligatory five-fold daily prayer (salat) prescribed by Allah keeps a person from unworthy actions and deeds. Allaah explains to us the wisdom of this injunction:"...And stand in prayer, for prayer keeps you from abomination and from the wrongdoer" (Surah 29, verse 45). "ahmadabdulvahid, Aaaaa, it's a bit different there. Here: "On the contrary, the obligations that Islam imposes on everyone who considers himself one of its members are actions that a person constantly repeats in order to develop the habit of living with correct morals. And also to ensure that a person always firmly adheres to them, regardless of changes in living conditions. They are somewhat similar to sports exercises, which a person aspires to with love and, by performing them regularly, strives for physical health and a healthy life. The noble Qur'an and the pure Sunnah clearly reveal these truths to us."

¹⁵ In the sense of: "fill in", "hang noodles on their ears", i.e. they lie, behave inadequately.

¹⁶ Modern blogger jargon of the Runet: post - message, question, answer, comment; tsynkanut - give a signal, report.

¹⁷ This is how the author mockingly calls the opponents of the Wahhabis - "Sufists".

spelling, punctuation, and original style) [http://shlakoblock.livejournal.com/262466.html, last visited on 20.02.2011].

There is no unity among bloggers. Opponents of the "Sufis" took offense at the fact that Bagauddin and their other idols are called "Wahhabis". Others praise Sufism, but not Sheikh Saeed Afandi. In addition, in blogs you can hear the abuse of nationalists of various stripes from fans of Great Russia to builders of Great Chechnya. Here are the typical utterances (spelling and punctuation preserved)::

"mrPlatinum100, January 2010: What Wahhabism!!! These are Kharijites ¹⁸! The most real ones! about them, the Prophet S. A. V. predicted that such fanatics with young hearts would appear, saying, " kill them. What a stupid word Wahhabism is, and they are not drug addicts, not for money, they are Kharijite fanatics."

"Shieshan, May 2010: Kharijites will kill Muslims and have other relations with infidels. Who is with the infidels today? And kills innocent Muslims?"

"zarechenskiy, September 2009: No going to some Ustaz ¹⁹ or to a sheikh is not shirk ²⁰, but calling out to them or walking around their graves is 100% shirk."

"bardakdurak, September 2009: Wahabis are monotheists, no doubt about it, they are! Monotheism is when there is only one God. Well, fellow Wahabists, you are monotheists, we confess and repent that you are better than us in this, you are ahead of us in this. We surrender..."

"AzeriFighter, December 2009: What a SCHMUCK this Bagauddin is!"

"Elsi1986, December 2009: I ... this Dagestan!.. There have always been and will always be six Chechens, and Dagestani sluts are all."

"crazy05boy, February 2010: Eslsil986, you're a bitch. Where did you see Dagestanis with six Chechens? And open your eyes, see who is engaged in prostitution in Khasavyurt, namely your Chechens! You're a schmuck."

"Terorist05, August 2010: Elsi1986, yes I am your mouth and rod..., bitch, your sister is a slut."..

"RUSSIANORTHODOX1, August 2010: MUHAMED IS A DEMON" [http://www.youtube.com/comment_servlet?all_comments=1&v..., last visited on 20.02.2011].

As can be seen from the above statements, the level of almost all participants in youth Internet blogs and chats is very poor (compare the observations of similar phenomena in Central Asia by the Tashkent Islamic scholar Bakhtiyar Babadjanov [Babadjanov, 2007, p. 140-159]). Their minds are filled with a mess of popular missionary pamphlets about Islam, images from action movies and electronic games, mixed with a passion for wrestling and other sports that are particularly respected among Dagestanis and other residents of the Russian North Caucasus [Karpov, 2007, p. 566, note 33]. Discussions among supporters of polar points of view do not work out, and mutual reproaches quickly descend into wretched square swearing. As a rule, at this stage, Russian nationalist skinheads intervene in the dispute about Islam, reacting to Muslims like a bull to a red rag, and the discussion finally falls apart. It seems that the participants in the debate about" correct "and" distorted " Islam are all quite young people. This is indicated by the peculiarities of their blunt youth vocabulary with fragments of Islamic concepts and formulas. Judging by the dates inserted in some pseudonyms, many of them belong to the generation of the 1980s. They are now in their early twenties. Some include

¹⁸ A movement that broke away from Sunni Islam in the early Caliphate.

¹⁹ To the Teacher.

²⁰ Polytheism.

²¹ In the Russian language of the XIX century. this word meant a pitiful, humiliated person. It is formed from the obsolete verb chmarit - to wither, to wither. [Dahl, 1882, vol. IV, p. 628]. In the modern prison jargon of criminals, it means "a person who has morally fallen", the abbreviation of which forms the word SCHMUCK.

c) his affiliation to Islam, as the first blogger to call himself "leva. musulmanin".

For some of them, the controversy over Islam seems to lead to national grievances that are still acute in Khasavyurt and several other districts of Dagestan, which were affected by the two Russian-Chechen wars and the fight of federal forces against terrorism. Comments on " Ordinary Sufism "(which, by the way, are two or three times less) also came out of the youth Muslim environment in the north and center of Dagestan. But here the opinions of bloggers were more evenly divided into supporters and opponents of the Wahhabis. Aladam, born in 1978, is thrilled: "You have great videos. Here is all their nose poke to know what they are doing. Thank you brother for the video and those who shot it, for their hard work and patience" (August 2009). A month later, he finished all the long 44 episodes and again looked at the blog with a question: "Will there be a sequel? Please, if there is and if there is an opportunity, time, and desire, send the continuation here. Very interesting. Thank you for earlier." Elmirka, born in 1987, agrees with him: "mashaAllah, the brothers are doing great... A useful video was made" (December 2009). Mahmoud Abu Ahmed disagrees with this and accuses the film's creator of ignorance or lying: "The wrong person reads the hadith himself!"Khalid Zirar, finding under this pseudonym a supporter of the "Sufists" and also a connoisseur of Hadith, swears irritably: "You are a coward and a liar. Why didn't you show your lying face? I have looked at the tafsirs and the hadiths that you have quoted. You lie and nothing else" (spelling and punctuation preserved) [http://www.youtube. com / watch?v=0jYOUNjBCdU, last visited 15.12.2010].

CURRENT POLITICAL CONTEXT

Of course, it is impossible to draw far-reaching conclusions based on such a controversial and uncertain source as blogs on the Internet. But still, it seems possible to somehow correct the assessment of the development of the Wahhabi movement in Dagestan and the North Caucasus based on their materials. The ongoing controversy over "pure Islam" in Dagestan confirms the assumption we made about ten years ago that military measures alone cannot suppress the Wahhabi movement in the region [Bobrovnikov, 2001, p. 29]. More than a decade ago, in the summer and autumn of 1999, federal troops destroyed the Wahhabi "Kadar Zone" and forced the movement's most prominent representatives, including Bagauddin Magomedov, to seek refuge from persecution abroad. But the Wahhabi teachings continue to arouse interest, especially among young people. The Wahhabis went underground, turning into a fabulous old man "everywhere-nowhere", which can not be caught in any way. They have also taken over part of the virtual Russian-speaking Islamic space. At the same time, one should not repeat the mistakes of Western Sovietologists, reducing the situation with Islam in the region to a confrontation between two factions of "official" and "unofficial" Islam [DeWeese, 2002, p. 298 - 330].

The situation is much more contradictory and mosaic. Wahhabis have never been united. The Duma, for its part, does not control the majority of mosque communities registered in the republic. Said-Afandi is undoubtedly a spiritual mentor, an outstanding leader and organizer, but besides him, there are other sheikhs in Dagestan, the relations between whom and, most importantly, between them and the Murids of the Chirkei Sheikh are no less difficult than those between Wahhabis and traditionalists. Not recognizing their rivals 'right to be mentored, they call other Sufi mentors "false shaykhs" (mutashay-them). In addition, the Sufi practices shown in Alishayev's film belong only to one of the branches of the Naqshbandiyya brotherhood operating in Dagestan, which comes from Mahmud of Almala and is therefore called Makhmudiya. At the beginning of the 20th century, Sheikh Saipullakadi combined this line with the teachings of the Shaziliya brotherhood, whose mentors he met in the Volga region. Since that time, Shaziliyya is considered by the sheikhs of this country.

lines as a preparatory stage for those who want to enter the Naqshbandiyah brotherhood. Another branch is represented by the Naqshbandiyya-Khalidiyya, which includes, for example, Sheikh Sirazhuddin (Israfilov, born in 1956) Khuriksky, who is influential in Southern Dagestan. In addition, the teachings of the Qadiriya Sufi brotherhood are widespread in the north of Dagestan.

Propaganda films in the genre of Islamic appeal (da'wa) should not be accepted on faith. Abdulla Alishayev's interviews are mostly taken from representatives of the older generation, most of whose lives were spent under the Soviet regime. The venerable Sheikh Said-Afandi, Imam Qadara Zainuddin-Hajji and his elderly countryman Jambulat-Hajji are for him carriers of folk wisdom, and sometimes deep religious truth. Young people appear in the film as victims of Wahhabi deception. There is a generational conflict. In the appendix to the film "No Comments", the Lebanese Mufti of Ukraine, Ahmed Tamim (born in 1956), recalls one such case when his son refused to read a talkin after his deceased mother after studying for a week at the Bagauddin al-Hikma madrasah. "This is their (Wahhabis') function-to divide the family so that the children are far away from their fathers, " he concludes his instructive story [Ordinary Wahhabism, 2005, 01:53:11 - 32]. Middle-aged people like Kamil Arbuliyev, a doctor, and Zaur Gaziyev, a TV journalist, may be deluded, but in the end, they are saved from the "machinations of Wahhabis" by following the advice of the keepers of the local Islamic tradition. The director also refers the young muezzin from Kadar, Dzhambulat Akbulatov, to the same group that escaped. In" Ordinary Sufism " people, as already mentioned, do not act at all, giving way to texts. In the video about Shahid Said Buryatsky, the roles change. The jihadists here are mostly young and middle-aged. The hero himself, who was less than 28 years old at the time of his death, embodies the type of heroic "Muslim soldier" [Said Abu Sadu..., 2010, 00: 05].

This is true, but not the whole truth. The Wahhabi communities were based on young people and active middle-aged people in their thirties and fifties. The split among Dagestani Muslims caused by the emergence of the Wahhabi movement was not purely based on age, as in the North-West Caucasus. Only a few years have passed since the release of the analyzed films and clips, but the youth of the 1980s and 1990s are already moving to an older age group of middle-aged and elderly people.

There is no need to exaggerate the significance of Islamic propaganda films. Its impact on the development of the situation in the region is relatively small. At the same time, one should not think that videos and documentaries about Islam are not serious. Their directors and viewers are drawn into a complex tangle of relationships between warring Muslim groups. Viewing and distributing, and even more so creating, an Islamic polemical video is associated with a risk to life in the North Caucasus today. The TV journalist profession has become one of the most dangerous. The author of "Ordinary Wahhabism" is no longer alive. On September 2, 2008, Alishayev's car was shot, and the next day he died in a hospital in Makhachkala. His death is attributed to "showdowns" between Wahhabis and the DUMD ne. reasons for the struggle for power and resources in the republic [http://i-r-p.ru/page/stream-event/index-21536.html, last visited on 20.02.2011]. Most of the characters in his film were also killed or forced to leave the Caucasus. Bagauddin Magomedov has been living outside the Caucasus and Russia for more than a decade, hiding somewhere in the homeland of Wahhabism, in Saudi Arabia. In 2002. Khattab was killed, Salman Raduyev, who joined the movement, died in prison in the same year, and Shamil Basayev was killed in 2006. Many of the traditionalists fell victims to terrorist attacks, being awarded, as members of the Islamist underground, the honorary title of shahid. Among them are Mufti Said-Muhammad Abubakarov, who was blown up in the summer of 1998, and his deputies Kuramukhammad-hajji Ramazanov (d. 2007) and Akhmed Tagayev (d. 2009).

INSTEAD OF A CONCLUSION: THE BIRTH OF ISLAMIC YOUTH CINEMA

Islamic documentaries have emerged in the post-Soviet North Caucasus, and especially in Dagestan. This phenomenon is young, young and in many ways unusual. It is characterized by a wide use of editing with contrasting musical design and voice-over comments by the author. The genre of Islamic polemical documentaries was influenced by the traditions of the Islamic call (da'wa) and the Soviet propaganda of the "Cold War", assimilating anti-Western sentiments and anti-Semitism from it. Internet videos about martyrs show the influence of post-Soviet pop culture. Islamic polemical videos are heterogeneous. It reflects the views of a number of opposing factions and groups of the Muslim spiritual elite. The dispute is not between supporters and opponents of Islam, but among different factions of Muslims, each of which accuses opponents of leaving Islam. The most active Islamic documentary film is the DUMD, which expresses the views of the officially recognized muftiate. In recent years, propaganda clips of members of the Islamist armed underground, whose ideologue before his death in the summer of 2010 was Alexander Tikhomirov, a convert to Islam, better known as Said Buryatsky, have become more widely distributed.

Muslim youth were also the main target of the Islamic appeal, which was aimed at explaining to them what "real Islam" should be and what are the dangerous deviations from it. For their part, young people reacted to the polemical film offered to them. But their position in relation to the problems of modern Islam has never been uniform. It reflects the complex conflict situation and heterogeneous composition of the region's Muslim society today. Directors and viewers find themselves caught up in a complex tangle of relationships between warring factions. This fact makes Muslim video production particularly important for the discursive analysis of the reproduction of knowledge about Islam in the post-Soviet Caucasus by means of cinema.

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