Caliphate Ideas in the Volga Region: Hizb ut-Tahrir Activity

 

Founded in 1953 in East Jerusalem by a Palestinian judge, Taqi al-Din Nabhani (1909–1977), Hizb ut-Tahrir initially had the dual purpose of establishing an Islamic state and liberating Palestine. Its geographical expansion coincided with a broadening of the party’s focus from a primary concern with Palestine to the project of setting up an Islamic state. Hizb ut-Tahrir’s declared goal became

 

67. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan is a militant Islamist group formed in 1991 that organized operations and raids around Central Asia and Afghanistan. Since 2001 its operating activity has been substantially decreased. For more details, see Rimma Akhmirova, “Derevnya Wahhabitov” [The Wahhabis village], September 9, 2011, http://www.ves.lv.article/18516.

68. See “V Ulyanovske osuzhden poslednii clen gruppy extremistov-wahhabitov” [The last member of the Wahhabi extremists’ group is convicted in Ulyanovsk], Interfax News Agency, August 30, 2010, http:// www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=37137.

69. See “Glava molodezhnogo soveta kurultaya bashkirskoi molodezhi podozrevayetsya v extremizme” [The head of the Youth Bashkir Kurultay Council is suspected of promoting religious extremism], Interfax News Agency, December 16, 2011, http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=43460.

 

 

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“to resume the Islamic way of life and to convey the Islamic call to the world.”70The pathos of Hizb ut-Tahrir is directed toward reestablishing the Islamic Caliphate and overcoming nation-states existing in the present-day Islamic world. According to Imran Waheed, spokesman for a British branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, the party “believes that the nation-states in the Muslim world are artifi-cial creations of Western powers to divide Muslims and exploit resources; we seek justice through the formation of a single Islamic state that serves the people rather than corrupt clients of foreign powers.”71In Russia, as well as in a number of countries of Central Asia and the Middle East, the party is considered a terrorist organization and is banned, yet at the same time many European countries and the United States do not include it in their “terrorist lists.” In its public statements, Hizb ut-Tahrir usually rejects violence; this distinguishes the party from most Salafis, who in turn consider Hizb ut-Tahrir a “godless sect.” Seven days after the attacks of September 11, 2001, Hizb ut-Tahrir issued a statement in which it suggested that Muslims should not undertake terrorist actions. Yet the public activity of Hizb ut-Tahrir does include anti-Zionism, anti-capitalism, anti-democracy, and anti-Western approaches.72As the party’s British spokesman noted, “The tears of the widows of Iraq are no different to the tears of widows in London. Western governments do not have a monopoly on anger, rage and suffering.” 3

 

In Russia, the first members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, mainly ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks, appeared in 1996 and initially these ethnic groups played the dominant role in the organization. In the early 2000s, Hizb ut-Tahrir’s presence became more visible and attracted the attention of the FSB. Faced with stiff opposition from the leadership of the Central Asian republics, and especially the authori-ties of Uzbekistan and President Islam Karimov personally, Hizb ut-Tahrir began to look for new areas in which to conduct their activities. Unlike the Salafis, Hizb ut-Tahrir had been concentrated outside the North Caucasus, its members choosing not to play an active role in that most turbulent Russian region, and instead focused on the Volga region, Central Russia, and Siberia. According to Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist and expert on extremism,

 

In our country Hizb ut-Tahrir has greatly changed its character. In the territory of the for-mer Soviet Union it is perceived as a Central Asian movement with features characteristic to that region. So I think the main reason is probably the difference in mentality of the in-habitants of Central Asia and the Caucasus. Therefore this party is not popular in the North Caucasus. If we look at locations of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s followers, we find that they concentrate in the Lower Volga where, unlike the North Caucasus, there is fertile social and ethnic soil for this Central Asian movement.74

 

 

70. David Commins, “Taqi al-Din al-Nabhani and the Islamic Liberation Party,” The Muslim World LXXXI, nos. 3–4 (1991): 194.

71. Manuela Paraipan, “Hizb ut Tahrir: An Interview With Imran Waheed,” September 12, 2005, http:// www.worldpress.org/Europe/2146.cfm.

72. According to the writings of Polish academic Wojciech Grabowski, a professor in the Department of International Relations at the University of Gdansk. See Wojciech Grabowski, “Hizb ut Tahrir—between violence and politics,” http://www.wojciechgrabowski.com.pl/download/Hizb_ut_tahrir.pdf.

73. Manuela Paraipan, “Hizb ut Tahrir.”

 

74. Andrei Soldatov, “Severnyi Kavkaz uzhe ne vkodit v chislo platzdarmov ‘mirovogo terrorizma’” [The North Caucasus has not yet been among the springboards of international terrorism], May 31, 2007, http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/analyticstext/analytics/id/1188719.html.

For example, in the early 2000s the North Caucasus Salafis Rasul Kudayev and Anzor Astemirov translated (from Arabic to Russian) and prepared to publish an anti-Hizb ut-Tahrir pamphlet. The full text of the pamphlet, “Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami,” is available on http://musulmanin.com/biblioteka.html. At the

 

 

22 |the rise of radical and nonofficial islamic groups in russia’s volga region

 

 

In fact the “Russian direction” of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s activities has focused primarily on the mass replication of propagandist literature—leaflets and booklets including “Proclamation on the prog-ress of the activity,” “Law enforcement bodies of the Russian Federation falsify the facts and falsely accused Hizb ut-Tahrir,” “Convergence with Ummah,” “How to behave in the case of contact with the intelligence agencies,” and “Training of the trainers”—translated into Russian.

 

In early 2003 at the urging of the general prosecutor, the Russian Supreme Court decided to recognize 15 well-known organizations including Hizb ut-Tahrir as terrorist organizations. Yet this measure did not prevent the proliferation of Hizb ut-Tahrir cells in Russia more generally or in the VFD in particular. In December 2004, then–Minister of Interior Rashid Nurgaliyev said that 12 members of the organization had been detained and arrested following accusations of extremist activity in the Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Udmurtia, and Nizhny Novgorod regions. Among those detained, the majority were people in their twenties, and there were many representatives of Slavic ethnic groups, including Russian and Ukrainian. According to Roman Silantyev,

 

Alisher Usmanov, an ethnic Uzbek, was the most colorful personality among the detainees. He taught in the Kazan madrassa named “the Millennium Islam.” During the investigation, law-enforcement o_cers found on him fairly typical evidence, such as a grenade fuse, a TNT block, and brochures and leaflets with extremist content, including one entitled “The military training in the jihad against tyranny,” by Osama Bin Laden.75

 

Usmanov was sentenced to nine months in a Russian prison for illegal possession of arms, but after his extradition to Uzbekistan he was sentenced to eight years. In August 2005, the Bashkor-tostan Supreme Court handed down a guilty verdict to the several party activists, and they were sentenced to prison terms from four to nine years.

 

Yet human rights activists and journalists alike have been critical in their evaluations of the campaigns against Hizb ut-Tahrir. According to Andrei Soldatov, the 2004 terrorist attack in Beslan triggered a repressive policy against this party on the part of the Russian law-enforcement agencies and the FSB: “It was chosen to be represented as the conductor of the global terrorism. I think that’s a mistake. There is no need to radicalize the movement, which, in principle, is peace-ful. There are people with whom it is possible to talk.” 6In the opinion of Irina Borogan, consider-ing the mutual enmity between the Uzbek president and the Hizb ut-Tahrir, this campaign can be explained as an attempt by Russia to strengthen its influence in Uzbekistan and receive additional preferences there.77Memorial, the international human rights center founded in 1987, together with other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) such as the Institute on Human Rights and the Civilian Assistance Committee, paid special attention to the fact that people were detained not

 

 

same time, leaders of the North Caucasus Salafi Kabardino-Balkaria Jamaat prohibited spreading Hizb ut-Tahrir-oriented literature among their supporters. Alexander Zhukov, “Kabardino-Balkaria: na puti k katastrofe” [Kabardino-Balkaria: toward the catastrophe], October, 27, 2008, http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/ articles/142989/?print=true.

75. Silantyev, Noveishaya Istoriya Islamskogo soobshchestva v Rossii, p. 167.

 

76. Soldatov, “Severnyi Kavkaz uzhe ne vkodit v chislo platzdarmov ‘mirovogo terrorizma’.”

 

77. Irina Borogan, “FSB presentovala nam novuyu ugrozu iz Tsentral’noi Asii” [The Federal Security Service announced on the new challenge from Central Asia], Ezhenedel’nyi zhurnal [Weekly Journal], April 3, 2008, http://ej.ru/?a=note&id=7954.

 

 

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only for extremist activities but also for the study of religious literature.78

 

After a series of trials and the revelations of some Hizb ut-Tahrir members, a number of of-ficial Muslim structures and their representatives began to protect the party. Nafigullah Ashirov, chairman of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of the Asian part of Russia and cochairman of the RCM in 2005, prepared a brief about Hizb ut-Tahrir’s ideological platform in which he tried to demonstrate the nonviolent nature of the ideology and practice of the Hizb ut-Tahrir and the absence of extremist activity in their actions. In March 2006, however, the Moscow Prosecutor’s O_ce issued a warning to Ashirov not to be an apologist for Hizb ut-Tahrir.

 

Indeed, although in the West Hizb ut-Tahrir has espoused peaceful and non-violent activity, this has not always been the case within the VFD. In 2008 a Hizb ut-Tahrir cell in Togliatti, in the Samara region, was shut down and its leader convicted of possessing an explosive device. In 2009, 12 Hizb ut-Tahrir activists received four- to eight-year prison terms for their efforts to prepare for a violent seizure of power. In April 2010, Hizb ut-Tahrir cells were neutralized in Meleuz, Tuyma-zy, and Mrakovo in Bashkortostan. During the operation, extremist magazines and videos were confiscated.

 

According to the Interior Ministry of Tatarstan, a local Hizb ut-Tahrir structure had been illegally active in the city of Chistopol since 2005. In 2009 a student in the Agricultural College, Ilgiz Gizyatullin, who acted as a religious trainer there, was sentenced for his involvement with the organization. In June 2009 Rustam Safin, the imam of the Al-Ikhlas Mosque in Kazan, received a suspended sentence for his involvement with Hizb ut-Tahrir. In March 2010, two students of the University of Kazan were convicted for involvement with Hizb ut-Tahrir, which in 2004–2007 had distributed propaganda among the women of the Republic of Tatarstan.

 

In November 2010 a special operation in the Nurlat district of Tatarstan became a point of immense focus and scrutiny in the republic. The operation, which was directed against three mili-tants, involved 500 police o_cers, armored vehicles, and a helicopter. It was led by then–Interior Minister Asgat Safarov. The scale of this counterterror effort involuntarily forced many observ-

ers to draw parallels with the situation in the North Caucasus. The investigation confirmed the involvement of three Hizb ut-Tahrir militants, 34-year-old Ruslan Spiridonov, 30-year-old Albert Khusnutdinov, and 26-year-old Diamond Davletshin.

 

When considering the principal differences between the way human rights activists evaluate Hizb ut-Tahrir activities and how the FSB sees them, it is necessary to note that it is extremely di_cult to draw a clear distinction between the activities of Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Salafis on the ground. In theory their approaches are different, and sometimes the FSB does not take those dif-ferences into serious consideration. However as the well-known Kazan theologian Farid Salman observes,

 

In the Volga region Hizb ut-Tahrir often loses its connection to the ideological roots and comes under the influence of Salafis (“Wahhabis”). Thus, in practice, the “ideological jihad” is replaced by direct acts of violence (terrorism, subversive struggle, and actions against o_cial authorities). The lack of general and religious education, youth and youthful maxi-malist approaches affect this replacement greatly. However, there are practical reasons as well. The followers of Salafi Islam try to “disguise” themselves as Hizb ut-Tahrir activists to

 

78. “Rossiya: Spetssluzhby protiv Islamskoi Partii Hizb ut-Tahrir” [Russia: Special Services against Islamic Party Hizb ut-Tahrir], February 15, 2005, http://www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/70149/.

 

 

24 |the rise of radical and nonofficial islamic groups in russia’s volga region

 

 

divert suspicion. We can’t ignore certain “excesses” from the government, where not just radical structures, but loyal groups associated with traditional Russian Islamic Heritage are banned… The lack of specialists leads to the situation where, for example, during the arrest of extremists relevant authorities are unable to expose Wahhabis, who cleverly hide behind the slogans of other ideological groups. Is it that important? Yes, it is very important! Such mistakes, lead to the formation of opposition to the governments, opposition which can then claim that the government is fighting against Islam. 9