Publication date:  27 December 2001

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The beginning is here and here.

If Wahhabism had remained inside Saudi Arabia, I think there would be no serious problems. But in the early 1970's, Wahhabis began deliberately and actively spreading their principles outside the peninsula. Meanwhile, the United States, while trying to find a counterbalance to the Soviet Union and communism in the countries of Near and Middle East during the Cold War, actively encouraged Wahhabi pervasion into different countries. Over a period of three decades, Wahhabism spread in three directions:

70's - early 80's - Arabic countries (Egypt, Syria, Algeria and other regions of the Middle East).

80's - Afghanistan.

90's - the territory of the former Soviet Union (Russia, Central Asia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, etc.), South East Asia, Western Europe, both Americas, Australia, Africa.

Wahhabism first began to manifest as an ideology among antigovernment extremist groups in Arabic countries during the 70's and 80's. Thus, Islamic extremism in the form of terrorist groups and illegal armed formations in Egypt, Algeria and other Arabic countries took form as a result of Wahhabi pervasion into the Muslim environment of these states.

The logic of Wahhabi takfir and jihad fully manifested itself in Algeria (however complex and contradictory were the events of the civil war, which claimed 100 thousand lives and ultimately destroyed the society and the state). According to the fundamentalist ideas of Algerian Wahhabi groups, all rulers who deviated from Islam were subject to death, as were all those who executed their rulers' orders. Nor did Wahhabi doctrine spare those who merely made no resistance to such rulers, nor those who did not agree with Wahhabis. Naturally, they didn't call themselves Wahhabis, but instead rather referred to themselves as Salafi or Muslims.

Ultimately, a complex network of Wahhabi groups, outposts, footholds, training camps, educational institutions and coordinating centers had been created worldwide. There is hardly a country in the world today that is not a host (whether it knows this or not) to one of this network's cells - consider Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Great Britain, Algeria, Germany, Nigeria, Switzerland, the United States, Palestine, Uruguay, the Philippines...

Wahhabism also became the main ideology of the Arabic task groups during the war in Afghanistan, in which they fought not only against the Soviet "infidels" but also against Afghan Muslims, who were proclaimed "infidels" as well. Today, Wahhabism is also rampant among the so-called "Afghans of the second generation" - extremists of various nationalities currently being trained in Wahhabi camps on the territory of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban, an ally of the Wahhabi movement. The new "Arabic Afghans" have spread around the world.

In the 90's Wahhabis launched a series of attacks against Russia, a nation that, the Wahhabis felt, kept Chechnya from becoming an Islamic state. The most dramatic manifestation of armed Wahhabi aggression was the invasion of Dagestan by Chechen and Arabic Wahhabis from the territory of Chechnya in 1999. Prior to this, they had invaded Chechnya - officially Russian territory - and committed a massacre in the Yarysh-Mardy ravine in April 1995. At that time, a column of the 245th vehicular regiment was annihilated (there are video recordings of the fighting and the summing-up scene, confirming that it was Arabic Wahhabis who laid the ambush and made the onslaught). Before this, there were also fights between the newly converted Dagestan Wahhabis and traditionalist Muslims in Chabanmakhi (May 1997).

Armed aggression was combined with ideological aggression - the spreading of Wahhabi ideas, which started even earlier and resulted (and still results) in the creation of Wahhabi units and footholds on the territory of Russia.

The spreading of Wahhabism, judging from the experience of its 30-year worldwide expansion, has always had negative results, as far as social stability and national security are concerned. These results include:

- split in the Muslim society of the affected country;

- conversion of a part of the nation's Muslim society (however small it might be) into an active anti-social or anti-government group or groups;

- spreading of the ideology of national intolerance and hostility, discrimination and segregation in the areas where Wahhabism has managed to take footing;

- theoretical justification of violence, extremism and terrorism in respect to those who are proclaimed "infidels;"

- active armed struggle or performance of terrorist acts against "infidels."

According to judicial inquiry and court proceedings, 1999's acts of terrorism in Moscow (where a block of residential buildings exploded), Buinaksk and Volgodonsk were performed by Wahhabi extremist groups. While in Chechnya Wahhabis kill imams, sheikhs and any Muslims who don't accept Wahhabism, many Russian towns were also swept by a wave of Wahhabi terror. Behind every act of violence, every incident in which weapons are involved, and every terrorist act, there are particular purposes and motives. It is the Wahhabi preaching of jihad, understood as obligatory armed fighting against "infidels," whom Wahhabis call "the worst of Allah's creatures" and whom "Allah hates," that has lifted the common Islamic ban on killing innocents.

Western civilization hasn't fully understood what has happened. The historic challenge that humankind has had to face in the last quarter of the previous century was interpreted as a clash of civilizations. From the point view of liberal humanism, the enemy was regarded as an equal (a civilization was thought to come into collision with another civilization). Moreover, Wahhabi teaching and Wahhabi ways were incorrectly interpreted as a manifestation of Islam.

But to put it realistically, world civilization (including its important Islamic constituent) has collided with barbarity. It has clashed with a new totalitarianism, which is trying to bring down all humankind - whether in Kabul and Grozny, New York and Moscow, Jerusalem and Djakarta, Algiers and Paris - and rule over people in accordance with the principles developed to suit only the aims of the 18th-century Arabic tribal aristocracy.

Translated from Russian by Olga Yurchenko

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