For Putin and for Sharia
Dagestani Muslims and the Islamic State

Iwona Kaliszewska (Author), Arthur Barys (Translated by)

9781501767630

Paperback / softback, published 15 February 2023

168 pages, 24 color halftones - 24 Halftones, color
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.454 kg

For Putin and for Sharia is a fine ethnographic description of a part of the Caucasus that has received little attention from Western scholars. Throughout the book Kaliszewska takes the perspective of her interlocutors toward the state and its actions against citizens. This is not only brave, as she is confronted with violence and the state security apparatus for doing so, her approach also uncovers the controversial world of Salafi-oriented Muslims.

For Putin and for Sharia examines what it means to support sharia in twenty-first-century Dagestan, where calls for an Islamic state coexist with nostalgia for the days of Stalin's rule and Mecca calendars hang alongside portraits of Putin. Confronting existing narratives about sharia, terrorism, and anti-terrorism through ethnographic fieldwork, Iwona Kaliszewska looks at the beliefs and practices of Dagestani Muslims, revealing that the pursuit of sharia can assume a range of forms from sweeping visions of an Islamic state imposed through violence, to minor acts of everyday resistance against injustice, to attempts to restore the security and stability once afforded by the Soviet state. In For Putin and for Sharia, Kaliszewska challenges the official dichotomy of Muslims as supporting either the political underground or state authorities and deconstructs the Salafi/Sufi division between the so-called reformists and traditional Islam.

Prologue: Pizza with Shakhidkas
Introduction: Sipping Coffee to the Sound of Gunfire
1. Political and Social Instability in Dagestan
2. Torture, Exorcisms, and Checkpoints: Experiencing the "Fight against Terrorism"
3. The Resurgent Importance of Islam in the Everyday Life of Dagestanis
4. Wahhabis, Tariqatists, and "New Muslims"
5. Sharia: Thinking beyond the (Secular) State?
Conclusion