For Putin and for Sharia: Dagestani Muslims and the Islamic State

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, contrary to simplistic explanations, 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 security and stability once afforded by the Soviet state.

Painting a complex portrait, For Putin and for Sharia challenges the official dichotomy of Muslims as supporting either the political underground or state authorities. Kaliszewska deconstructs the Salafi/Sufi division between the so-called reformists and traditional Islam that has perpetuated in writing about the post-Soviet space. Included is the self-reflection of a researcher in a conflict zone, how the experience can shift understanding of the ways people think and live.