Alexey Malashenko is no longer with the Carnegie Moscow Center
Alexey Malashenko is a former chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center’s Religion, Society, and Security Program.
Malashenko also taught at the Higher School of Economics from 2007 to 2008 and was a professor at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations from 2000 to 2006. From 1976 to 1982 and again from 1986 to 2001, Malashenko worked at the Institute of Oriental Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences as a research fellow, head of the Islamic Department, and finally as senior associate. In 1990, he was also a visiting professor at Colgate University in New York. From 1982 to 1986, he was editor of the journal Problems of Peace and Socialism.
Malashenko is a professor of political science as well as a member of the RIA Novosti advisory council. He serves on the editorial boards of the journals Central Asia and the Caucasus and Acta Eurasica and the newsletter Russia and the Muslim World and is a board member of the International Federation for Peace and Conciliation.
Malashenko is the author and editor of about twenty books in Russian, English, French, and Arabic, including: Islam in Central Asia (Garnet Publishing, 1994), Russia’s Restless Frontier (with Dmitri Trenin; Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), The Islamic Alternative and the Islamist Project (Carnegie Moscow Center and Ves Mir, 2006), Russia and Islam (Carnegie Moscow Center and ROSSPEN, 2007), and My Islam (ROSSPEN, 2010).
Although we shouldn’t expect anything drastic, Uzbekistan’s next president will likely change some of Islam Karimov’s policies, especially in the economic sphere. Because the country needs financial support and access to new technologies from the West, Uzbekistan may liberalize slightly, demonstrating greater respect for democracy and human rights.
Events in the Middle East and Russia’s participation in the Syrian conflict have left the majority of Russian Muslims indifferent and have not inspired them to take any particular action, let alone protest. Even the hundreds of militants who have returned from fighting for the banned Islamic State terrorist organization in the Middle East are behaving passively.
Putin has little choice but to ask Ramzan Kadyrov to remain as head of the Chechen Republic. But doing so will reveal how indispensable Kadyrov is to the Kremlin and betray Putin’s weaknesses in Chechnya.
The North Caucasus Islamists’ wish to join ISIS makes some sense. By joining, they would cast themselves not just as regional players but worldwide jihadists. The relations between ISIS and the Caucasus Emirate, however, have been fraught with difficulties.
The Russian authorities have been reluctant to admit that an attack in southern Dagestan on the eve of New Year was the work of Islamic State. The organization is making a bid to play a role in the North Caucasus.
Russia’s official Muslim establishment blames the West for the rise of the self-proclaimed Islamic State and refuses to admit that radical Islam has a real social base, ignoring the radicalization of many ordinary Muslims in Russia and Central Asia.
Despite his harsh rhetoric, Kadyrov now takes a pragmatic view of the Islamic State’s influence on the situation in Chechnya and is committing himself to “exorcise” would-be recruits or returnees from the Middle East rather than merely destroying them.
In light of the crisis in Syria, and as part of its mandate to promote democracy and development in the region, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA) has initiated a program named The National Agenda for the Future of Syria (NAFS).
As Islam expands in the Ural Federal District, religious and political life there is evolving. Much of this expansion is due to the arrival of Muslim migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus, and some migrants bring with them religious radicalism—a challenge that requires a more effective official response.
Shia-Sunni sectarianism is one of the factors driving instability in the Middle East.