Is Kadyrov trying to create a state-sanctioned Muslim sect Kremlin can control?
As AFR writes:
In Putin’s geostrategic vision, Saudi Arabia remains the crucial US ally in the region. Putin isn’t content to be allied only with Alawite Syria and Shiite Iran. He’d like to make inroads among Sunni Muslims as well.
Criticising Saudi exclusivism is a way for Putin to try to weaken Saudi Arabia’s regional influence – while enhancing his own. Egypt and the Sheikh of Al-Azhar are tools to use in pursuit of the goal.
The upshot is that while undercutting Wahhabism and the practice of takfir are good things, they’re being pursued here by Putin for the most self-interested of reasons – and against US interests.
Sufism has been the dominant form of Islam in Chechnya for almost two centuries but was forced underground in Soviet times.
During the 19th century, its followers, called murids, drew strength from their belief as they battled the soldiers of the invading Russian empire.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/22/chechnya.tomparfitt
There are two main Sufi groups in Chechnya the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naqshbandi and the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qadiriyya Kadyrov is formally a Qadirriyya.
But,
Kadyrov, who in his entire political career has never quoted publicly a single sura from the Koran, appears to be setting himself up as the supreme arbiter and primary defender of “pure” Islam in the North Caucasus.
http://www.rferl.org/a/chechnya-kadyrov-ingushetia-yevkurov-mufi/27532102.html
Chechnya's more than one million people have been among the most oppressed, and the most warlike, in both tsarist and Soviet times. The province declared independence in late 1991, as the Soviet Union was disintegrating. Russia's opposition to the nationalist uprising sparked the first Chechen war (1994-96), which left it a semi-autonomous, semi-dependent state. When war flared again in late 1999, Putin was prime minister and made most decisions in place of an ailing President Boris Yeltsin.
A better prepared Russian army, fighting a war brutal on both sides, reduced much of the capital, Grozny, to rubble. By 2000, Moscow had ended most organized resistance, though guerrilla activities continued until 2007, when Ramzan Kadyrov, son of a former Chechen president and strongly backed by Putin, imposed an often corrupt and savage dictatorship. Separatism was suppressed, Grozny rebuilt and Chechnya remained loyal to Moscow.
Chechnya is the model for war in Syria, Grozny the model for the assault on Aleppo.
Perhaps the plan is to make Kadyrov the new "King" of Syria?