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
Thanks for the ping!
Gaynutdin was even more direct: “In the spiritual-cultural development of the Muslim peoples,” knowledge about Sunni Islam in the form of Muslim modernism (jadidism) played “a no less positive role” in the dissemination of Islam than did Sufism. Moreover, the jadids had an influence throughout the Muslim world from the Ottoman Empire to Xinjiang.
The Chechen mufti has responded to this in the best tradition of the Soviet past: he refused to join the argument about the acceptability of diversity within Islam and the importance of modernism in particular and instead accused the SMR of harboring Islamist radicals on its staff.
And that exchange between the defenders of modernist Islam and its opponents is also a recrudescence of the Soviet past when communist officials attacked the former more intensively than the latter believing that this was the best way to root out Islam in the population by allowing only the most reactionary to continue to preach.
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.se/2016/10/russias-muslim-leaders-fighting-over.html
Since the start of the school year, Byurchiiyev says, the situation in the North Caucasus has deteriorated regardless of what officials say. Ever more pupils are being persecuted for wearing hijabs. The death squads, which experts say are linked to the authorities, have stepped up their activities. And kidnappings have increased in number across the region.
http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.se/2016/10/appearance-of-homo-sacer-in-north.html
More about this Soviet strategy is found here http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/the-ugly-truth-about-algeria-7146