Радикальний іслам та державна влада в Криму до 2014 року: кейс Хізб ут-Тахрір

Abstract

The looming danger of radical Islamism and religious struggles for hegemony effectively converged in the local Ukrainian context in the case of Hizb ut-Tahrir al-Islami (HTI), or the Islamic Party of Liberation. For want of a more notorious Islamist group in Ukraine, this organization became treated in various media as the main local embodiment of extremist and terrorist threat. Likewise, despite the fact that the actual number of HTI’s followers or sympathizers in Crimea remained uncertain, due to its high public visibility, in the pre-2014 period the movement often stepped into the spotlight as the number-one rival for the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Crimea and the Mejlis, the chief representative bodies of Crimean Tatars. Thus, although the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in March 2014 completely derailed the dynamic of HTI’s development in the region, an analysis of its previous activities there can still become an important contribution to an in-depth understanding of the movement’s dichotomous nature as a global phenomenon, as well as its relations with the state and its strategies of social accommodation in European settings. Hence, this article offers a more nuanced and comprehensive look at this HTI’s development in the peninsula prior to the beginning of the Euromaidan protests (November 2013), focusing on its involvement in local politics and interactions with law enforcement agencies and the government authorities. Special attention is paid to the public discourses of HTI in the Ukrainian milieu and the key elements of its self-representation for the general public as posing no existential threat to Ukraine’s socio-political and cultural order.