Ислам и война: Telegram-канал Р. Кадырова в период СВО

Abstract

The relevance of the study is determined by the influence of the special military operation (SMO) on the transformation of political discourse on the Internet. The novelty of the research is due to the identi-fication of current trends in the proposed content in the modern Russian media space. The start of a special military operation (SMO/SVO) determined a new model of the political development of the Russian Federation, and also significantly influenced the political discourse of the heads of Russian regions. The political discourse, in turn, forms social and political views at the grassroots level. This paper examines the religious and political discourse of the Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov in the Telegram messenger during the first year of the SMO. The study is focused on identify-ing the specifics of the formation of religious and political content in social networks in wartime. The work is based on the methods of classical and digital sociology, as well as discursive analysis of text messages. 2035 publications by R. Kadyrov on the Telegram page from February 24, 2022 to February 23, 2023, including 1406 videos, 165 photos/print-screens, 20 audio messages and 3 docs-attachments were analyzed using a continuous sample. Finally, conclusions are drawn in relation to some change in Kadyrov’s public discourse for the past year. On his personal page in Telegram, religious themes with an emphasis on traditional values, the image of the enemy and the legitimation of armed struggle (ji-had) acquire an exceptional sound in the conditions of the SMO. In today's political realities, a reli-gious resource and an open armed conflict successfully complement each other. At the same time, the head of the Chechen Republic demonstrates a claim to religious authority both on a Russian and global scale: he openly opposes Western ideology not only on the battlefield, but also in the religious content, actively participates in the sacralization of the SMO and its jihadization. The obtained conclusions ex-pand the knowledge about the potential of a religious resource in open conflicts and raise the question of the prospects for its use by other religious communities.