Islam and security narratives in Eurasia

Abstract

The 1979 Iranian Revolution and the re-emergence of Islam as a major political factor ushered in an international narrative linking Islam with security. This initial securitisation of Islam was qualitatively enhanced by the 9/11 crisis and the emergence of a US-inspired and led global masternarrative on Islamic threat. Eurasian Islam had its own rich, more nuanced and complex normative heritage, both in its “Orthodox” imperial Russian and Marxist Soviet past, from which to construct its own native securitisation narrative of Islam; it was nevertheless heavily affected by the post-9/11 global masternarrative. This article analyses the impact of this masternarrative on the securitisation of Islam in Eurasia, and its symbiosis and encounter with Eurasian Islam in the post-Soviet, and especially post-9/11, eras. It further analyses Russia’s attempt at both bandwagoning and differentiation, the utilisation of the masternarrative in Central Asia and its implications for authoritarianism, and the disposition of major actors such as the US, China, Iran and Turkey towards the securitisation of Islam. Post-Arab Spring dynamics have added new levels of complexity to the securitisation of Islam, specifically for Russia and its relations with the North Caucasus in particular, and with the wider Muslim and Western worlds more generally. Encounters and synergies between the global and Eurasian narratives, as elsewhere, have become a major source of policy connectivity between the states, societies, and social movements of the region and global Islamic politics.