Islamic Mass Consciousness in Twenty-First-Century North Caucasus: Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Chechnya

Abstract

The article sums up author’s sociological studies concerning elements and manifestations of Islamic mass consciousness in different republics of Russia’s North Caucasus after unprecedented religious growth happened after the fall of atheistic Soviet rule in the 1990s. The focus is made on Muslims’ attitudes to laws of secular post-socialist state as it concerns public morality, systems of religious and secular education, different forms of economic activities, Islamic mode of life. The study allowed distinguishing different types and levels of religious behavioral patterns from “simple believers” to “believers with conviction”. There is a clear antagonism between the level of respondents’ religiosity and their everyday religious behavior, diffusivity of religious and secular in mass consciousness of the society, mostly young people.