Veiled And Unveiled In Chechnya And Daghestan

Offering an unflinching portrait of life in Daghestan and Chechnya, focusing on its highly segregated girls and women, this book presents the North Caucasus today through the eyes of two Poles, an anthropologist and a writer, who traveled there amid a locally rooted but newly assertive Islamic revivalism. Shadowed by Russian secret police, they participate in Muslim rites in villages which penalize those caught smoking or drinking, even in their own homes; spend time with polygamous families; talk to human rights and democracy activists whose names feature on hit lists, and to young people about religion, polygamy, prostitution, and sex. They also track down ‘Wahhabis’ (known locally as ‘devils’) who conceal their religious affiliations for fear of persecution. In Daghestan, the authors encounter two Sufi religious leaders, both of whom were later murdered, and in Grozny, young men who survived torture but were forced to commit perjury. They hang out with female wrestlers, with young women ‘encouraged’ by the Chechen regime to ‘conduct themselves morally’ for the good of the nation; accompany girls on dates; and find out from eighteen-year-old divorces why it’s better to share a bed with another wife than have no husband at all.