Twentieth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

How should one make sense of the anti-Russian origins of Islamic governance in the North Caucasus, as Chechen troops in Ukraine profess their praise for Vladimir Putin amid shouts of “Allahu akbar”? To examine renegotiated notions of citizenship, belonging, and loyalty in the North Caucasus, this paper traces the continued reverence of masculine aesthetics in political legitimacy from the Three Imāms of the “murīd movement” (Ghāzi Muhammad, Hamzat Bek, and Shāmil) to the Head of Chechnya today, Ramzan Kadyrov. This paper relies on social media discourse analysis of MMA, UFC, wrestling, and boxing channels and employ field interviews with North Caucasian immigrant athletes in the United States to explore how North Caucasian autochthonous values of physical prowess and masculinity are used to renegotiate communal understandings of allegiance, gender, body, and violence. Today, the UFC is the last Western institution to maintain cultural links to the Russian “homeland” of the North Caucasian diaspora and is a crucial means of economic survival for immigrant athletes and their families. To understand the importance of martial culture among this migrant community is to uncover the subversive and unifying potential of the body as it relates to governance, spirituality, and ethnic identity in the current era of globalization.