ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that Buriatskii’s texts – all in the Russian language – are framed in a way that makes them distinctly Russian, especially through a multitude of references to Russian literature and to Russian anthropological models. Buriatskii’s approach to how he justifies jihad fits into the cultural and ideological tendencies of the post-Soviet period. One of the most well-known representatives of jihad in Russia’s North Caucasus was Said Buriatskii, a convert to Islam with a mixed Russian-Buryat family background. Buriatskii has been a central personality in many Western and Russian accounts of the jihad movement in the Northern Caucasus, largely from a security perspective. Buriatskii studied in Egypt for one year, or maybe even three. Formally he was enrolled at the famous al-Azhar University, but we must assume that he mostly took courses from private teachers. In the spring of 2008, Buriatskii attached himself to the Caucasus Emirate.
