Geydar Dzhemal

Geydar Dzhahidovich Dzhemal (Russian: Гейда́р Джахи́дович Джема́ль, Azerbaijani: Heydər Cahid oğlu Camal, sometimes transliterated as Heydar Jamal; 10 June 1947 - 5 December 2016) is a Russian Islamic revolutionist, philosopher, poet, political and social activist.

Dzhemal is founder and chairman of the Islamic Committee of Russia.

Biography

Dzhemal's maternal grandfather, Shapovalov, was the director of the Maly Theatre and First Deputy Minister of Culture of the Soviet Union. Irina Shapovalova gave birth to Geydar at age 18, divorcing his Azerbaijani father soon afterwards. Her second marriage was to a military seaman, who moved with her to Estonia (then the Estonian SSR). A few years later, with a third husband, she returned to Moscow. Dzhemal was raised by his grandparents.

In 1965, after graduation from school and with assistance from his grandfather, Dzhemal entered the Institute of Oriental Languages at Moscow State University, but a year later was expelled "for bourgeois nationalism". He then took a job as an editor at "Medicine" Publishing House, where he met a graduate of the Moscow State University, Ilya Moskvin. He worked at the "Medicine" as an editor and edited many books on psychiatry.

In the mid-1970s, friends advised Dzhemal, who was interested in psychiatry, to feign a mental illness in order to solve some problems with the police, who tried to prosecute him "for parasitism". This worked as he was subsequently registered at a psychiatric institution. By that time, Dzhemal was already married; he raised his son Orkhan ("Yury").

Activism

Since 1979, he was active in the underground All-Soviet Islamic movement. In the late 1980s, together with Aleksandr Dugin, Dzhemal became a member of the nationalist Pamyat Society, but then disassociated with the organization completely. In 1990, Dzhemal took part in the creation of the Islamskaya Partiya Vozrozhdeniya (Islamic Renaissance Party) in Astrakhan and became a deputy chairman of the party. In the same year he established an information center "Tauhid". From 1991 to 1993, he published the newspaper Al-Vakhdat (Unity). From 1993 to 1996, Dzhemal put on a few TV shows on Islamic issues (Nyne (Today), Minaret, etc.). In 1998, Dzhemal did a lecture tour in South Africa. In 1999, at the Orthodox-Islamic conference in St. Petersburg he put forward the thesis of the possibility of an anti-imperialiststrategic alliance between people of Islam and Orthodox Christianity's spirituality.

Dzhemal was among the 34 first signatories of the online anti-Vladimir Putin manifesto, "Putin must go", published on 10 March 2010.

Dzhemal has commented on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Philosophy

Dzhemal's political analysis can be characterized as Islamic Marxism. In Dzhemal's writing, Marxism and Islam are both characterized by eschatology, and the Islamic umma play the messianic role of Marx's proletariat in ushering in the final stage of history. The modern world, in which imperialism has been replaced by what Dzhemal calls mundialization, has at its core a conflict between transnational corporationsand the government of the United States. The transnational corporations are run by a "superelite," which has its roots in European (and primarily British) aristocratic families. He believes that the events on September 11th are a grandiose provocation of superelite against United States and the Islamic world. He has called Osama bin Laden and Taliban "creatures CIA" and Zionism together with the KGB, tools leading the superelite to domination over a planet.

In philosophy of religion, Dzhemal has drawn on the tradition of German Romanticism to distinguish the religion of prophets (which he sees as the religion of passionate expression) and the religion of priests. He believes that the prophets in the tradition of Abraham began from a position of creativity and novelty, while priests are always fierce advocates of tradition. True religion, believes, Dzhemal, is the religion of faith and death. Dzhemal does not accept all of the sects of Islam. He rejects Sufism, the Hashemite Islam of the Arab establishment and "the rule of the Turkic elements" that he believes has led to stagnation.

The anthropology of Dzhemal is based on a dichotomy of a divine spark and "clay" in the person.