From ‘We Want to Destroy the Regime’ to ‘We Want to Destroy the World Order’: Russian Multipolarity and the Enlistment of the Post-Arab Spring Dār Al-islām

Abstract

The Arab Spring produced new optimism in the Middle East regarding the possibility of democracy at the heart of the Muslim world. However, as the years passed, such optimism abated, leaving bitterness and cynicism in its wake. During the Arab Spring, Vladimir Putin watched in horror as numerous “strong men” lost power, or nearly lost power, including his ally, Bashar al-Assad. Determined not to allow what he saw as the West’s meddling in the Middle East provide a template for his own removal from power, Putin embarked on an anti-Western campaign to create a “multipolar world,” one that would liberate the strong men rulers from the demands of the “rules-based order,” i.e., the “unipolar world.” Key to the success of this campaign was the fostering of an alliance between the Russkii Mir (Russian World) and the dār al-Islām (Abode of Islam). Together with other parts of the world, such a coalition would resist the collective power of the Western world and attempt to bring about global conditions wherein “traditional” peoples can express their cultural, political, and economic particularities without being subject to the corrosive influence of the West. Key to this anti-Occident ideology is the far-right Russian philosopher, Alexander Dugin, and his neo-Eurasianist ideology. This essay explores how Dugin’s “reactionary modernist” ideology contributes to the struggles against the unipolar world, while at the same time arguing that his philosophy will most likely not be successful within the dār al-Islām for a variety of political, social, and religious reasons. If the promises of the Arab Spring are ever to come to fruition, this article argues, it will not be through a palingenetic Russia led by Putin.