For Putin and for Sharia examines what it means to support sharia in twenty-first-century Dagestan, where calls for an Islamic state coexist with nostalgia for the days of Stalin's rule and Mecca calendars hang alongside portraits of Putin. Confronting existing narratives about sharia, terrorism, and anti-terrorism through ethnographic fieldwork, Iwona Kaliszewska looks at the beliefs and practices of Dagestani Muslims, revealing that the pursuit of sharia can assume a range of forms from sweeping visions of an Islamic state imposed through violence, to minor acts of everyday resistance against injustice, to attempts to restore the security and stability once afforded by the Soviet state. In For Putin and for Sharia, Kaliszewska challenges the official dichotomy of Muslims as supporting either the political underground or state authorities and deconstructs the Salafi/Sufi division between the so-called reformists and traditional Islam.
"'Clever and complex... a formally original and intellectual engagement with forgotten history, cross-racial adoption and the impact of imperialism on black British lives today'"
Guardian
"'Unafraid to tackle important and complex issues... a must-see piece of theatre'"
Broadway World
"'A bold exploration of black Britishness that is as agonising as it is funny'"
