Mufti of Chechnya elected leader of North Caucasian Muslims

The Mufti of Chechnya and known advisor to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, Salakh Mezhiev, has been elected chair of the Coordination Centre of Muslims of the North Caucasus. 

On 28 September, the Council of Muftis unanimously elected Mezhiyev during a meeting in Cherkessk, the capital city of Karachay–Cherkessia. 

‘I congratulate the respected Sheikh Salakh-Khadzhi Mezhiev on his election to this post. I am confident that he will justify the high trust placed in him by religious leaders of the North Caucasus and will make every effort for the fruitful activities of the [Coordination Centre of Muslims of the North Caucasus] for the benefit of Muslims of the Caucasus and all residents of Russia’, Kadyrov wrote on Telegram.

The Coordination Centre unites the nine Muftiates of the North Caucasus — the traditional representative bodies of local Muslims — and their heads, the Muftis.

The meeting to elect a new chair was held two months after the death of the association’s previous head, the Mufti of Karachay–Cherkessia, Islam Berdiyev, who had held the post since 2003. 

Who is Salakh Mezhiev?

Mezhiev was elected Mufti of Chechnya in 2014 at the Congress of Muslims of the Chechen Republic. He has also held the post of Advisor to the Head of the Chechen Republic, and was believed to be part of Kadyrov’s inner circle. In February 2024, he received the title of ‘Hero of Chechnya’ for his alleged ‘personal contribution to the achievement of goals and objectives’ in the war in Ukraine. 

Over the last decade, he has often appeared publicly belittling and reprimanding residents of Chechnya. 

In 2019, state television channel Grozy TV aired a story in which 16-year-old Magomed Akhmatov was scolded by Mezhiev for writing critical comments about the authorities on Instagram. Mezhiev accused Akhmatov, who spent most of the programme in tears and apologising for his behaviour, of becoming ‘a comrade of the enemies of Islam’.

In 2020, Mezhiev, together with the head of the Grozny Ministry of Internal Affairs, Aslan Iraskhanov, held an ‘educational meeting’ on the state-run TV channel during which he scolded and forced four women to remove their niqabs. Mezhiev then ordered the women’s male relatives to ensure that they did not wear this item of clothing in the future.

Mezhiev also appeared to justify the murder of Salman Tepsurkaev, an alleged administrator of the opposition Telegram channel 1adat. After Tepsurkaev was kidnapped by Chechen security forces and forced to sodomise himself with a glass bottle, Mezhiev called Tepsurkaev a ‘dirty man’.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Mezhiev has been actively interacting with those who have been sent to war from the special forces university in Gudermes, and has called the war itself ‘sacred’.