Authoritarian states relabel peaceful religious dissent as extremism to justify repression.

Evidence

In contemporary discourse, the post-Soviet states widely employ the term “Wahhabism” to denote any manifestation of Islamic assertion in neighbouring Muslim countries. During the Soviet-era, the Muslim dissidents were usually labelled with terms such as “Sufi” and “fanatic” employing Islamophobic discourses that aroused hysteria of an underground religious activists threatening the stability of the Marxist order. By the late 1990s, the “Wahhabi” label would become the most common term to refer to the alleged “Islamic menace” in state propaganda, while “Sufism” was invoked as a “moderate” force that balanced the “radicalism” of those who were being accused as “Wahhabis”. The old-guard of the post-Soviet states found the label useful to depict all opposition as extremists, thereby bolstering their ‘strongman’ credentials. In short, any Muslim critical of the religious or political status quo, came at risk of being labelled “Wahhabi”. — Wikipedia contributors, Wahhabism, 169

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: the ‘Wahhabi’ label as a portable post-Soviet instrument of rule — how a theological term became a generic anti-dissent brand (
• XREF: Connects to prior reading on colonial-era label inflation (Along the Archival Grain, The New Crusades) where states manufacture categories to police ambiguous populations.