Kremlin frets as Russia's once restive Islamist region takes up political Islam

Russia fought two bloody wars in its Caucasus republic of Chechnya, ostensibly to crush an emerging threat of Islamist extremism on its own soil.

So it is with no small irony that the strongman Moscow installed to run a pacified Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, is increasingly posing a similar challenge to Russia's secular constitutional order. Mr. Kadyrov is imposing sharia (Islamic law) on his population – and lately, even defying the Kremlin's foreign policy – with an apparent eye on a global, Islamic stage.

“Kadyrov wants