Adyghe Xabze

Tenets of the Khabze include being especially respectful towards elders and (for men) women; a policy of endogamous marriage to protect Circassian culture; and exemplifying the values of truthfulness, honour, and bravery.

Khabze, as a set of laws, includes the norms and moral principles that determine an individual's behaviour.

Khabze almost ceased to exist in Circassia following the Circassian genocide, which was perpetrated by the Russian Empire in the 19th century.

[7][8] Thus, its meaning roughly translates to "language of the universe" or "word of the cosmos", perhaps comparable to the concept of Dharma.

Over time, the word "Khabze" has come to mean "rule", "custom", and "tradition" in the Circassian language.

The simplest sanction taken against those who act against Khabze is shunning, which includes not attending their funeral or wedding, and otherwise ignoring their existence.

Adyghe Khabze encourages respecting the opinions of others, understanding their situation, helping and protecting the weak, doing good deeds, standing up for the degraded and insulted and living by honest work.

Greed, desire for possessions, wealth and ostentation are considered disgraceful by the Khabze code.

During this time and after the fall of the Soviet regime, the revival of Khabzeist worldview was supported by Circassian intellectuals, as part of a rise in nationalism and cultural identity in the 1990s[11] and, more recently as a thwarting force against Wahhabism and other Islamic extremism.

[12][11] On 29 December 2010, a prominent Kabardian Circassian ethnographer and Khabze advocate, Arsen Tsipinov,[13] was murdered by radical Islamist terrorists who had accused him of being a mushrik (idolatrous disbelief in Islamic monotheism) and months earlier threatened him and others they accused as idolaters and munafiqun ("hypocrites") to stop "reviving" and diffusing the rituals of the original Circassian pre-Islamic traditions.