A radio host has been hospitalized after being cut 15 times by an unidentified criminal. Two weeks ago the journalist ventured to criticize the founder of Islam, the Prophet Mohammed, on air.
Sergey Aslanyan, 46, was brought to Moscow’s hospital with numerous non-penetrating knife wounds to the chest, neck and arm.
Moscow’s mufti Albir Krganov has appealed to the capital’s Bureau for Human Rights over nationalistic slogans and graffiti which he says insult the feelings of believers and non-Russian nationals.
Krganov – vice chairman of the Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia – said the body had received a large number of complaints from believers over xenophobic graffiti.In particular, they reported such slogans as “Russia is for Russians” covering the walls along the railroad to Moscow’s Domodedovo airport.
It is worrying that in Russia – a multinational and multi-confessional country – some people allow themselves to express nationalistic statements, the mufti noted to Russian News Service.
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Chechnya's government is openly approving of families that kill female relatives who violate their sense of honor, as this Russian republic embraces a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam after decades of religious suppression under Soviet rule.
In the past five years, the bodies of dozens of young Chechen women have been found dumped in woods, abandoned in alleys and left along roads in the capital, Grozny, and neighboring villages.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov publicly announced that the dead women had “loose morals” and were rightfully shot by male relatives. He went on to describe women as the property of their husbands, and said their main role is to bear children.
“If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them should be killed,” said Mr. Kadyrov, who often has stated his goal of making Chechnya “more Islamic than the Islamists.”
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Chechen Republic head Ramzan Kadyrov and Chechen mufti Sultan-hadji Mirzayev have both harshly criticized the proposal by Chechen legal scholar Dagir Khasavov to establish Shari'a courts in Russia for the benefit of those Russian Muslims who do not want to “get bogged down in the Russian legal system,” which they do not trust.
The Congress of Russian Communities is preparing a legal center aimed at protecting ethnic Russians in their conflicts both with the law and with other ethnic communities in the country.
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A Moscow court on Thursday sentenced 10 university students to up to 13 years in prison on "terrorism" charges for staging bombing attacks against security buildings and Muslim targets.
The students admitted in court to having been members of a gang called the Autonomous Military Terrorist Organisation that operated in the Russian capital in 2009 and 2010.(source)
The body of a Russian national of Azerbaijani origin has been found in Moscow with his throat slashed, his former employer said on Wednesday, blaming a gang of ultra-nationalists for his murder.
Metin Mekhtiyev, a 33-year-old Muscovite, was coming home from a grocery store on Tuesday when a group of assailants attacked him near his residential building in central Moscow.
"A group of five people including a young woman first beat him up and then slit his throat," said Maryam Nalobina, a representative of the Russian Islamic Cultural Centre, citing information from witnesses.(source)
A bomb blast in Russia's restive North Caucasus region of Dagestan on Friday killed an imam and his police guard, officials said.
The home-made explosive device went off at around 0200 GMT in the centre of the town of Buinaksk, killing the imam of the city's mosque, Gitinomagomed Abdulgapurov, and a policeman who acted as his guard, Magomedrasul Magomedov.(source)
The process of Islamization was voluntary in the beginning. Women who wore a headscarf were rewarded with a prize. Now all women and girls, regardless of their religion, must observe Islamic dress code by wearing a head covering, long sleeves, and skirts below the knee in public schools and government buildings. Those who refuse become targets.
Human Rights Watch released a report last year documenting a spate of attacks on women without head coverings. The females reported being harassed, some physically harmed for not observing the Islamic dress code.
Alcohol is now all but banned, and authorities encourage taking multiple wives. Gender-segregated hair salons and gyms are becoming the norm. Many Muslims here object to what they call an improper interpretation of Islamic law.(source)
A suicide bomber has killed herself and five police officers in Dagestan, Russia, weeks after security forces killed her husband, prosecutors say.
The bomber attacked a checkpoint in the village of Karabudakhkent using a bomb packed with shrapnel, and two other police officers were wounded.(source)
Detention of the alleged terrorists in Ukrainian city of Odessa
Alisa Ganieva, 26, wrote about her native Dagestan, a mountainous region rocked by Islamist insurgency. She told me that religious extremism has become a form of rebellion among the youth, as fashionable as a trendy nightclub.
“In the 1990s, religion became popular in Russia,’’ she said. After the fall of communism, “people finally got an opportunity to pray. Young people went to Egypt to study Islam. When they returned to the motherland, they started teaching their parents. Now girls my age want to wear the hijab and their mothers don’t allow it, so they hide their hijab in their bags.’’(source)
13 policemen have been killed in three days of fierce fighting with militants on the border of the Russian southern republics of Dagestan and Chechnya. This comes as a Turkish terrorist has reportedly become the new head of the Dagestani fighters.
At least five police officers were killed and six others injured in the fighting on the republics’ borders on Thursday, Interfax news agency reports. The policemen were fighting several militant groups. According to the news agency’s source in the police, the operation is ongoing in complicated conditions, in mountains and forests, covered in deep snow. The militants are offering fierce resistance, the source added, and have reportedly sustained losses.(source)
The Freedom Party (FPÖ) has been harshly criticised for meeting with Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov.
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Hübner and FPÖ Vienna whip Johann Gudenus – who was also part of the FPÖ delegation – said they agreed with Kadyrov and his team about the creation of a cultural association for Chechen refugees in Austria. The Austrian right-wing politicians said the planned club should encourage them to return to their home country. Gudenus said: "We were able to convince ourselves that Kadyrov would not persecute them."(source)
The leader of Russia's Islamist rebels ordered a halt to attacks on civilians, saying mass opposition protests showed the public no longer supported Vladimir Putin, according to a video posted Friday.
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"I order all special groups that are carrying out or plan to carry out special operations in Russia to put a halt to these operations that could hurt the peaceful population," Doku Umarov said in a video address posted on the rebel mouthpiece kavkazcenter.com.
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Via Interfax:
Federal Security Service officials have submitted to the Prosecutor General's Office materials stating that several high-ranking officials from the Interior Ministry's Main Department for the Prevention of Extremism extorted a large amount of money from a Moscow Muslim community, Kommersant daily reports.
"The Federal Security Service officers obtained information that a major extortion incident had occurred in the Moscow Lefortovsky market before the New year holidays. According to that information, a group of police officers went to the market under the pretext of an inspection, suspended the market's operation and demanded 1 million rubles from traders for permission to resume work," Kommersant writes.(...)
According to Kommersant, the police said they were checking reports stating that there was an illegal extremist center disguised as a prayer room at the market, which was visited by Muslim traders and Tajik workers from nearby construction sites.
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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin again expressed hope that bringing the Belt of the Mother of God to Russia would positively influence demographic situation in the country.
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He also said that Orthodox clerics told him that representatives of other religions, including Muslims, came to venerate the Belt.
"Priests asked them why. They answered: "God knows, what if it helps," Putin told.
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The Russian republic of Tatarstan held an Islamic graffiti contest. All designs were approved in advance by the Muslim Religious Board and could not include humans and animals. The winning creations will be used as logos for future activities. (Via Diario de Navarra, Kazan Times, KP)