Russia's struggle over Islam's place

International Herald Tribune ^ | NOVEMBER 8, 2005 | Steven Lee Myers

[mym]

Security officials here in Karachayevo-Cherkessiya, a restive republic on Russia's mountainous southern border, have a secret list of people who are kept under scrutiny. Those on it have committed no crime, but are considered suspect because they are Muslims who practice Islam outside of the state's sanctioned mosques.

"We know who they are," the republic's president, Mustafa Batdiyev, said in an interview. He declined to elaborate, but said the list included about 150 people.

A former member of a committee that compiled it, Murat Kkahtukayev, said the list was far longer.

Ovod Golayev is on it. He lives in Karachayevsk, a city nestled in the foothills of the Caucasus, where he works for a tourist company that organizes skiing and hiking excursions. He wears his hair and beard long. He prays five times a day. He fasts during Ramadan.

In the past month, he said, the police have detained him four times, twice in one day. The last time was on Oct. 28, after two days of violence that killed at least 138 people two weeks earlier in Nalchik, the capital of the neighboring republic, Kabardino-Balkariya.

Golayev, 36, said the Islam he observes was opposed to violence, but he warned that the mistreatment of believers was driving to desperation men like those who took up arms and attacked police and security outposts in Nalchik, men like him.

"They will pressure me enough," he said, "and then I will blow somebody's head off."

Here in the Northern Caucasus, like across all of Russia, Islamic faith is on the rise. So is Islamic militancy and official fear. The result has been tensions like those felt in Europe, where a flow of immigrants from the Muslim world is straining relations with liberal, secular societies.

Only the Muslims of Russia are...

[mym]

IMHO radical muslim preacher use bad economical situation and an absence of national idea in Russia to inspire their false jihadist ideas in young brains.

[MissAmericanPie]

"Those on it have committed no crime, but are considered suspect because they are Muslims who practice Islam outside of the state's sanctioned mosques."

In other words Russia can still add two plus two.