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“Beslan memorial plan angers Russian Muslim leader”
Reuters ^ | 04 Apr 2007 14:18:01 GMT | By Christian Lowe

Posted on 04/05/2007 1:53:53 PM PDT by Eurotwit

MOSCOW, March 4 (Reuters) - Plans to build a memorial to the 333 hostages killed three years ago in the Beslan school siege have sparked a row between Christians and Muslims in Russia.

The local Russian Orthodox diocese says it will build a church in the grounds of Beslan’s school No. 1 to commemorate the victims — half of them children — killed in a clash between insurgents and Russian troops.

But one of Russia’s leading Muslim clerics has accused the Orthodox church of trying to hijack a national tragedy by building a memorial that he said would exclude the more than 20 million Muslims who live in the country.

“It is not acceptable to present this tragedy as the tragedy of followers of only one religion,” Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin, chairman of the Council of Russian Muftis, said in a statement.

“We need a monument on this site that symbolises a national tragedy, without any religious undertones, where everyone can come and shed their tears.”

Gainutdin is an outspoken Muslim leader in Russia, and other senior clerics have not spoken out about the memorial plans.

But the row has exposed faultlines between the communities which, despite a conflict between Moscow and rebels in Muslim Chechnya, have had largely smooth relations. Russia is home to the biggest Muslim community in Europe.

Wrangling over the memorial could also aggravate already raw divisions between Muslims and Christians in the volatile North Caucasus region that includes Beslan.

Beslan and the area around it have a majority Christian population and many of them blame their Muslim neighbours for the bloodbath: the hostage-takers were Islamist militants from Chechnya and the neighbouring Muslim region of Ingushetia.”