ISCA - The Islamic Supreme Council of America

Russia: Saudi-Funded Wahhabite Group Seizes Mosque

Gennadiy Lyulkin
Moscow Rossiyskaya Gazeta Thursday, July 25, 2002

Report by Gennadiy Lyulkin: "It's Not the Fault of the Spring If People Take Water From It in Dirty Pots" -- taken from HTML version of source provided by ISP

[FBIS Translated Text] Krasnoufimsk, Sverdlovsk Oblast - "Here's the score, respected mullah. Repay R5 million to us. You took out a loan when you bought the car, just think. You'll be out in the snow. You'll be left without a home, without anything. Always keep this sum to hand, so you can hand over the money at our first demand. Death to enemies of the people!"

Imam Nadzhibulla Khazrat Sitdikov, senior cleric at the Krasnoufimsk mosque, found this note containing reckless threats in the mosque's mailbox one day. And although the threatening note, conforming to the rules of the genre, was unsigned, the 70-year-old mullah, with the wisdom of long experience of life, had no particular difficulty in working out that the splittists were trying to intimidate him in this crude way.

A Wahhabite sectarian group appeared in Krasnoufimsk in the early nineties. They were supporters of the so-called Kazyyat Administration, which is under the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Asian Part of Russia (DUMAChR). According to certain information, its activities are funded from Saudi Arabia, a state whose ideology is Wahhabism. For many years now this group of radicals, skillfully coordinated by Nafigulla Ashirov, self-proclaimed supreme mufti of the DUMAChR, has been terrorizing clerics and members of the Muslim community who hold traditional views concerning religious life and Islam. They are led by Libabov, whom Ashirov has appointed as imam-mukhtasib of the oblast's Krasnoufimskiy, Artinskiy, and Achitskiy Rayons. According to the imam, Libabov is a convinced supporter and proponent of Wahhabism.

"These people are few in number, but they are prepared to do anything for the sake of seizing spiritual power," the cleric believes.

You have to believe someone like Nadzhibulla Khazrat. He is an imam like his father before him. A respected man. An elder. A member of the presidium of the Regional Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Sverdlovsk Oblast, which is part of the Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia. The mosque belongs to the Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia -- the community has the use of it. Libabov and his comrades tried for many years to seize the mosque building and appoint a cleric from among their own ranks. Eventually they succeeded.

On 26 April 2002 the splittists made yet another attempt (the umpteenth!) to take the keys of the mosque from the senior cleric, but they met with a resolute refusal. Then they forcibly pushed him into the mosque and barred the door with whatever was to hand. The cleric was stuck inside until late that night, until his wife released him from confinement. And when Nadzhibulla Khazrat went to the mosque the next morning, he saw that the locks on the gates and doors had been changed. He was no longer allowed to take services at the mosque.

Exactly a month after the forcible seizure of the mosque, on Friday 24 May, Muslims celebrated their third most important religious holiday -- the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. Sibgatulla Hajji Saydullin, mufti of Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Oblast, and Mukhammedgali Khuzin, mufti of Perm and Perm Oblast, came to Krasnoufimsk for the occasion. According to the program for the celebrations, they were supposed to take the Mawlid Friday service in the city mosque. The clerics knew that the mosque was in the hands of the splittists and there could be clashes, so before the start of the service the two muftis went to the chief of the city internal affairs department and asked that a police detail be posted outside the mosque.

The service began. Traditionally, it is supposed to end with the drinking of tea around a common festive table. However, the ceremony did not take place. Immediately after the service Libabov's supporters mounted a frenzied attack on the mufti of Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Oblast and broke his staff -- the symbol of the cleric's spiritual authority. The mosque's senior cleric, Imam Nadzhibulla, also suffered. His turban and robe were torn off.

"Passions were running so high that I thought that at any moment matters would descend into bloodshed," the mufti of ekaterinburg says, recalling that ill-fated day. "However, the Almighty was merciful and prevented murder. Allah prevented it, not the police, because the people in uniform did nothing at the fateful time."

According to the mufti, the DUMAChR pursues a radical Islamic ideology leading to interethnic and interconfessional strife. This community sells religious literature that is on the list of sectarian, Wahhabite fundamentalist literature issued by the Central Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia. All the books on this list (it contains around 100 titles) are banned from being sold. In confirmation of his words the mufti showed me several books that can be freely bought at the DUMAChR's stall at Yekaterinburg's Northern Bus Station. "Program for the Study of Shari'ah Sciences," "The Muslim's Fortress," "Basic Principles of Brotherhood" -- all these books and others preach interethnic enmity and interconfessional intolerance. The pamphlet "Basic Principles of Brotherhood," for instance, openly calls for enmity between people.

"They are saving the 'Islamic world' in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Yugoslavia by means of war," the mufti says. "After reading lines from the book 'Basic Principles of Brotherhood,' people who call themelves 'Islamic brothers' or 'Muslim brothers' will want to create similar organizations in Russia. The 'Islamic brothers' will establish, measure out, and erect 'sacred borders of Islam' and defend them 'with powerful weapons,' 'adopting defensive positions' from the other tribes -- Christians, Jews, and nonbelievers -- and against the state itself, since it is secular and constitutional."

Several Near East residents preaching ethnic and religious extremism have been detained in Sverdlovsk Oblast in recent years. Here are just two instances.

Makhmudzhon Satimov, a citizen of Uzbekistan, was detained in summer 2000. He was on the international wanted list for preaching religious extremism and participating in the organization of mass disturbances. Despite this, Saimov was invited by DUMAChR head Nafigulla Ashirov to work in Artinskiy and Krasnoufimskiy Rayons. What this "work" was is not very clear, but, according to unofficial information, Satimov did his utmost to preach Wahhabism. When law-enforcement agencies tried to detain Satimov and extradite him to Uzbekistan, it transpired that the enterprising Uzbek, by contracting a bogus marriage, had obtained Russian citizenship and therefore could not be extradited.

A year later a similar story occurred with Kulbek Saktanov, a citizen of Kyrgyzstan accused of publicly calling for a violent change of constitutional system. Admittedly, Saktanov was successfully detained and extradited to his home country.

In Place of a Postscript

In Soviet times all Muslims were united in a single religious organization -- the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of the USSR and Siberia. With the advent of democracy parallel Islamic structures independent of the central Spiritual Administration began to emerge. The Islamic Cultural Center. The Council of Muslims of Russia. The Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Asian Part of Russia. The Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Tatarstan. The Buguruslan Muftiate. The Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Volga Region. Thus the unity of Muslims' ranks was destroyed.

The self-proclaimed leaders of these organizations were reminiscent of the "new Russians" who hastened to illegally appropriate considerable wealth. On the one hand, they categorically rejected the historical organization of Islam in Russia -- the centralization of spiritual authority -- and, on the other, satisfying personal, mercenary interests, without standing on ceremony, they swiftly declared themselves "heads of Muslim spiritual administrations" to the accompaniment of a democratic clamor about freedom of speech and religion. They appropriated spiritual and other titles, though this did nothing to make up for their lack of godliness. Muftis sprang up like mushrooms, including people with criminal pasts and young men who thought they could speak with the Lord on equal terms. Envy, vanity, unsatisfied ambition, and a thirst for power -- all this induced people to embark on separatist actions.

"In principle there is nothing unusual in the fact that there are many religious currents," Russia's Supreme Mufti Sheykh-ul-Islam Talgat Tadzhuddin stated in an interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta. "The Prophet Muhammad said: Christians have divided into 72 groups. You will divide into 73. But only one of them will enter paradise."

Concerning the sectarian Wahhabite literature that is being circulated on Russia's territory, the supreme mufti said: "My teacher Akhmadzaki Khazrat from Kazan used to say to me: When somebody brings you water from a spring in a clear pot, drink it and praise the water. But if they bring you the same water in a slop bucket, there is no point in cursing the spring. It is the same here. It is not Islam's fault if somebody alters and distorts it."