Women targeted in Chechnya

Many women in Russia’s volatile Chechnya region said on Friday they had been harassed and some physically harmed by bands of men for not wearing head scarves during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.

Against the backdrop of a spreading Islamist insurgency, many fear that growing interest in radical Islam could fuel separatism in the volatile North Caucasus, where the Kremlin watches uneasily as sharia law eclipses Russian.

Residents and witnesses told Reuters that bearded men in traditional Islamic dress have been roaming the streets both on foot and in cars since Ramadan started on Aug. 11, demanding bare-headed women wear a head scarf.

“Two men came up to me, one furiously fingering a prayer bead, and said it wasn’t pretty to have a bare head during Ramadan,” 38-year old Markha Atabayeva told Reuters in the Chechen capital Grozny. “They instilled such fear in me.”

Atabayeva was one of at least a dozen women who told of harassment or attacks. One of the women’s assailants told Reuters “hundreds” of women had been warned. Atabayeva said earlier she had seen a group of men with automatic rifles taunting women for not wearing head scarves.

A woman in her mid-30s said she was punched in the face by a man in Islamic dress after refusing to put on a head scarf he had given her.

The actions follow a radical order earlier this week from Chechnya’s spiritual leader to shut all cafes during the month of Ramadan, as well as paintball attacks on bare-headed women in June.

One of the assailants, who described himself as an ” activist,” told Reuters: “We are trying to warn women of their possible sins before God.”