Category Archives: Russia

Putin opposes Muslim headscarves at schools, says Russia is secular state

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A relative of mine once said, ‘The most common substance in the universe is not stupidity, it’s irony’

h/t Martin

Al Arabia:

Thursday, 18 October 2012

President Vladimir Putin has spoken out against the wearing of headscarves in Russian schools in his first public comment on a potentially explosive issue. (AFP)

President Vladimir Putin has spoken out against the wearing of headscarves in Russian schools in his first public comment on a potentially explosive issue. (AFP)

By Al Arabiya with Agencies

President Vladimir Putin has spoken out against the wearing of headscarves in Russian schools in his first public comment on a potentially explosive issue.

Putin’s statement Thursday follows a recent incident in southern Russia where a school principal forbade girls from Muslim families from wearing headscarves at school. Their parents protested the move and the principal said she was threatened, according to The Associated Press.

Asked to comment on the issue, Putin signaled his opposition to headscarves at schools, saying that Russia is a secular state and must create equal conditions for all its citizens.

“We must always treat the religious feelings of people with great respect. That must be shown in the state’s activities, in the nuances, in everything,” Putin told supporters, quoted by the Interfax news agency.

“Secondly we have a secular state and we must proceed from this basis,” he added, after being asked for his view on the case of a school in southern Russia that banned girls from wearing the Islamic headscarf.

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More here from ABC

‘Black Widow’ Bomber Was Actress, Dancer

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Russia, like Europe, is attempting to deal with the problem of Islam by inventing a form of benign Islam, feeding it to the people and hoping they are too stupid to notice it.

 

It tends not to work very well.

From The Moscow Times: 

‘Black Widow’ Bomber Was Actress, Dancer

31 August 2012

 

Aminat Kurbanova

For MT

Aminat Kurbanova

 

The female suicide bomber that killed prominent Dagestani cleric Said Atsayev earlier this week had been a theater actress and member of a breakdance troupe before joining the republic’s Islamist movement, national media reported Thursday.

Aminat Kurbanova, born with the ethnic Russian surname Saprykina, graduated from Dagestan State University’s drama school in Makhachkala and went on to work in the city’s Russian-language Gorky Theater, Kommersant reported, citing an unspecified law enforcement source.

Together with her first husband, fellow actor Marat Kurbanov, she also was a member of a local breakdance ensemble that called itself “Snatch,” the report said.

A number of videos of Snatch performances are available on YouTube, but none show female participants.

A video published by the Lifenews.ru tabloid website showed a woman resembling Kurbanova performing a classical dance with a man at an unidentified location.

Reports said Kurbanova converted to Islam after marriage and became a member of Dagestan’s radical Islamist insurgency after her husband was killed in an anti-terrorism operation in 2009.

Kurbanova subsequently married twice, and her last husband, Magomed Ilyasov, died when handling a self-made bomb, the state-run RIADagestan.ru news site reported.

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Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/black-widow-bomber-was-actress-dancer/467380.html#ixzz25Yk4uqoP
The Moscow Times

At least 3 Russian servicemen killed, another 3 wounded by suicide bomber in Chechen capital

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Calgary Herald:

BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS AUGUST 6, 2012 10:10 AM

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Russia – At least three Russian servicemen were killed and another three wounded when a suicide bomber detonated outside a Chechen department store on Monday, officials said.

The Investigative Committee said the attack took place in Chechnya’s provincial capital, Grozny, and the attacker also died in the explosion.

Chechnya’s branch of the Russian Interior Ministry said in a statement that it appeared that two suicide bombers took part in the attack and four Russian servicemen were killed. There was no explanation for the discrepancy in the two accounts.

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Read more:http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Russian+servicemen+killed+bombing+Chechen+capital/7046697/story.html#ixzz22mu8JZcH

Claim of Responsibility in Russia Attack

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Much of the western world, most notably the UK, has attempted to create a new kind of Islam which is commensurate with Western values and convince Muslims that it is authentic. Somehow. The Russians or various former Soviet states had tied this first making official state versions of Islam. This of course has been a dismal failure wherever it has been tried, often with the net result of taking millions upon millions of public dollars and seeing them channeled into actual jihad, for the purpose of destroying us, our way of life and traditions etc.

The story below from the NYT is a pretty good little illustration of how well this works.

NYT:

By
Published: August 4, 2012

MOSCOW — A self-described guerrilla fighter urging strict adherence to Islamic law has claimed responsibility for the killing last month of one Muslim leader and the attempted murder of another, in Tatarstan, a region in central Russia that prides itself on a tradition of religious tolerance.

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“On July 19, 2012, on my orders an operation was conducted against the enemies of Allah,” the guerrilla fighter, who identified himself as Muhammad, emir of the mujahedeen of Tatarstan, said in a video posted on an Islamist Internet site that focuses on the predominantly Muslim Caucasus region, including Chechnya.

In the video, he is shown sitting in the woods, with an automatic rifle propped against one knee. He specifically named the victims of the attack last month: Valiulla Yakupov, the cleric in charge of Islamic education in Tatarstan, who was shot and killed outside his home in Kazan, the regional capital; and Ildus Faizov, the chief mufti in the region, who survived a car-bomb attack less than an hour later.

“All praise Allah,” the jihadist, Muhammad, said in the video. “We believe the operation was a success.” He also warned of further violence against Muslim leaders who do not adhere to Shariah, the strict legal code of Islam based on the Koran.

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STRATFOR: Sniper murders 7 in Khorug Tajikistan

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Four of the murdered were children. The term, ‘recently restive’ was used to describe the area. I suppose “restive” doesn’t mean quite what it sounds like it means as “restive” areas always seem to be places where Muslims are slaughtering people wholesale as opposed to say, a Club Med.

The original SITREP is at WWW.STRATFOR.COM

Tajikistan clashes: ‘Many dead’ in Gorno-Badakhshan

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Notice how far you have to read in this article before you actually get to the bit about who is causing the problems and doing all the fighting. Also this represents yet another front in the war between Islam and everyone else.

BBC:

BBC Map

At least 42 people including 12 soldiers and 30 rebels have been killed in fighting in the remote Tajik region of Gorno-Badakhshan, state television has reported.

Some unconfirmed reports speak of a far higher level of casualties, with dozens of people being killed in the violence.

It follows the fatal stabbing of a top security forces official on Saturday.

That led to military action against local opposition strongman Tolib Ayombekov, reports say.

Residents of the provincial capital Khorog told the BBC their town now resembled a warzone.

Communications in Gorno-Badakhshan province have now been cut.

People are trapped in their homes because of the heavy fighting in the streets, where armoured vehicles have been seen. Dozens of people have been reported wounded.

A hospital official in the Tajik capital Dushanbe – where some of those injured have been treated – told the BBC’s Central Asian Service that more than 200 people were killed on Tuesday.

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‘Russian court forbids spreading islamic writings’

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Translated from German by Michael Laudahn:

From THIS German language news site

[Caption] A russian court put islamic writings on the extremism index

 

 

A court in the south russian city of Orenburg  has established a list of prohibited litterature comprising 65 islamic books, whose sale henceforth is illegal on russian territory. The verdict caused great outrage with the russian moslem community. The court classified the islamic publications as ‘extremist’. In Orenburg, there is a minority of moslem faith, until 1925 the entire district was part of the kazakh soviet republic. Today, Orenburg is situated near the Kazakhstan border, where more than 70 percent of the population are moslems.

 

Among the islamic litterature classified as dangerous are the well-known al-Bukhari and al-Muslim hadith collections, like also the books on the life of the prophet Mohammed (sirah) and the 40 hadiths of the imam An-Nawawi. A typical and verdict-causing text sample from the Sahih hadith goes like this:

[…] When the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) appointed anyone as leader of an army or detachment he would especially exhort him to fear Allah and to be good to the Muslims who were with him. He would say: Fight in the name of Allah and in the way of Allah. Fight against those who disbelieve in Allah. Make a holy war, do not embezzle the spoils; do not break your pledge […] If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah’s help and fight them. […] (Sahih Muslim 19:4294) [excerpt copied from http://wikiislam.net/wiki/Qur%27an,_Hadith_and_Scholars:Jizyah

The forbiddance caused sheer horror with the moslem community in Russia. The Mufti Council of Russia, the Central Office of the Islamic Congregation, the Moslem Coordination Centre for the Caucasus and more islamic institutions condemned the court’s decision sharply. The associations intend to appeal against the Orenburg court decision. Should the court’s decision be upheld, this could lead to a disgruntlement within the moslem community and beyond that to riots. Russia’s human-rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, declared: ‘The fight against terrorism is a fight against the real planning of terror acts and the establishing of groups, not against the interpretation of old and holy books, no matter what persuasion.’ As the writings prohibited are part of classic islam, a forbiddance would be equivalent of a closure of all moslem libraries.

 

This decision is not the first one taking on religious litterature. Earlier, 68 Jehova’s Witnesses publications and 15 oeuvres of the late islamic theologian Said Nursi were classified dangerous and put on the federal list of extremist material, which means it is illegal to spread them or store them for spreading. Since november 2011, blocking the Jehova’s Witnesses’ website has been intensified. In december 2011, Russia’s ambassador to India apologised for the attempt to prohibit the book ‘Bhagavad Gita as it is’ in Russia for being extremist. It is of paramount significance for Hare-Krishna movement partisans. ‘It is not normal to send religious books to ignorants to have them checked’, added the ambassador, thereby expressing sharp criticism at the Tomsk (Siberia) University’s expert witnesses, who had classified the book as extremist.

Wahhabist Terror strikes Tatarstan

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Durotrigan:

 

Today, unknown assailants have attacked two outspoken critics of Wahhabi/Salafist Islam in Kazan, capital of the Russian republic of Tatarstan. Valiulla Yakupov, Tatarstan’s Deputy Mufti, was shot and killed as he left his home, whilst elsewhere in the city the Chief Mufti himself – Ildus Fayzov – was seriously injured as a car bomb tore his vehicle apart. Although nobody has yet claimed responsibility for these attacks, it is a near certainty that they were perpetrated by Salafist militants, angered by the efforts of these two men to combat a growing trend towards Quranic literalism and the call for violent Jihad that has been gaining traction in the republic. It seems symbolic that the attacks took place upon the eve of Ramadan, as if emphasising that the attackers regarded them as false Muslims.

Valiulla Yakupov

Izvestia reports that “Spetsnaz are conducting an operation to detain the presumed killers” and reveals some interesting background information on the two victims. Fayzov only took up his position in April 2011, succeeding Gusman Iskhakov who, according to “the unofficial version” was held to be “leading an insufficiently rigorous policy in relation the republic’s radical Islamists”, whereas Fayzov “took a hard-line and principled position on this question.” Fayzov and Yakupov in this respect were cast from the same mould, and shortly before his death, Yakupov told the paper that he was “alarmed at the growing influence of followers of radical currents of Islam amongst the republic’s Muslims.” He believed that these influences were primarily of foreign origin, stating: “Dozens of people go abroad, who then return to the republic and act as influential agents: actually recruiting new people and sending them abroad.”

 

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(STRATFOR is reporting this as a “Wahhabi attack on these men)

‘Allah’s enemy!’ Radio host slash-attacked for anti-Islam rant on air

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RT.Com

Published: 29 May, 2012, 15:34

Photo from www.radiomayak.ru

Photo from www.radiomayak.ru

TAGS: Crime, Health, Religion, Scandal, Russia, Mass media, Police

 

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.

According to the police report, on late Monday evening an unknown man called to Aslanyan’s flat over the building intercom and called him outside for a talk. When the journalist stepped out of the entranceway he was knocked over the head with a heavy object, after which the assailant brought the knife into play.

Aslanyan claimed that the attacker was shouting “you are Allah’s enemy!” while slashing at the victim.

Police say the abuser was a slim man of about 30, while according to some witnesses there were several attackers.

As of now the journalist is conscious and his condition is stable. His relatives and friends are free to visit him in his flat, which is guarded by police. Investigators say they do not have a primary lead, but hope to identify the perpetrator using porch surveillance camera data.

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Increase on religious Islam in Azerbaijan

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Here is a short excerpt taken from a STRATFOR report. The increase in mosques is interesting.

From STRATFOR:

in 1991. That year, there were fewer than 40 mosques in Azerbaijan; at present, there are more than 1,700. More important, Islamism also appears to be climbing, as evidenced by increased religious rallies and religious schools.

The reasons for this increase are manifold. Azerbaijan is situated between two traditionally Islamist areas — Iran and Russia’s North Caucasus region — that through various groups are attempting to spread their own versions of Islamism throughout the country. With the rise of these groups comes the concern that their members could destabilize the country through radicalism. Radical Islamism may increase in the long term, but Baku will be able to manage the situation through its security apparatus and through political accommodation with nonviolent groups

Sharia in Moscow. Not just for Muslims anymore!

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This article below from

Front Page Magazine.

If there are any fluent Russian speakers out there who feel the video linked in the article is important and worth translating and subtitling, please leave me a comment below and let’s see if we can do it together. From the description in this article would certainly make it appear that it was.

Eeyore for Vlad:

—————

“You think that we are coming here as foreigners, but we believe that we are at home here and maybe you are the foreigners. We will make those laws that suit us, whether you like it or not, and any attempts to change that will lead to spilled blood. There will be a second dead sea here and we will drown the city in blood.”

Those were not the words of some back alley preacher, but of noted Moscow lawyer, Dagir Khasavov, giving an interview to a television station about his proposal to implement Sharia courts in Russia. Interspersed with footage of death sentences being executed, Khasavov spoke about his new organization that would protect Muslim rights and claimed that his proposal was only the beginning of a worldwide expansion.

“We are going to expand this net, we will begin in Russia, first Asia, and then everything will be encompassed, as it was in the Caliphate,” Khasavov said. According to Khasavov, Russian security services already unofficially refer cases involving Muslims back to Sharia courts and his proposal to officially establish such courts would only legitimize the parallel justice system that already exists for the millions of Muslims who now live in Moscow and other cities.

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Syrian security forces using chemical weapons, says army defector

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IsraelHayom:

Captain Ahmed Abdul Razek, a Syrian army defector, says troops loyal to Assad used nerve gas to subdue protesters in Homs • President Shimon Peres calls Assad a “murderer” and praises Syrian opposition groups • Violence in the country continues with diplomatic efforts bogged down.

Eli Leon, Daniel Siryoti, Yori Yalon and The Associated Press
Tanks in the streets of Homs. Army defector Captain Ahmed Abdul Razek says forces loyal to Assad are using chemical weapons on opposition fighters.

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Photo credit: AFP

An officer who has defected from the Syrian army claimed on Sunday that security forces were using nerve gas manufactured in Russia to subdue opposition forces mainly concentrated in the city of Homs.

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Good to see Russia is maintaining it’s high standards for power-plant safety.

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I mean if you can’t learn from Chernobyl…

h/t Gates of Vienna

From source page:

         Uploaded by on Feb 7, 2012

Video courtesy http://www.fontanka.ru/2012/02/06/020/
Amateur video showing a huge flash at a power station near St. Petersburg has gone viral on YouTube. Authorities say the flash was caused by ‘technical malfunctioning’ which led to a temporary power blackout. No one was hurt in the incident.