Moscow Muslims Complain of Suppression

Moscow – Every `Eid or Ramadan, the growing Muslim community in Moscow recalls a never ending problem of mosque shortage, being forced to pray in the streets under rain or even snow.

“Certainly mosques are needed. Mosques are needed in each micro-district,” Voice of America reported quoting Abdul Bari Sultanov, a Russian Muslim from Tatarstan, as saying. “As well as madrassas, schools, imams so that people would be morally prepared for meeting their God.” Same as Moscow two million Muslim population, Sultanov has been complaining from increasing suppression and violence for the Muslim community. While the Russian Orthodox Church was building 200 new churches around Moscow, new mosque projects never win building permits. Russian Muslim activist Geydar Dzhemal accused the Kremlin of blocking new mosques in Russia’s capital. “They understand the politics of suppression -- direct suppression,” said Dzhemal, who has criticized Moscow’s policy on Islam since the Soviet days. “And they don't understand that this will create problems for themselves much worse than those they are trying to understand now.” Last March, the mayor of Moscow has warned that no permissions would be granted to building new mosques in the metropolitan city.

Vowing that no new mosques would be built in Moscow, Sergei Sobyanin has attacked economic immigrants for irritating Muscovites with their different languages and manners. “It has turned out that the praying Muslims are not at all Russian citizens and they are not Moscow residents,” Sobyanin recently told Ekho Moskvi. “They are labor migrants. There are only 10 percent of Moscow residents among them and building mosques for everyone who wants it - I think this will be over the top,” continued the mayor. “Muscovites now get irritated by people who speak a different language, have different manners, with aggressive behavior,” he added. Opposition to the building of mosques is not new in Moscow. Last December, government plans to build six new mosques in the Russian capital sparked a controversy in the country with opponents calling for a public referendum on the building of mosques in Moscow.

In 2012, hundreds of residents of Moscow’s neighbourhood of Mitino staged a protest against the building of an Islamic cultural center in their far-flung district. Three years ago, similar news in the Tekstilshchiki area in the city’s eastern part saw residents up in arms against building a mosque on a park.

Away from mosques controversy, anti-immigrant riots became a modern day pogrom in Moscow. On Sunday, Slavic residents in a working class Moscow neighbourhood rioted against Central Asians and Caucasians. “Russia Forward! Russia Forward!” they chanted. While police released most of the rioters, they detained 2,000 migrant workers for identity checks. Politicians called for banning apartment sales to foreigners and for imposing visa restrictions on migrants from the southern Muslim nations that only a generation ago were part of the Soviet Union.

However, anti-Muslim concerns were increasing in the European city. “It will be Muslim, I am afraid,” said Isolda Kukushkina, who moved to Moscow from Ukraine, after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Believe me I like them, but Moscow must be Slavic. It should be somehow balanced. But this influx of immigrants influences our life in a bad way,” said Kukushkina. There are some 23 million Muslims in the Russian Federation concentrated in the north of the Caucasus, representing roughly 15 percent of its 145 million population. Islam is the country's second-largest religion, behind the Russian Orthodoxy. According to Russia Today, experts say that, by 2050, Muslims will make up about half of Russia's population, making it one of the world’s largest countries.