Window on Eurasia

Officials Mistreat St. Petersburg’s One Million Muslims, Leader Says

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 21, 2006 – Dzhamaleddin Makhmutov, the deputy head of St. Petersburg’sAl-Fatkh Muslim Organization, said this week that police and other officials in Russia’s northern capital now practice “systematic discrimination” against the one million Muslims living there.

Makhmutov’s comment came during an interview he gave to the
Portal-Credo.ru religious news service in which he described the recent
harassment against himself as well as the official mistreatment other
Muslims there have experienced both individually and collectively
[http://portal-credo.ru/site/print.php?act=authority&id=564].

Earlier this month, Makhmutov said, he had received a call from the
militia asking him to come in for questioning. When the officer refused
to say what the case was about, the Muslim leader took his name and
number, saying he would come in when it was convenient for him.

Shortly thereafter, three young men appeared at his apartment,
presented official identification, and demanded that they be admitted. Makhmutov asked that whether they had the sanction of the procuracy or a court
for such admission. They said they did but refused to show it to them.

Makhmutov said that he told them that if they did not leave within five
minutes, he would call the militia. They left, but the next day he
called the officer who had called him before. That militiaman again
said Makhmutov should come in but gave no more information. And now
Makhmutov has filed a complaint with city prosecutors.

The Al-Fatkh leader said that what had happened to him was part of
“the systematic discrimination of Muslims” in St. Petersburg.
Various police officials harass the community with calls, and in one
case at least, these calls caused one elderly Muslim to have a heart
attack.

What is especially disturbing, Makhmutov continued, is that the
authorities focus their attention on Muslim citizens of the Russian
Federation and typically ignore Arab Muslims in the city who often
preach a variety of radical Islam that is very much at variance with
the traditional Islam practiced in St. Petersburg.

Officials don’t take any measures against these radicals, Makhmutov
said, aadding that he “does not understand why the authorities are
not interested in conducting a struggle” against such Islamist radicals,
given the stated policy of President Vladimir Putin and the Russian
government.

Another way in which the St. Petersburg authorities are discriminating
against Muslims, Makhmutov insisted, was in their continuing refusal to
allow the Islamic community there to expand the one mosque in the city
or to build additional religious centers.

For 12 years, he said, Muslims there have sought land for the
construction of a new mosque, but they have been kicked “like a
football” from one office to another and then told that “there is
no land.”

Given that nearly one-quarter of the population of St. Petersburg is
now Muslim, Makhmutov said, the Muslims ought to have more than one mosque,
which often cannot hold all those who show up for prayers. Indeed, they
should have one-quarter as many mosques as the Orthodox Church has
churches.

Official attitudes toward the Muslim community there are also reflected
in two other situations, Makhmutov argued. On the one hand, city
officials have been unwilling to help the local medressah to find a
building the Muslims can afford to rent or to subsidize more expensive
quarters.

And on the other hand, when the local Muslim community organized a
meeting in June on “Islam Against Terrorism,” officials of the city
“orally” said they would come but did not in the event show up.
Thus, it appears to the community that city officials is “not
interested in the life of Muslims,” except as an object of
harassment.

The Portal-Credo.ru interviewer then asked him whether all this might
be part of the run-up to last weekend’s G-8 meeting in St. Petersburg.
Saying that he did not know, Makhmutov acknowledged that “it is
possible that someone had made such a decision.”

Now that the G-8 meeting is over, he said, he hopes that St. Petersburg
officials will end the discrimination against Muslims that they have
practiced up to now. In the meantime, he said, he and his fellow
Muslims in Russia’s northern capital will “sit quietly” and hope for the
best.

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