Window on Eurasia

Russian Supreme Court Refuses to Block Demolition of Astrakhan Mosque

 

Paul Goble

Vienna, September 1, 2006 – The Russian Federation Supreme Court has rejected an appeal by members of the Muslim community of Astrakhan against orders from the city government there to tear down a mosque they had built not only with the approval but the support of the previous city government.

The decision reportedly was made on August 14, but the court did not tell the appellant about the ruling until the leader of the Astrakhan community inquired this week. Clerks said that the decree was in the mail, but no one inAstrakhan has yet seen it
[http://www.islam.ru/rus/2006-08-29/#13089].

Unless either the Duma or Russian President Vladimir Putin intervenes, that brings an end to legal proceedings about this case within the Russian Federation, but the Astrakhan Muslims have already filed an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights so the issue is hardly closed even in a legal sense.

The case appears to have begun a little over a year ago when Putin told members of the newly elected city government that the mosque, located on the road between the airport and the city center, was a completely inappropriate symbol of the Russian city of Astrakhan.

(For a detailed and well-sourced history of this extraordinarily complicated case and its ramifications for other Muslim communities in the Russian Federation and for Moscow’s relationships with Islamic countries abroad, see
[http://www.religion.sova-center.ru/events/13B742E/14351B8/6D31FE5].)

The Muslim community, which built the mosque not only after receiving all the necessary approvals from predecessors of the current city regime but also with their help, peacefully protested the city’s decision and chose to challenge it in court rather than in the streets.

That action, however, did not lead to a calming of passions but rather their escalation. On the one hand, the city authorities decided that they would insist that the Muslims not only tear down their mosque but do so with their own money – and in the interim face monstrous fines.

And on the other, the Astrakhan Muslims turned to the Muslim media in the Russian Federation which over the past year have regularly featured articles about this and related “threats” to the survival of a Muslim community that not only has deep roots in the city but has been growing rapidly thanks to immigration.

Tempers are now unlikely to cool, not only because of the decision taken by the Russian Federation’s highest court but also because of the cavalier way in which court officials failed to inform the appellants and the likelihood that other Russian politicians may now feel empowered to move against Muslim communities in their locales.

And consequently, it is entirely likely that this action, reported in the Muslim media of Russia only yesterday, will not only spark additional articles critical of what the Russian judicial system has done but quite possibly a round of demonstrations not only in Astrakhan but in other Russian cities with significant Muslim populations.

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