http://www.newkerala.com/news-daily/news/features.php?action=fullnews&id=86378
Eye on Eurasia: FSB makes Muslim enemies: [World News]: By PAUL GOBLE TARTU, Estonia, March 15 : The "typically Soviet approach" of the Russian Federation's security agencies is alienating ever more Muslims in that country, driving them into the underground and thereby creating the very Islamist extremism Moscow claims it is fighting against, according to a leading Russian journalist. In an article published in Moscow's Novaya Gazeta this week, Anna Politkovskaya reports on what the Federal Security Service, the FSB, has done to a Muslim leader in North Ossetia and how its approach to him and others is intentionally or not promoting the radicalization of Islam there and in other parts of the Russian Federation. On Feb. 2, FSB officers broke into the home of Yermak Tegayev, the head of the Islamic Cultural Center in Vladikavkaz, and conducted a search without a warrant.Tegayev demanded that his lawyer be present, but the Russian security officers ignored him.More to the point, they kept going back to a single place in his apartment and then said that they had found explosives there. There is nothing in Tegayev's past to suggest that he would have such explosives or even that he holds radical views, and his defenders believe that the FSB planted them there.But following this "discovery," North Osetia's Soviet rayon court ordered him held until April 2 to allow prosecutors to investigate his case.He remains under arrest.According to Politkovskaya, Tegayev's only "crime" in the eyes of the authorities is his popularity among Muslims and his unwillingness to subordinate the activities of his center to an officially recognized Muslim Spiritual Directorate, or MSD, a legacy of the tsarist and Soviet past with no theological basis in Islam. Tegayev's Islamic Cultural Center is officially registered with the authorities as a club of people with an interest in religion.But after the Beslan massacre last fall, the FSB in North Ossetia decided that it must be under the local MSD whose leader many Muslims say was installed by the government rather than elected by them as required by Islamic law. But precisely because the authority of the North Ossetian MSD was so low as a result, ever more Muslims looked to Tegayev and his Islamic Cultural Center as their true leaders, something that Tegayev's supporters and Politkovskaya as well believe made him an obvious FSB target. Politkovskaya, who has written internationally renowned books and articles on Chechnya, offers the following analysis of what this case shows.She argues that many Russians in fact support what the FSB is doing with regard to Islam but that neither they nor the security agencies understand the consequences of such actions. The FSB is acting as it is, she argues, "because in the baggage of the FSB there is nothing except Soviet models of 'leadership through spiritual administrations' with the simultaneous destruction of any other trends."What we are seeing today, Politkovskaya continues, is simply "a mechanical remake" from the Soviet past. If the authorities cannot destroy the Koran as they would like, Politkovskaya continues, then they want to put all Muslims under their direct control.They won't allow any "dzhamaats" (an Arabic word for "communities") to exist.And "if muftis and emirs are all the same inevitable in a country with 20 million Muslims, then they must be 'our own' or put in jail." All this, of course, is being done in the name of fighting terrorism, but such actions have achieved little in that regard.Instead, Politkovskaya points out, they are leading to a situation in which Muslims in the Russian Federation may feel compelled to go "underground," with the inevitable radicalization of opinion that such a development will involve. Muslims "who do not want to live in the system of government-controlled 'spiritual administrations' will tragically go into self-isolation," she writes.And Muslim communities will ever more cut themselves off from the rest of the world and that means they will become less understandable to that world."That trend will not lead to anything good. "History," Politkovskaya insists, "provides a mass of examples described in any number of little books which those who are in power stubbornly forgetting to read before they begin striking out" against Muslims or others who refuse to place themselves under the control of those the government has appointed. And what will be the result? "The authority of Yermark Tegayev will only grow," she says."And the more methodically the authorities work to destroy the Islamic Cultural Center, the stronger will become the new religious dissent in the Muslim community of North Ossetia." In short, she concludes, "The republic FSB is now forming with its own arms (is) an opposition that will be happier because it is in opposition" to the government and is thus gaining authority as a result.But this opposition will almost inevitably be radicalized by that, a development that does not bode well for the future of the Russian Federation as a whole.--(Paul Goble teaches at the EuroCollege of the University of Tartu in Estonia.)) ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. Bring education to life by funding a specific classroom project. http://us.click.yahoo.com/FHLuJD/_WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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