Russian Police Targets Crimean Hijab-wearing Muslims
“This shows that Russian police do not trust headscarfed women and see them as a separate group in the general public,” Eider Ismailov, the assistant mufti of Crimea, told Qirim News Agency.
“This is nothing but an insult against our beliefs as Muslims,” Ismailov said.
Recently, Muslim women in the capital Simferopol and Bakhchysarai have accused Russian police of pulling women with Islamic hijab over for passport checks.
Women added that they were being treated as if they were 'enemies' on their Facebook profiles.
Security check did not target women only.
Over the past few days, Crimea religious schools, or madrassahs, have been searched for banned Islamic literature.
Three madrasas were searched during August 13, ahead of a law that will come into force in 2015 that bans a number of popular Islamic books, another assistant mufti, Esadullah Bairov, said.
“The books are removed as a warning, as the law is not in force in Crimea yet. Still no extremist literature was found in Crimean madrasas that were searched,” Bairov said.
The so-called “Federal List of Extremist Materials” was compiled by the Russian Ministry of Justice on July 14, 2007 and contained 1,058 data-x-items as of December 25, 2011.
According to the ban, producing, storing or distributing the materials on the list is an offense in Russia.
The Russian move to annex Crimea followed an earlier vote in March on the peninsula’s future.
The referendum, approved by 96 percent, was followed by several steps from pro-Moscow Crimean parliament, issuing a law that allows Russia’s annexation of the disputed peninsula.
The hastily organized March 16 referendum was boycotted by Tatars who rejected as held at gunpoint under the gaze of Russian soldiers.
Source: On Islam
