THE MUSLIM WORLD
More than a Landmark Moment A land that persecuted observant Muslims celebrates the opening of a grand mosque. BY RAMADAN ALIG
E
id al-Adha 2015 will remain a special and memorable moment for all Russian, especially Muscovite, Muslims, for on Sept. 23, 2015, President Vladimir Putin formally inaugurated Moscow’s Central Mosque (aka the Moscow Cathedral Mosque and the Moscow Jum’ah Mosque). Accompanying him were Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other world leaders, as well as Chechen Republic President Ramzan Kadyrov, Ingush President Yunus-bek Yevkurov and Dagestan President Ramazan Gadzhimuradovich. This moment reminded Sayyid Muhammad Syeed, national director, ISNA Office for Interfaith & Community Alliances, who represented ISNA, of his visit to the former Soviet Union some thirty years ago. He reflected upon how sad he had been to see that many mosques had been converted into communist party offices and clubs. In addition, he recalled that this particular institution had been in disrepair and had hardly twenty worshipers, all of them middle-aged and closely watched by the Soviet intelligence agency. At that time, Syeed had managed to take in a few copies of the shirt-pocket-sized Quran undetected, which were discreetly and gratefully received and of course with
due apprehension, as it was a proscribed possession then. How times have changed. “What impressed me most was the number of worshippers in every mosque, and all below thirty and fifty years old, and even school students,” said Syeed. At the opening ceremony, Muslim students volunteered to serve as translators and assistants. He met with interesting young Muslims, among them Russian revert Nasima Bokova, editor of the beautiful Muslimah magazine Musulmanika. Muslim social service organizations are run and staffed by hijab-wearing women. Moscow Times, available free in hotels and other places, is run by Dagestani Muslim Nabi Abdullaev, who is critical of Russian support for Assad. Under the Soviet rulers, atheistic schooling was compulsory and any public expression of Islam was against the law. Upon his return to the U.S., Syeed helped establish Americans for Soviet Muslim Rights (ASMR), which had modest goals like educating Muslims and lawmakers in the U.S. about the plight of Muslims in the Soviet Union and asking for such rights as being allowed to go for hajj. Issa Smith served as its president. The organization also distributed a newsletter. “However, in our wildest dreams we could not visualize that the evil empire would crumble and the laws keeping religions
ISLAMIC HORIZONS JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2016
under brutal control would cease,” Syeed remarked. “We know that they need more rights and more freedom. But it is clear that they are on a road where they will get more rather than less of those rights and freedom.” Syeed gave Putin’s staff a humanitarian appeal from U.S.-based Syrian organizations — endorsed by ISNA — asking him not to support Assad. Rushan Abbyasov, the first deputy chairman of the Russian Council of Muftis, told the Vestnik Kavkaza website that the Moscow Cathedral Mosque’s opening was a bright indicator of their “spiritual revival.” The Turkish Diyanet Foundation, an agency of Turkey’s religious affairs directorate, helped with the mosque’s interior design. Dagestan-born billionaire Suleiman Kerimov, who barely surviving a car crash in France in 2007, gave the largest donation: $100 million. The donor-funded $170 million mosque, 59