Judge Patimat Dadayeva ordered the destruction of dozens of copies of the translation of fifteen Muslim books written by Turkish theologian Said Nursi.
The judge operates in the Russian republic of Dagestan, in the northern Caucasus; and he has denied the return of 945 other books, also on Muslim theology, seized from local Muslim, Ziyadin Dapayev.
Dapayev’s lawyer, Murtazali Barkayev stated: “It is blasphemy. I have not witnessed any episodes of destruction of religious literature prior to this, in Russia.”
Last month, four other works by the late theologian, Said Nursi, were banned and included in the “extremist Material” federal list.
But it seems that the grip of administrative control by the state is being tightened in worrisome ways not only on Islam (always suspected of spurring forms of violent nationalism and of terrorist extremism in some areas of Russia), but also on other religious faiths not suspected of violent manifestations.
The courts in various parts of Russia are in fact trying to ban Jehovah’s Witnesses’ literature. And in Tomsk some judges are trying to promote an appeal against the decision of a court which has refused to include “the Bhagavad-Gita as it is” in the list of extremist texts.
The book is particularly important for the devotees of the Hare Krishna movement. The office of the Attorney General of Tomsk has announced that it will decide on whether to appeal against the “exoneration” of the Bhagavad-Gita after the motivations of the regional court will have been made public.
But it is obvious by now that in many different places in Russia authorities are looking for any possible barely legal method to prevent the spread of religious literature they do not approve of. Regarding the Jehovah’s Witnesses (who have always been in the eye of the storm as far as their activities in Moscow’s orbit are concerned) the Prosecutors appoint “experts” to verify if the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ texts contain “extremist feelings”; and naturally experts often give affirmative answers.
This same system was used for the destruction of the theological works of Said Nursi. Various courts have decided, based on highly debatable evidence, than the translation into Russian of Nursi’s work as well as that of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ are “extremist”.
And they have included them in the list of “extremist Material” compiled by the Federal Ministry of Justice. Consequently anyone owning or distributing those books runs the risk of being indicted.
The destruction of Nursi’s books in Dagestan is not an isolated incident. Various courts have adopted this measure regarding the works included in the “black list”; extending their attention towards people afterwards.
Therefore it has become more and more common for people to be indicted with accusations of not-specified extremism. For example, in Taganrog some judges have launched a criminal procedure against a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and their community has been declared illegal.
In Kaliningrad the Internal Security Services and the magistrates are trying to force a local Muslim, Amir Abuev, to undergo an obligatory psychiatric examination. It is a situation that makes various organizations for the defense of religious rights, like Forum 18, wonder if we are not returning to a script that seemed gone with the end of the Soviet Union.
In this atmosphere the “victory” of the Hare Krishna in Tomsk is a signal of hope for religious freedom, but not without doubts and fears. “The Bhagavad-Gita as it is” is the translation and commentary of an ancient Sanskrit text by Swami Prabhupada, the founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, and it is a fundamental text for the Hare Krishna community. The Hare Krishna feared that the declaration of “extremism” of the work would foreshadow the banning of the community.
But the idea of there being reasons of international opportunity at the base of the “rescue” of the Hare Krishna, cannot be excluded; in India the condemnation for “extremism” has provoked outraged reactions, and the Indian ambassador to Moscow has described its authors as “crazy”. All this, at a moment when Moscow and Delhi are becoming more and more aligned in foreign policy, economic relationships, and in terms of anti-Chinese and anti-Muslim sentiment.