"In that capacity, he observed the problems facing Russian Muslims up close. He says they have to be less passive. “Unfortunately, most of us are sitting and waiting for Allah to help us.” The mainstream Muslim population has lost a lot of time in the last fifteen years in the battle against fundamentalism, according to Amirov. “We could have organized good madrasas or a good Muslim university.” Instead, the Muslim leadership here was bogged down by infighting. The lack of moderate Muslim schools at home in Russia saw young people leave to get their “Muslim education” in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia. He does not have a high opinion of what some of these students learned. “They came back completely different people. They said you should not greet Christians, that you should hate Jews.” A friend of his returned and tried “to teach me how to live.” They found themselves “on different sides of the barricades.”
(Radik Amirov, who is president of Russia’s League of Muslim Journalists when I meet him in 2010, had been press secretary to Moscow mufti Ravil Gainutdin)
- Karima Bennoune. Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here.
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