Italy: Islam denied share of income tax

Italy doesn’t recognise Islam as a religion, but rather as a political group, so mosques won’t be eligible for public funds and their donors will be public. From ADNKronos:

Mosques in Italy will not receive a share of income tax revenue the Italian government allocates to religious faiths each year. Hindu and Buddhist temples, Greek Orthodox churches and Jehovah’s Witnesses will be eligible for the funds, according to a bill approved by the Italian cabinet in May and still must be approved by parliament.

Until now, the government had earmarked 8 percent of income tax revenue for Italy’s established churches. The great majority of these funds go to the Catholic Church, although if they wish, individual tax payers may elect to give the money to charities and cultural projects instead.

The head of COREIS, one of Italy’s largest Muslim groups, Yahya Pallavicini, said he was bitter that Islam had been denied the revenue from Italian income tax.

“Work should be begun on legally recognising those moderate Muslims who have for years shown themselves to be reliable interlocutors who are free of and fundamentalist ideology,” he said.

Islam is not an established religion in Italy and there is only one official mosque in the country, Rome’s Grand Mosque (photo). Politicians from the ruling coalition cite radical imams, polygamy and failure to uphold women’s rights by Muslims immigrants as obstacles to recognising Islam as an official religion in Italy.

Found here and here.

Background: Milan’s 1st mosque construction faces problems.

France: AQ warns Govt against rescuing French kidnapped nationals

AFP:

Al-Qaeda has warned Paris not to attempt to rescue five French nationals kidnapped by jihadists in Niger, SITE monitoring group said Thursday, as France mobilised its forces to find them.

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb posted a statement on jihadist forums in which it said the kidnappings came in the “context of retaliation” promised by AQIM leader Abu Musab Abdul Wadud to France, the US-based group said.

SITE said the statement carried a warning to France that they should not attempt another rescue mission “like they had done for Michel Germaneau” and that the group “will issue their legitimate demands later.”

“In the context of retaliation… a group of heroic mujahedeen under the command of Sheikh Abu Zeid, may Allah protect him, were able to break into the French Arlit mining area in Niger,” said the statement carried by SITE.

“Despite the tough military stands in the area and the many security cordons, the lions of Islam were able to go through all the guards and kidnap five French nuclear experts working at Areva,” it said.

“We also warn of the consequences should they commit any foolish action again, because it will be doomed to fail and they will certainly pay a heavy price.”

Found here.

Background:

7 foreigners kidnapped near uranium mining site.

AQ behind Niger attack.

Tajikistan: AQ’s attack marks an increase in profesionalism and number of terrorist operations

Analysis from Stratford about last Sunday’s AQ attack on Tajik military, as a result of which 40 soldiers were killed:

Sunday’s attack was one of the deadliest clashes between militants and the Tajik government since the Central Asian country’s civil war ended in 1997. The last comparable attack was in 1998, when militants ambushed a battalion of Interior Ministry troops just outside Dushanbe, killing 20 and kidnapping 110. Sunday’s incident was preceded by a Sept. 3 attack on a police station that involved a suicide operative and a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device (VBIED) in the northwest Tajik city of Khujand that killed four police officers. Suicide attacks are rare in Tajikistan, and VBIEDs even more so. The Khujand attack also stands out as it occurred outside militant territory. Khujand, Tajikistan’s second-largest city after the capital, is located at the mouth of the Fergana Valley, the largest population center in Central Asia.

This represents a noticeable increase in the number and professionalism of militant operations in Tajikistan. Regardless of whether the September attacks can be directly linked to the Aug. 24 jailbreak in Dushanbe, the sudden re-emergence of attacks in Tajikistan after a decade of quiet in Central Asia deserves our attention. In short, something is percolating in the valleys of Central Asia that has reawakened militant groups more or less dormant for a decade. This unrest will likely continue and possibly grow if Tajik security forces can’t get control of the situation.

…The past has shown that violence in one country can quickly spread to its neighbors. Thus, while Uzbekistan has largely mitigated the militant threat through strict security measures, it remains vulnerable due to its proximity to the chaotic countries of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and the geographically distorted borders around the Fergana Valley.

The Afghan question also looms large. With the United States and NATO set to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in less than a year, Central Asian countries will face a much less restrained Taliban in Afghanistan. The Taliban’s relative weakness in northern Afghanistan will mitigate this threat, but the region will nonetheless be in limbo after NATO withdraws. For their part, Central Asia’s militants hope the Western withdrawal and the hoped-for Taliban rise to power will restore Afghanistan as a militant safe haven from which to pursue their home-country ambitions. And this prospect, of course, makes Central Asian governments quite uneasy.

Complicating matters, Russia is moving to protect its interests in Central Asia by moving up to 25,000 troops to Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan to increase security at its military installations there. Central Asian states are looking to balance their security needs in light of a destabilizing Afghanistan by accepting more Russian troops.

Between increasing militant activity in Tajikistan after years of relative quiet, the impending Western withdrawal from Afghanistan and a resurgent Russia, Central Asia faces challenging times ahead.

The Tajikistan Attacks and Islamist Militancy in Central Asia is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

UK: Six men arrested on suspicion of burning Qu’ran

Telegraph:

Officers detained two men on September 15 and four more yesterday and all six were bailed pending further inquiries, Northumbria Police said.

”The arrests followed the burning of what are believed to have been two Korans in Gateshead on September 11,” the spokesman said.

‘‘The incident was recorded and a video placed on the internet.”

In a video still accessible on YouTube, six young men in hooded tops or wearing scarves over their faces can be seen pouring petrol on a book and setting it alight, before burning another.

On the video, which appeared to have been filmed behind a pub, they cheer as the first book bursts into flames.

Northumbria Police said the men were not arrested for watching or distributing the video, but on suspicion of burning the Koran.

Gateshead Council and the force issued a joint statement to stress that community relations in the area were good.

It said: ”The kind of behaviour displayed in this video is not at all representative of our community as a whole.

”Our community is one of mutual respect and we continue to work together with community leaders, residents and people of all faiths and beliefs to maintain good community relations.”

Italy: Police discovers "huge amount of explosive" headed for Syria

Carmelo Casabona

ABCNEWS.com:

Italian police have seized seven tons of the powerful RDX explosive which they found in a shipping container they believe were likely destined for a terrorist organization.

While the origin and destination of the contraband is still being investigated, police are convinced the huge amount of explosive was in transit, possibly from Iran to Syria.

“The truly astonishing amount (of explosive) we seized leads us to believe the recipients could be large international criminal organizations, perhaps tied to terrorism,” Carmelo Casabona, the chief of police said at a press conference in Reggio Calabria today, according to the ANSA news agency.

Found at The Iconoclast.

Terrorism: Algerian women suicide bombers could target Europe

Particularly France, but not only. From Sify News:

European airports and other transport hubs are on ‘high alert’ amid fears of a spate of attacks by Algerian female suicide bombers, Israeli intelligence website Debka said Wednesday, citing counter terrorism sources.

Security has been stepped up at London’s Heathrow, Amsterdam’s Schiphol and airports in Berlin and Rome, as well as at major European railway and underground stations, Debka said.

The commander of French police and security services Frederic Pechenard said on radio Wednesday they had ‘serious evidence coming from reliable intelligence sources telling us there is a risk of a major attack‘.

Al-Qaida in North Africa was targeting France in particular, he said.

The threat included ‘the assassination of an important figure or an attempted mass casualty attack on a crowded public area like a metro train or department store‘, Pechenard said.

One of the main prospective targets for the suicide bombings is reportedly the Gare du Nord station in Paris, where trains depart for London and cities in Italy, Belgium and Switzerland.

Besides French intelligence, Debka said the ‘reliable sources’ referred to by Pechenard were an Algerian intelligence service, Algerian military intelligence, a Moroccan agency and the US agency which coordinates anti-terror activities against Al-Qaeda in the Horn of Africa and the Sahara region.

India: Jihadis appear near Commonwealth Games

Foreign Policy runs an article about the last Jihadi attack, which happened last Sept 19th. Two guys in a motorcicle shot people near a mosque, injuring two Taiwanese journalists. After that, they disappeared in the alleys behind the mosque and minutes later a bomb exploded nearby but didn’t actually cause a lot of damages because of errors in its fabrication.

Commonwealth Games will be held in New Delhi between from next October 3rd. Of course, this Jihadi (re)appearance is not a positive development:

The Jama Masjid attack was a far cry from the sophisticated November 2008 massacre in Mumbai, but it suggests that India’s jihadi movement can no longer be ignored. It also demonstrates the durability of the Indian Mujahideen, whose bombings claimed hundreds of lives between 2005 and 2008, and raises the prospect that it is regrouping. In their email, the militants threatened to disrupt the Commonwealth Games, scheduled for next month in New Delhi. India’s various failings in planning for the high-profile sporting event have garnered all the headlines, but a larger, more successful attack — if demonstrated to have been carried out by a terrorist group linked to Pakistani jihadi groups — could spark a regional crisis between two nuclear powers.

Much of the Indian Mujahideen’s leadership is drawn from the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) — a banned Islamist student group founded in 1977 by Jamaat-e-Islami, India’s largest Islamist political party. From the outset, SIMI made clear its belief that the practice of Islam would remain incomplete until a caliphate was established. SIMI’s strident Islamism soon led the Jamaat to distance itself from the organization.

SIMI appealed to an emerging class of educated, middle-class urban men who felt economically marginalized and politically disenfranchised by anti-Muslim chauvinism in India. By 2001, when the group was outlawed, SIMI boasted more than 400 ansar, or full-time workers, and 20,000 ikhwan, or volunteers. As scholar Yoginder Sikand has noted, the organization provided “its supporters a sense of power and agency which they were denied in their actual lives.”

After December 1992, when Hindu extremists smashed a mosque in northern India, SIMI’s polemics became increasingly bitter. In a 1996 statement, SIMI called on Muslims to follow the path of the 11th-century warlord Mahmood Ghaznavi and avenge the destruction of mosques in India. At SIMI’s 1999 convention, the language was inflammatory. “Islam is our nation, not India,” thundered Mohammad Amir Shakeel Ahmad — one of several SIMI-linked operatives of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Pakistani jihadi group, who was arrested in 2005 for smuggling in military-grade explosives and assault rifles for a planned strike in the state of Gujarat.

Read it all.

Flag: Wikipedia.

Germany: honor killings and superficial integration

http://www.youtube.com/v/EcsxXfFjx8M?fs=1&hl=es_ES&color1=0x5d1719&color2=0xcd311b

Found here.

US: More on Obama’s silence about Molly Norris

World Magazine:

From beyond our shores and without setting foot on our soil, the jihadists have invaded our country and taken the life of one of our citizens. Norris is still alive, but the woman as she was known is gone. She has lost her life in the legal sense: new birth certificate, school records, life story. For anyone who knew her, it is as though she is dead. But it is not just one life the jihadists have taken. To the former Molly Norris, it is as though all the people she has known are also now dead. They have been torn from her life because she has been torn from theirs.

A random attack—an exploding SUV in Times Square or a suicide bomb on an airplane—would spur us to retaliation. Be this is worse. Al-Awlaki targeted Norris in particular because she exercised her right to free speech in America in a way that displeased him and those who share his political religion on the other side of the world. The result: American blasphemer successfully neutralized. This is cause for national alarm.

President Obama has been quite vocal about standing up for the First Amendment rights of the Muslims who want to build a mosque near Ground Zero. But as that is an issue that involves local government, popular opinion, and private enterprise, it is actually none of his business. By contrast, as this involves foreign threats against an American citizen in her own country, the matter is central to his business. President Obama should call this what it is: an act of war. He should make full use of his armies and agencies to protect this woman’s life and liberty, and should defend her as he would defend our borders. But he has been completely silent.

Well, guess what? More people are just seeing what’s obvious!!

I insist: Are they going to ask Awlaki to pay for the security costs his threats are causing? Or that’s just for Fla pastor Terry “I wanna burn a Koran” Jones?

Bosnia: Al-Jazeera purchases station, will begin broadcasting in Jan 2011

DW:

The Qatar-based media giant Al Jazeera has purchased a broadcasting station in the Bosnian capital. The operation is slated to begin January 2011 in Sarajevo and later be extended to the entire region. News of the Arab broadcaster’s Bosnian expansion has produced diverse reactions.

“People aren’t afraid of a new war, exactly, but rather political upheaval,” said Boro Kontic, head of the journalist training institution Media Center Sarajevo.

Kontic likens the arrival of the Arab media conglomerate to the atmosphere before the start of the Bosnian war, when it was announced that Sarajevo was to become regional headquarters for the European TV channel Euronews.

The reactions are basically two: first, those who support Al-Jazeera because it can be “an independent and objective source of information” and, secondly, those others who see a desire of political influence on the Balkans’ sphere.

Algeria: Christians tried for breaking Ramadan fast

Another example of “respect” for non-Muslims. ABC.au:

Two Algerian Christians have been tried for breaking Ramadan fasting rules, with hundreds of people protesting outside the courtroom against judicial authorities.

Hocine Hocini, 44, and Salem Fellak, 34, were arrested on August 13 on the building site where they worked in the northern region of Kabylie after they were spotted eating lunch.

The pair admit to eating but insist it happened in a discreet place.

Muslims are not allowed to eat during daylight hours during the Ramadan holy month.

In Algeria breaking the fast can be punished with three months in jail.

The prosecutor has actually asked for that punishment.

Found here.

Flag: Wikipedia.

Germany: Two ex-GITMO prisoners arrive after Germany-US agreement

Der Spiegel:

A spokesman for the Hamburg government confirmed that Ahmed Mohammed al-Shurfa, a stateless man of Palestinian descent born in Saudi Arabia, had arrived in the northern German port city.

The spokesperson said that the 34-year-old would first be brought to a medical clinic, where he will be given an extensive check-up over the next few days. Officials said the goal was to help reintegrate the former prisoner into society, with the hope that he will ultimately become self-sufficient. The Americans arrested al-Shurfa in Afghanistan in 2001 and he has been imprisoned at Guantanamo since 2002.

Later on Thursday, a second former Guantanamo prisoner — 36-year-old Mahmoud Salim al-Ali of Syria — arrived in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate in central-western Germany, an official with the state’s Interior Ministry said. “According to our knowledge, he does not pose any threat,” a spokesman said. “We haven’t brought a sleeper into our country,” he said, referring to the phenomenon of potential terrorists like the 9/11 celll that infiltrate society and appear to be normal residents before they are activated.

‘Humanitarian Reasons’

Earlier this year, Germany said it was prepared to host two former inmates from the Guantanamo prison. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière said the decision had been made for “humanitarian reasons.” “I’m not only the federal interior minister, but also a human being and a Christian,” the politician, who is a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, said as he announced his decision in July. The decision had been contingent on German states volunteering to take in the former prisoners, who in many instances couldn’t return to their countries of origin. Both Hamburg, which is a city-state, and Rhineland-Palatinate agreed.

…In the case of a third prisoner, German officials rejected the request to allow him to be transferred to Germany because the government could not conclusively confirm that he didn’t represent any threat or danger, de Maizière said in the summer. The interior minister said Germany did not plan to take in any other Guantanamo prisoners and that the government would respond negatively to any additional requests.

Photo found here.

Egypt: Islamist cleric accuses Coptic Church of "being a State within the State", stockpiling weapons

AINA.org:

On September 15, Qatar-owned Al-Jezirah TV broadcast a program called Without Limits, presented by moderator Ahmad Mansour, who hosted the Islamist Dr. Selim el-Awah, former Secretary-General of the World Council of Muslim Scholars, which has stunned and enraged Copts inside and outside of Egypt. “El-Awah is simply threatening Copts that the forthcoming chaos after Mubarak dies will see mass violence against the Copts,” says Magdy Khalil, Coptic activist and head of Middle East Freedom Forum.

The program alleged the Church has its own militia and hides weapons and ammunition in monasteries and churches, preparing for a war “against the Muslims.” el-Awah said that “Israel is in the heart of the Coptic Cause,” and the Church gets weapons from Israel. He cited as evidence an incident in mid-August, in which the son of a priest in Port Said, Mr. Joseph El-Gabalawy, was falsely accused of importing weapons from Israel. Although he was cleared of charges and released, as the imported goods were children’s fireworks from China and did not belong to him, he is still detained by State Security.

The television program also charged the Church of concealing Muslim converts to Christianity, besides abducting and torturing Christian converts to Islam. Out of the thousands of Christian woman who converted to Islam, willingly or unwillingly, el-Awah mentioned only two wives of priests whom he claimed converted to Islam and consequently were imprisoned in monasteries, Wafa Constantine and Mary Abdallah. Speaking on the latest crisis over Camelia Shehata, about whom Muslims fabricated rumors of her conversion to Islam, he said that she never converted to Islam and was handed over by State Security to her two married sisters (AINA 11-1-2015).

The nearly two-hour program went on to accuse the Coptic Church of being a “State within the Egyptian State,” allegedly taking advantage of the weakness of the present regime, behaving as if it is above the law. The Church was also accused of making an “inheritance” deal with the regime to support President Mubarak’s son in succeeding his father as president in exchange for benefits.

…In a Middle East Freedom Forum press release on September 20, Magdy Khalil said that what Dr. Selim el-Awah said “amounts to incitement to murder and ethnic cleansing of a minority, which are crimes in Egyptian and international law” and if Al-Awah’s words of hate and incitement are overlooked by the Egyptian government, “this would mean that they are partners in these crimes.” The Forum invited national lawyers, Muslims and Christians, to join its campaign for the prosecution of Dr. el-Awah for crimes of incitement.

Read it all!

Flag from Wikipedia.

Iran: (another) prominent human rights campaigner, sentenced to jail

After Shiva Nazad Azari‘s 6 yr- prison sentence and Hossein Derakhsan aka Hoder‘s possible death penalty, now Emad Baghi has also been sentenced for “engaging in propaganda against the Islamic republic“.

A prominent Iranian rights campaigner has been sentenced to six years in jail after he recorded an interview for the BBC’s Persian language TV channel.

Emad Baghi was convicted of engaging in propaganda against the Islamic system, a statement on his website said.

The court charges referred to his BBC interview with Iran’s leading reformist cleric, the late Grand Ayatollah Hoseyn Ali Montazeri.

Mr Baghi, 49, remains free, pending an appeal hearing.

The interview was broadcast after the death of Ayatollah Montazeri in December 2009. His funeral sparked a series of anti-government demonstrations across Iran.

Mr Baghi was arrested days later, then freed on bail in June.

In a separate case, he was sentenced in July to one year in prison and banned from political activities for five years, after being convicted of endangering national security in relation to his work defending prisoners’ rights. An appeal court upheld the sentence on Tuesday.

….He has spent four-and-a-half years in prison over the past decade, and suffers from serious heart and kidney ailments.

Photo from Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

Background: “Democracy and Human Rights have no place in Islamic theology”.

Iraq: Births of AQ’s children were never legally recorded, now they have no legal rights

WaPo:

The daughter of an al-Qaeda in Iraq militant who forced her mother into marriage and motherhood, then disappeared, Zahraa is one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children whose births amid the anarchy and insurgent violence of Iraq were never legally recorded.

Without the paperwork to prove that she is the child of an Iraqi man and that her parents were joined in a legitimate marriage before her birth, Zahraa and others like her have no rights as Iraqi citizens, legal experts say. They do not have birth certificates, passports or national identification cards and will be unable to go to school or hold a government job.

These children, a little-noticed legacy of more than seven years of war, are paying for the sins of their fathers.

“It’s dangerous because in the future they might hurt the society that hurt them,” said Ahmed Jassim, director of the Nour Foundation, a nongovernmental organization working to improve the lives of the militants’ offspring in the northeastern Iraqi province of Diyala.

The children are products of a time when al-Qaeda in Iraq controlled large swaths of the nation after the U.S.-led invasion. The legal system broke down, institutions stopped functioning and an insurgency raged. Some Sunni Muslim communities gave sanctuary to the men, Iraqi and foreign Arabs, believing they would help rid them of a foreign army. But al-Qaeda in Iraq quickly grew brutal, overpowered other Iraqi insurgent groups, declared an Islamic state and enforced a severe form of Islamic law.

…Officials in the Interior Ministry tasked with assisting victims of the Iraq war said the women are not considered victims of rape and, although the situation is unfortunate, there is nothing they can do.

“Helping them could encourage al-Qaeda in Iraq,” said Fadhil al-Shweilli, a ministry official who deals with victims of war.

Legal experts said the easiest solution would be to give the children to orphanages or forge their birth certificates with the name of a fake father.

Flag from Wikipedia.

Netherlands: prosecution drops charges against cartoonist

DutchNews.nl:

The public prosecution department announced on Tuesday it is dropping its case against a cartoonist arrested in 2008 on discrimination charges. 

The cartoonist, who operates under the pseudonym Gregorius Nekschot, published the controversial cartoons on his website. He was arrested in 2008 following a complaint made in 2005.

Although the department considers the cartoons discriminate against Muslims and ‘people with dark skins’, it made the decision to drop the case because the cartoons have not appeared on the website since shortly after Nekschot’s arrest. In addition, the cartoonist spent 24 hours in jail following his arrest, reports the Volkskrant.

The fact that the complaint was made as far back as 2005 and there have been no further complaints also played a role, the paper says.

Gregorius Nekschot in Wikipedia.

Image found here.

Germany: Merkel on mosques

“For years we have deluded ourselves on this subject”, Merkel said, but “mosques, among other things, will become an ever more present feature of our landscape”.

She added that immigrants who did not make enough of an effort to integrate in the country should expect to be treated “firmly” and would “suffer the consequences”.

“We cannot accept a parallel society in which fundamental rights such as equality between men and women would not be the rule”, she said.

“Only the Constitution can serve as a basis for us to live together in tolerance and respect. Whoever wants to live here must accept that.”

[Source: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung/AFP]

Found here.

And what happens if the people who come tell you that they are tolerant but they aren`t and are just waiting for their moment? Officials in Sweden fear Islamization and say:

It’s not necessarily the case that we’ll all become Muslims, but that we will have to obey Sharia. . . Through Muslim immigration and rapid propagation, as well as through Turkey’s membership in the EU, Europe can become dominated by Muslims.

Something that Thailand knows well, while MSM usually avoid this fact.

Morocco: blogger threatened with death

I have received two messages on my Facebook inbox, in the first message, the sender threatened of slaughtering me like sheep being slain! in the second message titled ” an appointment” , the sender says to me : “we shall meet at Elhajeb where murdering you is going to take a place!” Elhajeb, however, 15 km away from my village, is the nearest place which i often go to every now and then! This points out that the terrorist exerted extra efforts to find out my location!

Kacem blogs at Bahmout, where the famous quote from Voltaire, “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll fight for your right to say it”, is displayed. He “blogs for change” and supports freedom of religion. He also says that Facebook has done nothing against the authors of this repeated threats.

Found at Global Voices Advocacy.

Book: The Tyranny of Silence

It will be about the Mohammed cartoons, and, yes, the “controversial” cartoons will also be depicted. From CNN:

The cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that sparked protests worldwide four years ago will be republished in a new book soon.

Staffers at Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten said the cartoons will be in a book created by cultural editor Flemming Rose and will be titled “The Tyranny of Silence.”

Rose could not be reached for comment.

The book is scheduled to hit stores on September 30, staffers said.

Russia: Moscow Muslims could end up praying in churches

Just the same happens every day in Muslim countries: letting non-Muslims pray in their mosques. Oh, no wait.. From Spero News:

Muslims in Moscow may be forced to pray in Orthodox churches because of a lack of mosques, though they would prefer not arrive at such an “extreme” decision. The warning comes from the imam of the main mosque in the Russian capital Ildar Ayautdinov, responding to citizens’ protests against the planned construction of a place of Islamic worship in the district of Tekstilschiki. The Orthodox Church says it is ready to accept the Muslim faithful, but scholars of Islam argue that Muslim religious leaders are magnifying the situation which in reality is not so dramatic.

“Moscow is the only place in the world where over one million Muslims are served in only four mosques. We lack premises for praying. Muslims are allowed to conduct their religious ceremonies in Orthodox churches, but we would rather avoid this extreme measure, “he said yesterday in an interview with Russian daily Ayautdinov Metro. On Sept. 11, residents of Tekstilschiki took to the streets, along the Volga road, to say no to the plans to build a mosque in a green area, the only one for several kilometres. According to locals, who are gathering signatures for a petition, the mosque “would create parking problems and would represent a threat to the owners of dogs”, animals considered incarnation of the devil by the faithful of Islam. Previously, the residents themselves had asked to have an Orthodox chapel in the area, but permission was denied. For their part, supporters of the construction of the mosque, such as Arthur Urmanshin, ensure that originally there were more mosques in Moscow.

… According to the expert on Islam Roman Silantyev, interviewed by Interfax, the demand for new mosques by Muslims in Moscow is baseless. “It ‘s time to end any speculation about discrimination against Muslims in the capital,” he said. He corrects the mufti Ayautdinov, adding that the actual number of Muslims is estimated “around 400 thousand and there are not four mosques available, but six.” Besides these, he continues, there are dozens of other small mosques and prayer rooms, which are sufficient for the entire community.