Muslims in Moscow need more mosques. Does Moscow need any?

A mosque that will be able to house up to 40-60 thousand worshipers is to be built in Moscow. It will be the largest mosque in Russia, and the second largest Muslim temple on the post-Soviet space (after the mosque in Dushanbe). The Spiritual Administration of Muslims in Moscow and the Central Federal District filed an application for the plot of land to build a new mosque and a cultural center a long ago. The religious facilities will be built on the outskirts of the city.

According to the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Russia, the number of the Muslim population in Moscow has been growing steadily. It is easy to assume that it is not the Tatars, who make the Muslim population in Moscow grow, even though they live in the Russian capital for centuries.

This year, the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha was celebrated on August 19. It coincided with one of the major Christian holidays - Transfiguration. The traffic on a number of streets in the center of Moscow was partially blocked, and, as you may guess, it was not because of religious processions of Orthodox believers. During Islamic holidays, the central mosque near the Olympic Sports Complex can not accommodate all those who wish to participate in the joint prayer to Allah. Hundreds of people have to pray right in the street. The mosques that Moscow has today can not accommodate all worshipers. The Council of Muftis of Russia put forward a suggestion to build one mosque in each administrative district of the capital. Will the Moscow government accept the idea?

A while back, the residents of one of the Moscow neighborhoods expressed their protests against the plans to build a mosque on their territory. We do not know how the protest ended, but it seems that it was a bit naive, as it was directed not against the cause, but against the consequence of one and the same phenomenon. During the Soviet times, there was a popular joke of only two words - "A Jewish janitor." In today's Russia, particularly in Moscow, it is the expression "a Slavic janitor" that sounds like a joke. Everyone is used to the fact that it is only non-Russian individuals who work as janitors. Non-Russian nationalities dominate other areas of economic activities: small business, large-scale construction, etc. However, it is the image of the Tajik or Uzbek janitor that symbolizes the current state of affairs in today's Russia most brightly. The majority of people who use brooms, shovels and lawnmowers in their everyday work are illegal migrants from Asian republics of the former USSR. They work on municipal positions, i.e. they are public servants of the municipal level. So we have illegal state employees everywhere, but no one seems to pay attention to the issue.

How so? One may recall the beginning of mass protests in the Russian capital. It all started on Manezhnaya Square near the Kremlin, in the heart of Moscow. That riot was based on the murder of a Russian football fan by non-Russian people. However, it was not migrant workers from Central Asia, who killed the young man, but Russian citizens from the North Caucasus. Modern young men do not see any difference between them, though.

A similar protest took place in the Moscow region in October 2010. A Russian young man was killed in an inter-ethnic fight. The residents of the 25,000-strong town of Khotkovo demanded all immigrants should be expelled. The people threatened to lynch them otherwise.

The mayor of the town managed to prevent the pogroms. The lists of addresses where migrant workers lived were handed over to police. The district council hastily disposed of non-Slavic janitors, cashiers and other workers with Asian features. The migrants moved to other towns and villages near Moscow, and Khotkovo became a "Russian" town.

The residents of Khotkovo instinctively and clumsily did the thing that the state, which they pay taxes to, was supposed to do carefully and correctly.

The army of illegal immigrants ideally corresponds to one of the bad Russian traditions, which is known as "non-economic coercion to labor." Serfdom was abolished in Russia much later than in most European countries. The modernizing breakthrough in the 1930s was largely driven by the labor of Soviet prisoners and by the confiscation of  "excessive property" from peasants.

Nowadays, Russian cities can not be imagined without the gratuitous labor force that is commonly known as guest workers. However, millions of rightless and angry aliens pose a threat to the country, where most of them are exploited as slaves. Some day, they may rise. For example, it may happen when they are not allowed to build new mosques.

We hear and read news stories about racial crimes in Russia almost every day. An attempt to understand the reasons for any crime can be easily branded as an attempt to justify this crime. But one can not overcome evil without studying the causes on the basis of which it appeared. Talks about fascism in modern Russia are meaningless if people discuss this issue disregarding a number of serious facts.

Here are some of them. Since 1992, more than 250,000 Russians have left Chechnya, 20,000 people went missing. About 20,000 Russians fled from Karachay-Cherkessia republic. The number of Russians in Ingushetia has decreased by 13 times in 20 years. Fifteen years ago, Russians in Dagestan accounted for 12 percent of the population. Nowadays, there are less than 4 percent of Russians living in Dagestan. The Russian exodus from the former republics of Central Asia was not like an avalanche. But even there, the number of Russians living in those republics is considerably smaller today than it was during the last years of the Soviet power.

Common young Muscovites are not familiar with statistics. However, they can see the scale of Eid ul-Fitr festivities in the Russian capital. They can see new mosques being built, and they know that it is not good for "white" people to live in the places where the "blacks" come from. Therefore, non-Russians pose a threat to Russians. Many Russian youngsters do not see the difference between those who come from Asia and the Caucasus.

Despite the numerous crimes against immigrants, their inflow to Russia does not reduce. Last year, the influx of immigrants put Russia on the second place in the world. In addition, Russia ranks fourth on the amount of money transfers that non-Russians send to their relatives outside Russia. The money transfers go from Russia to citizens of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. As many as 12.3 million people have come to Russia to live during the recent years. In other words, it means that nearly every tenth person in the country is an immigrant, and it goes about only the officially registered people. The largest number of guests lives in the Moscow region - 3 million, or one-sixth of the population of Moscow and the Moscow region.

We have two trains rushing towards each other. Their collision threatens to trigger a national disaster, but who is going to stop them, if the Russian political elite do politics only in their spare time?

I would like to stress it out once again that the construction of new mosques in Moscow is only a consequence of the disease that is known as the uncontrolled migration and Islamization of Russia's Russian regions. "Decorating" Moscow with new Islamic centers will inevitably increase the degree of national strife, which is already critically high for the multinational capital of the multinational country. It is possible to live in self-deception for some time by not noticing the symptoms of the disease. Reality will still break out in a rough form of senseless and merciless Russian uprising. The unity of the country will be in jeopardy.

Stanislav Varykhanov

Pravda.Ru

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