Moscow (AsiaNews) - A group of unidentified armed men murdered a Muslim religious leader and two of his relatives, in the troubled republic of Dagestan, Russian Caucasus. On 30 October, the Salafi imam Kalimulla Ibragimov, 49, was travelling with his father and his brother by car to the morning prayers in a mosque in Derbent, when group attacked.
This is the third imam killed in
the region since March, but this time the victim is not a moderate. Ibragimov,
as reported by Russian agencies, was a Salafi who preached fundamentalist
Islam. The
Directorate of Muslims of Dagestan, quoted by Ria Novosti, said they did not
know who the victim was.
The
Kavkaz Center, the official website
of the rebels in the North Caucasus, has called Ibragimov a "martyr"
explaining that the imam "ideologically opposed various sects of idolaters
in Dagestan."
Some see the attack as a response to
the murder in August of one of the spiritual leaders of the Dagestani Sufis community,
Sheikh Said Afandi to Chirkavi, a moderate and promoter of dialogue. Afandi
was a well known figure in the varied realities of the Caucasus, where
infighting is on the rise between Salafis and Sufis, associated with a mystical
tradition, represented by the Sheikh who was highly respected by the people. This
year alone five Muslim religious leaders have been killed in Dagestan,
including another Salafi in early October.
After the so-called "pacification" of Chechnya, Dagestan has become the most unstable among the republics of the Russian Caucasus, where Moscow continues to fight Islamist insurgents who advocate the creation of an emirate. In recent years, a deadly campaign has been launched against the religious officials, in response to their explicit criticism of radical Islam, even from local mosques, at the behest of the Kremlin in an attempt to stifle separatism.
The President of Dagestan, Magomedsalam Magomedov, has promised an iron fist against "extremism and terrorism", but some members of the local Muslim community have warned of the real risk that the Dagestan is sliding towards a real civil war. A perspective that puts at risk the security of the Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, close to Daghestan, and through which the Kremlin aims to boost the economy of the Caucasus and present the region as a possible tourist destination.
In
July, the attack on a prominent moderate Islamic leader in Tatarstan - another
autonomous republic of the Federation, about 2 thousand kilometers from
Dagestan - and the killing of his right hand man on the same day, raised fears
that Islamic fundamentalism is spreading to the heart of
the country. So
much so that President Vladimir Putin immediately went to Kazan, the Tatar
capital, to appeal for calm.