Russia’s senior Islamic clerics warned the country’s leaders on Friday that unrest could erupt in Russian Muslim communities and beyond if a court decision ordering the destruction of an interpretive translation of the Holy Quran is not overturned.
On Tuesday, a court in Novorossiysk, a city in southern Russia, outlawed the widely read text under a Russian anti-extremism law that rights activists say has been abused by local officials out of prejudice or to persecute groups frowned upon by the dominant Russian Orthodox Church.
The rights campaigners said the decision, which will apply nationwide unless it is overturned on appeal, comes dangerously close to banning the Quran itself.
Russia’s Council of Muftis sounded the alarm in an open letter on Friday to President Vladimir Putin, who has frequently called for unity among the leading faiths, and warned that ethnic tension could tear Russia apart.
“Russian Muslims are indignant over the decision,” said the council’s deputy head Rushan Abbyasov, adding that if the ruling was acted upon, there would be unrest all over the world.
In the letter to Putin, the council drew a parallel with violence in the Middle East and Afghanistan over the actions of American pastor Terry Jones who threatened to burn the Quran on September 11, 2010.
“Is it necessary to discuss how the destruction of books, especially sacred religious books, has been received in Russia in the past?” it said.
A lawyer representing the text’s author, theologian Elmir Kuliyev, said he would appeal the ruling, which calls for the text to be banned and its copies “destroyed”.
Lawyer Murat Musayev, who has a month to file an appeal, said that a local prosecutor sent the material to a local court and together they decided to ban the holy book.
“On one hand there is freedom of religion in Russia, on the other they are banning fundamental religious texts,” he said.
Experts say the translation by Kuliyev, which is more than a decade old, is a respected scholarly work and one of the four translations of the Quran into Russian.
Russian Academy of Science Islamic expert Akhmed Yarlikapov termed the decision “unprofessional” and said it was “one step away from banning the Quran”.
“You could ban the Bible just as easily because it also has passages that talk about the spilling of blood,” he said.
Muslims always threatening like children who don't get their way, then murdering, rioting, raping, and behaving worse than wild animals. Maybe your Koran needs to thrown in the trash heap of history! I hope it is soon, so the world can be done with your Islamic barbarity portraying itself as something pious, HA! The worlds patience wears thin. Meanwhile, Muslims are too blinded by their own delusion of superiority to notice. Woe to you, Muslims, when your time comes it will be well deserved and the world will not care nor cry, and breathe a collective sigh of relief to be done with your terrors and infantile BS! Count on it.
Hey confuse buddy !! Do you really know what is going on or believe in what media shows you ! Many of taliban arrested in our area were not even Muslims. This what US and other countries make up because of their business profit or hatred ,like oil from Iraq.They hire people and name them as taliban Muslims.
Russia is doing the right thing in order to save itself by banning the Quran. And if muslims don't stop crying about this "injustice", then they should first apologize for killing, raping and suppressing christians as well as burning churches and Bibles. And if they don't like it, then THEY CAN GO HOME to the third-world hellholes where they came from. Nobody will miss them and their bloody religion.
The bible writes about violent people and don´t say to the reader “you must kill”!Thats the difference my friends!
Muslims always threatening like children who don't get their way, then murdering, rioting, raping, and behaving worse than wild animals its just due to our acts and due to our corrupt leaders who have presented us wrong in the eye of other world they are responsible for all this
Muslims always threatening like children who don't get their way, then murdering, rioting, raping, and behaving worse than wild animals
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