Rogozin Consider Mass Muslim Prayers in Downtown Moscow a Demonstration of Power

“we should stop being tolerasts and start speaking to each other seriously and responsibly for the sake of preserving state unity.” interfax-religion.com   Special Envoy of the Russian President for Interaction with NATO Dmitry Rogozin believes mass visits to Cathedral Mosque in Moscow on chief Islam feasts have political background. “When buses packed with Muslims are driven to Moscow city center not because they don’t have a place for prayer, but because they have to stage a rally with great masses of people subordinated to their Muslim priest, it’s a demonstration of power and there’s nothing of a religious feast,” Rogozin said in his conversation with head of Synodal Department for Interaction with Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies Archpriest Dimitry Smirnov in frame of the priest’s programs posted at his videoblog. He says that Switzerland, Belgium and France are working out a legislation that bans to turn religious feasts in rallies. “The situation there becomes unbearable on Muslim feasts the same as on Prospect Mira (in Moscow where the Cathedral mosque is located – IF),” the politician said. He believes in Russia “we should stop being tolerasts and start speaking to each other seriously and responsibly for the sake of preserving state unity.”

“Muslims have traditionally lived with us and we have never had any problems with them. Recent development are really dangerous, there’s a war against Muslims inside Russia’s Muslim world when radicals try to dominate over followers of traditional Islam,” Rogozin said. According to him, he has recently had a frank talk in Brussels with Tajikistan Foreign Minister, who said that republican leaders sent Tajics to work in Russia “with great pleasure” in order to save them from “Taliban mentality, Islamic fundamentalism” and make more civilized. “But quite the contrary happens. He said: they become fundamentalists in Russia, what do you do with them, who works with them? They become mujahideen in Russia,” Russia’s special envoy said.