On 3rd May, Ansar.ru, a Russian Internet portal, reported that in Moscow one of the mosques is being closed. This was announced by the Imam of the Darul-Arqam Mosque. In connection with the information spread in the media, discrediting the work of the community, a working group has taken the decision to suspend the religious-educational activities of the Darul-Arqam Mosque. “Reorganization is planned. For an indefinite period, starting today, daily services, Friday sermons, lessons and lectures were stopped at the mosque,” said the imam of the mosque.
Recall that a week before the announcement of the closure of the Darul-Arqam Mosque, on 26 April the mosque was surrounded by various units of Russian special services. All Muslims who came to the Jumaah-prayer were subjected to document checks and 140 of them were arrested. The majority of Muslims attending the mosque were from the North Caucasus. In Russian media, information on the detention of 140 extremists based in the walls of the Al-Arqam has been repeated. The media based only on the non-disclosure of law enforcement sources, reported that the congregation of the mosque is often detected in the Islamic militant factions leading the fighting in the North Caucasus. In turn, the representative of the mosque, commenting on the results of the inspection, said that “All arrested last Friday were released on the same day, except for two people who have no registration in Russia, and in accordance with the immigration laws they will be deported.”
All these events took place against the backdrop of explosions produced during the Boston Marathon. As we know the official version was that the Chechen Tsarnaev brothers carried out these bombings under the influence of Islamic militant groups operating on the territory of Russia in the North Caucasus. It has also been announced that the elder brother Tsarnaev recently was on the territory of Russia, where he studied at one of the camps of Doku Umarov. This interpretation of the events indicates that Russia is indirectly to blame for the tragedy that took place during the Boston Marathon. That is it is responsible for the death of the American citizens occurred on the American soil. Russia has taken extra steps to distance itself from the events in Boston. The head of the Chechen Republic Kadyrov said that the Tsarnaevs have long left their homeland and lived in Kazakhstan, and then immigrated to the United States. Russian television stations showed Tsarnaev’s relatives living in Dagestan. They unanimously said that their relative during his visit to them was almost in and all the time spent in feasts with relatives. As for the secret services they conducted mass arrests in Moscow at the Darul-Arqam Mosque where visitors were mostly natives of the North Caucasus. Also, the Russian secret services tried to shift the blame on the FBI, saying that they warned U.S. intelligence about radical views of Tsarnaev, but the FBI had not given these signals enough attention. Putin also spoke of the need for tighter US-Russian struggle against terrorism.
Russia has turned to distance itself from the Tsarnaev brothers and Boston explosions, it became clear, when a FBI spokesman said that the Russian service inform them about the Tsarnaev brothers as people who pose a threat to American interests.
Today, the damage is done against the interests of Muslims, as a result of all these manipulations Moscow Muslims lost one of their mosques. Thus, the dire on-going problem of shortage of mosques in one of the capitals of the world even more aggravated.
Usman Salihov