Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 16 – Prisons in
many countries have often become seedbeds for radicalism, but rarely have those
in charge done more to make that so that the Russian Federal Penal Service,
which is now putting materials on jihad in prison libraries in the mistaken
hope that learning more about radical Islam will dissuade prisoners from
turning to it.
As Yekaterina Trifonova of “Nezavisimaya
gazeta” points out, those in charge of Russian prisons believe that “having
found out more details about non-traditional trends in [Islam], prisoners will more
rarely fall under the influence of extremist groups,” a conviction that is at
best naïve and may be extremely dangerous (ng.ru/politics/2014-11-13/3_prison.html).
The Russian penal system has reached
an agreement with the Foundation for the Support of Islamic Culture and
Education to provide books for prison libraries with titles like “Salafism. A View
from the Inside,” “Salafism. Briefly about the Main Thing,” and “A Scientific
Understanding of Jihad.”
According to one official, “the
criminal milieu is a favorable source for recruiting people into the ranks of
extremists. Some convicts during their incarceration may become followers of radicalism
because they see in its postulates a similarity with the ideology of the criminal
world.” That is all the more likely as the number of people behind bars for
extremist crimes grows.
And their numbers are rising: At
present there are 40 percent more people in Russian prisons for radicalism than
there were only two years ago.
While most specialists say that the
provision of materials on radical Islam is a logical step, some of them say
that the whole program is not working as the authorities intend. Teyub
Sharifov, a lawyer, for example, says that prisoners who read such pamphlets
and books may draw conclusions exactly the reverse to those the authorities
want them to.
If a prisoner reads about the fight
between the Salafis and the Russian police, who, Sharifov asks, is the prisoner
likely to identify with – and perhaps decide that he shares the same values as others
who are fighting the powers that be?
The decision of the Russian penal
authorities to provide books and pamphlets on radical Islam to prisoners is
especially striking given that last year these same authorities banned books by
Leo Tolstoy and Mikhail Lermontov because of the battle scenes these two great
Russian writers offer.
Another expert, Mikhail
Remizov of the Moscow Institute of National Strategy says that the penal
officials are fighting a losing battle. Today, he reports, many radical Muslims
are getting themselves incarcerated precisely because they believe they can
recruit jihadists more easily inside prison walls than outside.
For officials to provide Muslim literature, he suggests,
runs the risk that they will end by helping the jihadists rather than
restraining them. According to Remizov, the only way that will work is to
follow the example of European countries and separate Muslims from other prisoners
and treat them as a special case.
Aleksey Malashenko, one of Russia’s leading specialists
on contemporary Islam, says that the problem of Islamist extremism in prisoners
has been critical since the 1990s. As the authorities have arrested more people
they classify as extremists, the number of prisoners seeking to recruit others
to that banner has risen as well.
Human rights specialist Lev Ponomarev, however, told “Nezavisimaya
gazeta” that in his view, “the role of religious literature in prisons is
strongly exaggerated.” What the penal authorities are doing is no more than
what other Russian officials are doing with regard to the population outside
prison walls.
A second human rights activist, Vladimir Osechkin,
provides another perspective. He points out that the penal authorities are
going to have a difficult time determining which prisoners are doing what and
why. Some Tajiks incarcerated for drug trafficking are in fact Islamist
radicals and “some of them assert that jihad is a holy war against Russia.”
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