Russian Bigotry, Migrants’ Isolation Radicalizing Muslims in Moscow, Martynov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 8 – The offer of a Moscow moving company to send only “’Slavic drivers’” if customers are willing to pay more and the spread of a Daghestani newspaper explaining to Muslims in the Russian capital how to live according to shariat in Russia reflect two forces that are radicalizing Muslims in Moscow, Kirill Martynov says.

            Indeed, such Russian bigotry and the efforts of Muslim radicals to reach out to gastarbeiters to explain why Russians feel this way and why it is thus necessary to withdraw into Muslim enclaves are combining to transform the capital “into a major center of Islamization” (newizv.ru/comment/kirill-martynov/06-06-2018/moskva-prevratilas-v-krupneyshiy-tsentr-islamizatsii).

                These two events are clearly connected, he says. “’The Slavs’ aren’t concerned about the problem of including migrants into their own society … the migrant in Russia is simply a source of enrichment for the siloviki and low-level bureaucrats,” the Novyye izvestiya commentator argues.   

            “And the only ones who speak with migrants in human terms are the Muslim brothers who explain why the world is organized in such a grotesque way, why the non-believers conduct themselves in anything but a human way, and where they should find their own way of life” – one in isolation from the Russian majority.

            Indeed, Martynov says, the conditions in which Moscow migrants are forced to live, close to slavery and without legal protections are a cauldron in which over the next decade Muslim quarters will appear. There are no other possibilities here. [And as a result,] Muslim is the most important center for the Islamization of young people coming for work.”

            “Secular values are failing,” he says, “simply because their bearers are racists.”