Ufa Commentator Says Ingush Protest ‘Model for All Russia’s Muslims,’ ‘A Light in a Dark Kingdom’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 15 – Timur Shangareyev, a Muslim commentator from Ufa, says that the entire controversy between Chechnya and Ingushetia was artificially created by Moscow to weaken and justify repression against the Islamic community and that the Ingush have behaved well by not falling victim to such provocations and demanding that their rights be respected.

            And while he is anything but optimistic that the Ingush will achieve their ends given the Kremlin’s repressive approach, their actions have become “a model for all of Russia’s Muslims” and represent “a light in a dark kingdom,” one that can show everyone the best way to move forward toward freedom (zamanho.com/?p=6391).

            “I am convinced,” Shangareyev says, “that this entire history has no relationship to Islam” but instead has been instigated by those who do not respect Muslims, want to set them against each other to weaken them, and thus to allow non-Muslims to dominate the Muslim peoples of Russia.

            “From my point of view,” he continues, the Ingush are doing everything right” given that the protesters have focused on their own leaders who have taken decisions without consulting them.  And what they are doing now is an example for all of us, an example for all Russia.”  This shows what a disciplined and committed people can do against oppression.

            Shingareyev says that he fully understands that the Ingush effort is doomed in the near future but it has laid down a marker and a model which will not be forgotten by that nation or by others and thus has created a platform on which they and others will build in the future. And the Ingush struggle also shows just who are the enemies of the Muslim peoples and of Islam.

            Meanwhile, in Ingushetia, the powers that be arrested more protest leaders, harassed others, and accused those in detention of trumped-up crimes to hold them not for a few days but for two months (graniru.org/Society/Law/m.275959.html, kavkaz-uzel.eu/blogs/342/posts/37388  https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/334304/ and kommersant.ru/doc/3944843).

            But the protest movement continues with those still free applying for official sanction to hold a public demonstration in Magas on April 26, the anniversary of the adoption of the Russian law on the rehabilitation of the repressed peoples, of whom the Ingush were one. No answer has yet been received from the republic government (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/334355/).