Staunton, Jan. 2 – At the end of December, Sergey Baburin’s Russian All-People Union, a nominally Russian nationalist group, named Moscow Mufti Anar Ramazanov as its candidate for president of the country, Viktor Biryukov says, a disturbing sign of the growing influence of Islamic groups inside Russia and the weakening of Russian nationalist ones that might counter it.
On the Russian nationalist portal Topwar, the commentator says that those who dismiss this nomination as irrelevant because the mufti won’t be registered as a candidate and wouldn’t attract many votes in 2024 even if he were are missing the point (topwar.ru/233333-diaspory-vydvigajut-kandidata-v-prezidenty-ot-musulman.html).
Clearly both Baburin and Ramazanov are playing a long game. Both can see that there are ever more Muslims in Russia and that in some future election, they will have enough to win. In the near term, Biryukov says, the Baburin nationalists and the Muslim radicals will support each other; and the latter may even get senior Russian posts.
Baburin is clearly calculating that he can win by pursuing such a program because Ramazanov is among those who has been promoting the idea that all residents of Russia are Russians. But in doing so, he has failed to recognize that this attitude devalues Russian national identity and threatens the country, Biryukov says.
Consequently, because of this misconception, a Russian nationalist who should be fighting the Islamization of the country is in fact promoting it, the Topwar commentator concludes (cf., topwar.ru/229434-islamizacija-rossii-shariatskie-patruli-nravov-ne-za-gorami.html).
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