FSB-Controlled Muslim Hierarchies in North Caucasus have ‘Fueled Anti-Semitism’ for Years, Albakov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Nov. 5 – Shamil Albakov, the former head of the press service of the Asembly of Chechens of Europe and himself an imam, says that the Muslim spiritual directorates in the North Caucasus not only are controlled by the FSB but have been “fueling anti-Semitism” in that region for years.

            They have done so, he says, because both they and the Russian state which controls them “have needed to distract the protest sentiments of the population and have seen directing them toward the issue of Palestine” as an effective way to do so (kavkazr.com/a/kak-ustroeny-duhovnye-upravleniya-musuljman-v-rossii/32665149.html).

            “By distracting the population from the problems and repressions of the Russian regime and by justifying the war in Ukraine and calling it a jihad,” Albakov continues, the MSDs have “supported the narrative that Russia is supposedly behind the Muslims, helps the Palestinians and fights against the West which supports Israel.”

            Such notions come from the Russian state rather than from the Muslims of the North Caucasus themselves and are yet another confirmation that the MSDs there “over the course of their entire history have done everything to promote the interests of the state. This is after all the goal and task of their existence.”