Silantyev Demands Moscow Ban Two Leading Muslim Organizations

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 16 – Roman Silantyev, a specialist on the Islamic community of the Russian Federation who has long been rumored to have close ties with the FSB and the Moscow Patriarchate, is demanding that the Investigative Committee ban the Muslim Spiritual Directorate of the Russian Federation and the Council of Muftis of Russia.

            Both groups which are headed by Mufti Ravil Gaynutdin are “the most criminalized religious organizations of the country” and a threat to the country’s legal order even though they control “no more than seven percent of the really functioning Muslim communities” in Russia (https://t.me/tsennostirf/2576 and sova-center.ru/religion/news/extremism/counter-extremism/2024/09/d50433/).

            According to Silantyev, Gaynutdin and his subordinates are active supporters of Wahhabism, the Nursi movement, Hizbut Tahrir and other already banned groups and that 41 of the Muslim leaders subordinate to the two organizations he wants to ban have already been convicted of extremism.

            Silantyev has a long history of attacking the Muslim establishment and Gaynutdin personally (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/01/window-on-eurasia-radical-muslims.html, windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2010/12/window-on-eurasia-silantyev-says-more.html and windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2010/01/window-on-eurasia-silantyev-says-muslim.html).

But this time his appeal may have more serious consequences. That is because the Kremlin has put in place a law-like system to declare any group it dislikes extremist and therefore subject to a ban. Earlier banning groups would have required special measures but not it can be done without much fuss. 

Were such a ban to be imposed, that would leave the Central MSD in Ufa under Mufti Talgat Tajuddin in the best place he has ever been to claim the status he styles himself as "the supreme mufti of holy Rus." Silantyev is an admirer of this defender of traditional Soviet-stye Islam and so his appeal to ban Gaynutdin's organizations may presage a new effort to form a single Muslim Patriarchate.