Krasnodar Territory has secret ban on building mosques, said source from Muslim community

The repeated requests of the Muslim community to solve the problem of deficit of mosques in the Krasnodar Territory remain unanswered, believers assert. The attempt to contain the spread of Islam leads to aggravation of inter-religious relations, said the experts questioned by the "Caucasian Knot". According to the Mufti of Adygea and Krasnodar Territory, authorities are deciding to allocate a land plot, in the future, for building a mosque.

Another reason for believers to raise the issue of the absence of a mosque in Krasnodar was the closure of the representative office of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims (SAM) of Adygea and Krasnodar Territory, which occurred in the Muslims' holy month of Ramadan.

The closure of the SAM's office was reported on August 8 by readers by means of the SMS-service.

At the moment, there is no mosque in Krasnodar. City Muslims have to travel to the town of Adygeisk and settlements of Yablonovsky and Novaya Adygea, located in the Republic of Adygea, where there are mosques.

The policy of the territorial authorities in relation to the development of the local Muslim community weakens the official spiritual structures and contributes to the emergence of reactionary sentiments, said Akhmet Yarlykapov, a senior scientific collaborator at the Centre for Ethno-Political Studies of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, adding that the policy of bans creates underground and uncontrolled communities and contributes to radicalization.