Zamirbek Makhmutov's murder sharpens tension in Stavropol Territory (+video)

The law enforcers' failure to investigate crimes against Muslim religious leaders in the Stavropol Territory aggravates the interreligious interethnic relations. This opinion has been expressed by experts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot". However, the experts differed in the evaluation of possible motives for the murder of Zamirbek Makhmutov, the Deputy Imam of the village of Irgakly.

The body of the religious leader was found on August 20. Relatives of Zamirbek Makhmutov associate the crime with his professional activities.

Mukhammad Rakhimov, the Mufti of the Stavropol Territory, suggests that the murder of Zamirbek Makhmutov is not associated with intrareligious conflicts. According to the Mufti, Zamirbek Makhmutov received no threats.

The murder of Zamirbek Makhmutov is not the first crime against religious figures committed in the Stavropol Territory. Meanwhile, according to Akhmet Yarlykapov, the Senior Researcher of the Department of Ethno-Political Studies of the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), all of those murders remain uninvestigated.

Akhmet Yarlykapov believes the country needs to reload state-church relations, and otherwise it is impossible to ensure the equality of all members of the society.

The murder of Zamirbek Makhmutov will remain unsolved. This opinion was expressed by Rinat Mukhametov, an Islamic scholar and Doctor of Political Sciences. The expert considers it necessary to perform political and criminal procedural reclassification of crimes related to attacks on religious leaders in the country.

According to political analyst Ruslan Kurbanov, the Senior Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the RAS, the murders of Muslim community leaders can be explained by the general increase in the level of Islamophobia in the Stavropol Territory and widespread fears of spread of Islam.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.