Thus, after 4 years of trial, Muslim enlighteners and philanthropists Abdulmumin Gadzhiev, Abubakar Rizvanov and Kemal Tambiev were sentenced to 17, 18 and 17.5 years of imprisonment. They will serve 7 years in a high security prison and the rest in a strict regime colony.
But what surprised us was not this sentence. Honestly, what surprised us was the surprise of many of our fellow believers and their quite inadequate reaction before it. For example, a lawyer wrote on his social media that he would free his clients. Of course, he may have wanted to encourage them, but the fact is that thousands of people, based on the speeches of Abdulmumin and Kemal in which they refuted the falsified arguments of the accusations, genuinely hoped that the court would undoubtedly set them free.
Others, shocked after the verdict was announced, exclaimed, «For what?!» People, are you serious?! Don’t you understand that Putin’s Russia is an analog of not only the Khrushchev or Brezhnev era, but of Stalin’s USSR? And if the security and other law-enforcement officials have arrested someone, their verdict can be considered already pronounced? Don’t you understand that there have been no real courts in this country for a long time, and that the function of people in robes pronouncing judgments has been taken over by the troikas of our time or somewhere in the Kremlin administration? Don’t you understand that people like Abdulmumin are imprisoned precisely for what you consider their merits — for enlightening Muslims, helping the needy, and so on?
If you still don’t understand, read this again: [link]
Another problem is that many who express outrage at the sentence do not understand not only why it was passed, but also who passed it. And the bitter truth is that it was passed by those whom many of them still support. And, of course, we do not mean those conscious Muslims who have long understood everything. We mean the thousands who can be genuinely outraged by the mistreatment of Muslims or hostile acts against Islam by the authorities, but then continue to support these same authorities, believing that «Putin is great,» «we will defeat the West,» and so on.
These people still do not want to or for some reason cannot understand that Abdulmumin, Kemal, Abubakar, as well as Aslambek Ezhayev and many others have been thrown behind bars, and someone like Timur Kuashev has been killed not by the West or Ukraine, but by those whom they continue to support. And some of those who have stopped supporting them do not want to admit that our prisoners of conscience can only be released when this regime falls. Or if they are rescued from its clutches, which we will talk about later.
«What can we do?» they say, convincing themselves that all they can do is dua, change their profile pictures, or at most send help to the families of the prisoners (although even this is extremely dangerous in today’s Russia). But in reality, they can at least realize this and start spreading the word to others, and then, when the opportunity to act arises, everyone will find something to do.
As for rescuing people from the clutches of the beast, the possibility of exchanging political prisoners from Russia for Russian spies and terrorists sitting in the West is now being loudly discussed. It’s real, but what do you think, if tomorrow lists for the exchange of Russian political prisoners will be drawn up, who will draw them up and who will be on them? They will be compiled by the teams of Navalny, Khodorkovsky and other «good Russians», and for sure they will include the same kind of people, liberal and left-wing Russian opposition figures, and maybe even Russian nationalists.
However, Muslims will not be able to take advantage of this opportunity, and this is logical and, as painful as it sounds, fair in its own way. At least because the well-known and wealthy Muslims who have left Russia and are ready to invest money in their various projects have not, during all this time, created a political structure that could represent Muslims — political emigrants and prisoners of conscience.
And therefore, even if such an exchange takes place tomorrow, most likely Navalny, Kara-Murza, Yashin and their like will be released, but not Gadzhiev, Tambiev, Rizvanov or Ezhayev.
This is how Muslims live in Russia, and this is how it will continue until we come to our senses.