After the appointment of Vladimir Vasiliev as head of Dagestan, the temporary acting head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, may have seemed like a victory for the republic’s national forces. From Murtaza Rakhimov’s team, they began to create a reputation for him as a Bashkir nationalist. What’s more, in 2018, when all «ethnocracies» (except for one militarized one) have long been defeated, at the height of the triumph of the «Russian world» ideas in Russia, why would the Kremlin appoint a «Bashkir nationalist» as the head of the second largest territory and the first in terms of population of the republic?
The solution to this mystery was quickly found. Last weekend, in response to a question from the host of Russia 24, who had come specifically to film a propaganda story about him, Radiy Khabirov said the following: «I am a Muslim. And a practicing Muslim. But it’s interesting how it turned out in my family: I have three children and they are all Orthodox.»
So who is this «practicing Muslim» whose children are all (!) Orthodox? According to Islam, a child born to a Muslim father is considered a Muslim, and it is the father’s duty to raise him as such. If an adult child leaves Islam, he is considered an apostate (murtad) from his father’s religion. Well, anything can happen in life — in a secular society, with a preponderance of people who consider themselves Orthodox, with a Russian Orthodox wife (which is why such marriages are either condemned or even prohibited in Sharia law), it is not always possible to keep track of all the children. After all, as the Russian proverb goes, «there is no family without a black sheep.»
But if all of a Muslim father’s children grow up to be apostates, then something must be wrong with him, too, right? The Internet quickly provided an answer to this question — it turns out that there is a publicly available video (caution — men with partially exposed awrah) in which the «practicing Muslim» Khabirov plunges into the baptismal font and makes the sign of the cross, which according to the unanimous opinion of scholars is incompatible with a person’s being in Islam. Moreover, eyewitnesses from Krasnogorsk near Moscow, where Khabirov used to work, report that during his time there he regularly attended church, lit candles, and made the sign of the cross. What’s more, it’s quite believable considering that all of his children «somehow» («suddenly») turned out to be Orthodox.
Interestingly, it was in the Moscow suburbs that Khabirov divorced his first Russian wife and remarried an Armenian woman. The couple named their child Farit, but he somehow also turned out to be Orthodox (although rumor has it that he was baptized in an Armenian church, which is not Orthodox). In general, it is now fair to ask not how devout Khabirov is as a Muslim (it is ridiculous to even discuss this), but rather how successful he is as a man who does not bring his wives into his «own» religion, or at least does not raise his children in that religion, but allows them to be subjected to another religion.
So there are no surprises — when the Kremlin today appoints people with Muslim surnames in Muslim republics instead of the Vasilevs, these «national cadres» look exactly like that.