Suppression of Nursi Followers Continues with Attack on University Professor

On October 13, 2011, the Investigative Committee of Russia's Novosibirsk region announced the launch of a criminal investigation against two residents, filed under Article 282.2 of the Criminal Code: organizing activities in association with an organization banned for extremism. The investigation is part of a larger trend of suppressing the literature and followers of the late Turkish Muslim scholar Said Nursi in Russia, and follows a ban on the activities of the nonexistent organization "Nurcular" for extremism. Russian authorities allege that "Nurcular" is composed of Nursi's followers.

Nursi, a twentieth-century Turkish theologian, wrote a six-thousand-page commentary on the Holy Quran. He is also known for his public work, which pertained primarily to advocating for the integration of modern science into religious schools, and of so-called religious sciences into secular schools. Today, his followers form no declared, unified group. Nevertheless, Russian translations of his works are banned in the Russian Federation (though they are not in the original Turkish).

The subjects of the investigation, Ilkhom Merazhov and Kamil Odilov, are accused of participating in activities linked to the supposed regional group "Nurcular," and of distributing books by Said Nursi not included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials.

Russian authorities maintain that "Nurcular" is a group of Nursi’s followers.

The announcement of the investigation follows the October 11 detainment of the two Novosibirsk Muslims. Merazhov, the more prominent of the two detainees, is a lecturer at the Siberian University of Consumer Cooperatives, and heads two committees of the Muslim Spiritual Board in eastern Russia.

Texts by Said Nursi in the original Turkish were confiscated in the course of a search of Merazhov’s apartment, though there is no ban on them under Russian law.

Local Muslims associated with Merazhov also found themselves subject to searches and arrests, but were released shortly thereafter.

Following the arrests, regional media began depicting Merazhov as a religious extremist in what appears to be a character assassination campaign beginning with the October 14 Novosibirsk editions of Kommersant and Komsomolskaya Pravda. The attacks gained further momentum when IslamNews published a letter from Merazhov to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev pleading for protection from unfair accusations.

These accounts accuse Merazhov of indoctrinating his students, calling him the "assistant professor of extremists." Denunciations have now appeared in several prominent Russian newspapers, news websites and television news broadcasts; we remind readers that the government maintains control over the great majority of television in Russia.

Predictably, each attack on Merazhov is made possible by the same source: a press release on the Novosibirsk Investigative Committee’s website. The contents of each attack differ only by degrees of journalistic creativity: "Nurcular" is "extremist," while the legal case is treated as a "matter of Islamic sects." Further, we learn that as far back as 2002, the FSB had accused the "sect" of espionage; for whom is left unclear.

Merazhov’s followers, these accounts continue, "formed groups with a positive view of death" after having been "recruited into ranks of young people trained in secret cells, subjected to strict religious and psychological pressure."

Every account has been directed against Merazhov personally, with the exception of reports appearing in Kommersant. Merazhov allegedly "distributed forbidden literature and recruited new adherents" in collaboration with a partner and, according to these accounts, was arrested at a "safe house."

In other circles, Merazhov is known for his work as an advocate for the legal rights of suppressed Muslims in other regions of Russia – in addition to his work as a university professor.

We remind readers that Sova does not find the ban on Said Nursi’s books or the prohibition of "Nurcular" to be legitimate. We also note that the existence of the group is apocryphal at best; a brief Google search of "Nurcular," in its Russian or English iterations, results primarily in articles pertaining to the Russian government’s suppression of its alleged members. The term Nurcular does refer broadly to followers of Said Nursi and his scholarship – who do not form any unified organization. Further, after decades of interest in Nursi's works, his followers have yet to display any propensity to violence or anything that could be considered extremist in a court of law.

The case against Merazhov and Odilov was filed on October 11, the day of their arrest. Merazhov has appealed to the Dzerzhinsky District Court of Novosibirsk by way of the judicial complaints procedure contained in Article 125 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.