Eid al-Fitr celebrated peacefully

Muslims celebrate Eid al-Adha, the celebration of the end of the Hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca. On this day, in the morning it is customary to attend festive prayer and sacrifice rams.

Photo: Zakir Magomedov/PublicPost

The Cathedral Mosque on Mira Avenue is still under construction, and parishioners perform festive prayers in a large covered room next to the mosque. The room, by eye, could accommodate about five hundred people. The rest lay down rugs outside.

Photo: Zakir Magomedov/PublicPost

Order is maintained by several squads of police. They let everyone through metal detectors. From time to time a queue forms. A group of teenagers tries to skip the line, the police grab them. “Now I’ll throw it in the paddy wagon!” - the policeman warns. But he is quickly calmed down by a group of bearded grandfathers.

Photo: Zakir Magomedov/PublicPost

A man passing by, apparently thirty years old, shouts towards the police: “Create normal conditions for Muslims first!” I approach him and ask about the conditions. “There are no mosques, ” he answers straight away. “ Today it’s either raining or snowing, and people are standing on the street. In Moscow, where 15 million people live, there are only four mosques, and this is catastrophically few. For example, in London with a population of 10 million thousands of mosques. In the capital of Russia, you see, there are problems with Muslims, but for some reason there are none in the center of Europe. We are not allowed to slaughter sheep outside the city this year.”

Photo: Zakir Magomedov/PublicPost

“Everyone loves to eat meat, but the sight of a slaughtered animal upsets them, ” says an old woman in a hijab.

Photo: Zakir Magomedov/PublicPost

The mosque does not have enough for the obligatory ablution before prayer, although several plastic canopies have been installed for this purpose. People wash their faces right on the street.

Photo: Zakir Magomedov/PublicPost

You can buy sacrificial lamb meat right there in the store. He also has a queue. Seller Kazbek says that the meat is brought from the slaughterhouse: “The meat runs out quickly. Cars take a long time to travel from the countryside, they get stuck in traffic jams. People, as you can see, are not in a very festive mood.”

Photo: Zakir Magomedov/PublicPost

This year, according to the Moscow Central Internal Affairs Directorate , about 150 thousand Muslims took part in the celebration of Kurban Bayram. A year ago, according to official data, there were 20 thousand more believers. No serious violations of public order were recorded.

Photo: Zakir Magomedov/PublicPost

In Moscow, Eid al-Adha was celebrated in four mosques: the Cathedral on Prospekt Mira, the Historical on Bolshaya Tatarskaya, the Memorial on Poklonnaya Gora and the Yardyam Mosque in Otradnoye.

Photo: Zakir Magomedov/PublicPost

The prayer was also held in the pavilion of the Sokolniki exhibition center, in Luzhniki, in the tent of the Emerald complex (Southern Butovo) and in the 60th Anniversary of October Park on Andropov Avenue.

Photo: Zakir Magomedov/PublicPost

The video, which lawyer Alexey Navalny distributed on his blog , was filmed in August of this year during the celebration of Eid al-Adha and has nothing to do with today’s events.

In St. Petersburg, Eid al-Adha was celebrated the day before. No more than 20 thousand people took part in the prayer, however, citizens complained about blocked streets and changes in public transport schedules. As in Moscow, in St. Petersburg it was forbidden to perform sacrifices; for these purposes, Muslims were allocated two state farms: “Shushary” and “Koltushi”.