The court fined residents of Bashkortostan because of banned Muslim books

The Sibai city court fined two residents of Bashkortostan 1,000 rubles because of Muslim books banned in Russia. This was reported by the Information and Analytical Center "Sova". Both were brought to justice under the article on the distribution of extremist materials (Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses).

On September 10, the court fined Yulia Arslanov for reposting on VKontakte the book of monotheism banned in Russia by Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, an 18th-century religious figure who influenced Muslim fundamentalism. Arslanova pleaded guilty, the court considered this a mitigating circumstance.

On August 5, a court fined Damir Kuvandykov for possession of three books that the courts placed on the list of extremist materials. He kept them "for the purpose of mass distribution" - he gave them to his wife and brother to read, according to the court order. Kuvandykov also pleaded guilty, the court considered this a mitigating circumstance.

Some of the publications for which people were fined, the SOVA Center considers illegally prohibited:

“The text of the treatise [al-Wahhab] contains separate elements of hate speech and a number of references to jihad in a positive way, but we believe that it is impossible to approach a religious work of the 18th century with modern standards, and therefore we also consider the ban on this work to be unlawful.”

“The book [found at Kuvandykov’s] was banned as promoting the superiority of one religion and nationality over others, from our point of view, unlawfully: its text deals with the biography of the Prophet Muhammad and the events of the era of the formation of Islam, and it reflects the worldview characteristic of the medieval Muslim religious literature, on which the book is based, ”says the experts in the commentary.

• Earlier, a court in Bashkortostan fined a local resident Zagir Bilalov because of the film "Scientific Miracles of the Koran".