The Russian head of state adds that in Russia it is also considered a crime to induce religious hatred among practitioners and that the country “will always comply with these laws”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday that insulting religious sentiments is considered a crime in Russia and condemned the burning of the Koran in the Swedish capital on the day Russian Muslims celebrate Eid al-Ahda.
“We know that in other countries people behave differently, they don’t respect people’s religious feelings and they even say it’s not a crime. In our country this is a crime, in the Constitution and in the penal code”, said Putin during his visit to a mosque in Derbent, capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan and on the day of the beginning of the celebration of Eid al-Ahda or Feast of Sacrifice, the most important of the Islamic calendar.
Putin added that in Russia it is also considered a crime to induce religious hatred among practitioners and that the country “will always abide by these laws”.
He also underlined that the Koran is a holy book for Muslims “and should also be for other confessions”.
A copy of the Koran was burned on Wednesday outside a Stockholm mosque, in the first act of its kind authorized by Swedish police after courts recently overturned a previous ban.
Last January, the burning of another copy of the Quran in front of the Turkish Embassy by the Swedish-Danish ultra-rightist Rasmus Paludan provoked a strong protest from Turkey, which maintains the blockade to the ratification of Sweden’s accession to NATO.
Also this Wednesday, Putin congratulated Russian Muslims on the occasion of the Feast of Sacrifice and underlined that the festivity, which marks the end of pilgrimage to the great Islamic shrines, “has a profound moral and spiritual meaning”.
This Muslim celebration, designated in Russia “Kurban Bairam”, of Tatar origin, recalls the occasion on which, according to the Koran, the prophet Abraham (Ibrahim) was willing to sacrifice his son Ishmael (Ismail) to demonstrate his loyalty to God (Allah).
This account is similar to the biblical passage described in Genesis about the sacrifice of Isaac, son of Abraham.
Although there are no official statistics on the number of Muslims in Russia, it is estimated that they amount to 20 million.
