Paul Goble
Vienna, September 29 – A majority of Muslims from Russia who study abroad return home “negatively inclined toward everything that is taking place in Russia and in the Spiritual Directorates (MSDs)” or they choose not to come back at all, according to leaders of Islamic educational institutions.
Maksud Sadikov, head of the North Caucasus University Center, said that 500 to 700 of the more than 1,000 Daghestani Muslims now studying at Islamic institutions abroad are likely to return with their minds set against the situation in Russia and especially against the official Muslim leadership there (www.blagovest-info.ru/index.php?ss=2&s=3&id=29906).
But at least Sadikov implied that most Muslims from his republic who study abroad return home. Sharafuddin Chochayev, rector of the Islamic University in Kabardino-Balkaria, in contrast said that of 20 students who travel abroad, “on average [only] one comes back” to his homeland ...
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov has come under fire in Australia after it was revealed that two of his elite racehorses would participate in high-profile races in Melbourne this fall.
Australian Greens party leader Bob Brown said that neither Kadyrov nor his horses should be let into Australia because of the Chechen leader’s brutal politics.
“If this nasty character were to get his hands on the Melbourne Cup, it would be the lowest point in Australia’s sporting history,” Brown said, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday.
Kadyrov is sending Mourilyan, a gelding that won this summer’s March Stakes race in Goodwood, England, to contest the Melbourne Cup on Nov. 3, the report said.
The contest is the country’s most prestigious race, with the winner’s prize money worth $3.3 million.
Australian media reports said victory for Kadyrov’s horse would be a public relations disaster because the cup is awarded personally by the governor-general, the official representative of Queen Elizabeth II in ...
