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 do not respect people’s religious feelings and say that it is not a crime. In our country it is a crime, in the Constitution and in the penal code,” Putin said during the visit. . to a mosque in Derbent, capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan and the day of the beginning of the celebration of Eid al-Ahda or Festival of Sacrifice, the most important in the Islamic calendar.
Putin added that in Russia it is also considered a crime to incite religious hatred among practitioners and that the country “will always comply with these laws.”
He also stressed that the Koran is a holy book for Muslims “and it should be for other denominations as well.”
A copy of the Koran was burned outside a Stockholm mosque on Wednesday, in the first such act authorized by Swedish police after courts recently overturned an earlier ban.
Last January, the burning of another copy of the Koran in front of the Turkish Embassy by the Swedish-Danish far-right Rasmus Paludan provoked a strong protest from Turkey, which continues to block the ratification of Sweden’s accession to NATO.
Also this Wednesday, Putin congratulated Russian Muslims on the occasion of the Feast of Sacrifice and stressed that the holiday, which marks the end of the pilgrimage to the great Islamic sanctuaries, “has a deep moral and spiritual significance.”
This Muslim celebration, called 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 ( To the).
This story is similar to the biblical passage described in Genesis about the sacrifice of Isaac, Abraham’s son.
Although there are no official statistics on the number of Muslims in Russia, they are estimated to number 20 million.
Source: TSF
