Interfax: Skinheads attack prayer house outside Moscow

The Council of Muftis of Russia has announced that a group of extremist young men attacked a Muslim prayer house in Sergiyev Posad in the Moscow region and brutally beat up leader of the local Muslim organization Arsan Sadriyev on Friday. "Violating security of Muslim believers, a group of skinheads armed with reinforcement bars and spades broke into a prayer house and assaulted its visitors, shouting ''Russia for Russians!'' and ''There is no place for Muslims in Russia!''," the Council of Muftis of Russia said in a statement circulated in Moscow on Saturday. The statement says that the attackers caused serious bodily injuries to leader of the local Muslim religious organization Sadriyev, who "has worked for many years at the Spiritual Muslim Department of European Russia as chief of the division for relations with Moscow regional religious organizations and is also a post-graduate student at the Russian Academy of Sciences'' Institute of Oriental Studies," it says. "A criminal case was initiated, but those detained were soon released," the statement says. "While a tide of interethnic intolerance and inter-religious hatred is looming large, this fact appears to be quite alarming. This is a direct threat to interethnic accord in Russia, which may trigger interethnic conflicts," the statement says. siehe auch: Extremists Attack Muslim Prayer House in Moscow Suburb