Rafik Mukhametshin, the headmaster of the Russian Islamic University in Kazan, has studied the sect for more than 10 years. Mukhametshin says he thinks the authorities hesitated to interfere out of “political correctness,” because they feared that they would be perceived as hindering religious freedom.
Gumar Ganiyev opens the gates of the compound where members of the Islamic sect he belongs to have lived in seclusion since the early 2000s outside Kazan, capital of the Russian province of Tatarstan, earlier this month.
The recent headlines in the Russian press were sensational: Members of a reclusive Islamic sect were said to be living in an isolated compound with underground burrows, some as deep as eight stories underground, without electricity or heat.
Reporters have descended on the compound, on the outskirts of the city of Kazan, but have had only limited access and have not been able to confirm all the allegations by Russian officials.
Meanwhile, authorities are now trying to decide what to do with the estimated 70 members of the sect, who call themselves muammin, Arabic for “believers.”
Child-welfare authorities took custody of about 20 children, saying they had been denied medical attention and schooling, and that some had never seen daylight.
The members of the sect are followers of an 83-year-old Islamic cleric named Faizrakhman Satarov, who says he had a revelation from God that true Muslims must separate themselves from society.
Satarov declared his compound in Kazan — the capital of Tatarstan, a majority Muslim region about 500 miles east of Moscow — an independent Islamic state.
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