Jamaat Aminovka or Sharia Dacha?
2021-08-26
Posted by: badanov
Direct translation via Google Translate. Edited.
Russian journalist Dmitri Steshen provide a view of an Islamic enclave being established near Moskva
by Dmitry Steshin
[KP] This news caused a serious scandal in the media and social networks : allegedly, a special village for Muslims appeared in the Moscow region , where it is forbidden to drink alcohol, smoke, keep pigs, walk in shorts and T-shirts - all according to the laws of Islam. And the residents for this village are selected by a commission. Special correspondent Komsolmol Pravda, Dmitry Steshin went to the place to see everything with his own eyes.
Of course, there is no Aminovka on the map of the Moscow Region. This is the self-name of the field near the village of Nechesovo. Approximately 140 kilometers from Moscow in New Riga. The nature here is almost pristine, the roads are excellent. Shakhovskaya, one of the most developed and cozy small towns in the Moscow region, is only 16 kilometers away. There is an electric train to Shakhovskaya, and in general, the place for Aminovka has been selected with taste.
It could not be otherwise. The organizer of the settlement, Amina Shabanova, a fashion designer of Islamic clothing and a blogger, got into the secular media for the first time when she tried to defend her right to go to Moscow State University in a hijab. Now, judging by the photos in social networks from the village-jamaat, Amina wanders in a hijab among Russian fields and birches, calling on like-minded people to her.
And 50 people have already built their homes in Aminovka in order to live a righteous life, without kufr (unbelief, the worst sin in Islam - corr. Note). Moreover, in the village, in addition to the usual infrastructure, a mosque or, at least, an Islamic prayer house is planned.
It is curious that there is not a word about Islam on the project website. The eye clings to the slogan of the main page: "We unite the awakened!". People who have survived the 90s at a conscious age immediately have strong associations with Jehovah's Witnesses and the magazine Awake! which talkative people in black funeral costumes pushed to Russians with home delivery.
I dig further the official site of Aminovka, looking for about Islam. Not a word. There is such a message: "About us. Strength is in unity. And our goal is to unite in one settlement to create a community of mature, conscious people. We not only share hectares of land, but also share similar views on life. This applies to different areas, but the basis is awareness, maturity, environmental friendliness."
I am leafing through the Aminovka Charter, a solid document. Indeed, the candidates for life in the village will be approved by a special commission. But that's not all:
"Representatives of non-traditional sexual orientation are not allowed on the territory of the Aminovka ecovillage and as members of the Partnership." Here I internally agree, of course. But the further, the more surprising:
"Male sex from 12 years old: closed torso, when wearing shorts - length below the knee. Female from 12 years old: opaque and not tight clothes below the knee length, closed neckline."
Alcohol, drugs, loud music, chemical fertilizers and pig breeding are also prohibited in Aminovka. And not a word about religion, which should bind people who bought land here at a price of 35 thousand rubles per hundred square meters. And this is very strange. Why hide it? It's not just me that annoys me. You need to sort it out on the spot.
I left for Aminovka in the chill, with the first sun. The road is not close and there was time to think about why the local residents and the Russian public in general were so tense because of Aminovka? Why, if someone organized a Christian village called "Heavenly Palisades" with strict rules, no one would be upset, except for the possessed city madmen?
The answer is on the surface. Over the past 30 years, there has been only one emphatically Orthodox terrorist in Russia - Nikola Korolev and he is serving a life sentence.
And what about the radical Islamists? It is clear that Islam is the religion of peace, but ordinary people are not idiots either. OK. I personally am not sick with Islamophobia, I even counted how long I lived side by side with Muslims under the same roof, ate from the same cauldron, hid in one trench, in the Caucasus, in the Middle East - years, if you add up all my business trips! And we perfectly understood each other and were friends. Where does the negative that is projected onto the entire ummah come from?
RULES OF CONDUCT IN THE VILLAGE I will explain. The whole difference is in the mentality. Can you imagine that a separate region, city or village in lowland Russia basically did not pay for gas and electricity for years? They will disconnect it in a week, cut off the pipe-wires. It's hard to imagine that.
But in the Caucasus, it's easy. The North Caucasus Federal District owes RRUB 50 billion ($674 million USD) just for electricity. And the most unpleasant thing is that in this region there is not even an understanding that electricity is not taken out of thin air, it is generated with the money of subscribers of electric grids, and the grids themselves are a complex mechanism, they need to be kept in order and it is expensive. This is just one example. Do you know why there are no branded gas stations and large retail in the Caucasus? Well, think at your leisure.
And such a worldview, for some reason, instantly arises in places of "compact settlement", where the internal laws of the community are more important than the state ones. It ends badly.
I worked in Kondopoga, and in the steppe regions of Stavropol.
I saw it. At the "point of incorporation," an environment immediately appears that can be clearly felt in Makhachkala and Nalchik. The neat little boys scurry about on low sneakers and drop something in the flower beds. Taxi drivers - "borscht" are beginning to receive from their new colleagues with orange lamps on their seats. There are cafes and shops that do not pay taxes, and it is not clear at all to whom they pay. But someone gets paid, so they say.
Local cops are fed with pilaf until they completely lose their self-esteem. They are not issued invoices in cafes and diaspora car services. They are provided with rakhmat with tassels. Shukranchiks are brought in clinking bags. The "sponsorship" of the ROVD is being carried out without interruption - for the purchase of writing paper: those who refuse to write to local people, and from that moment on at 02 you can no longer call.
ROVD reference is about the recent bribery scandal in southern Russia involving Russian traffic cops. And you need to call, because visiting citizens are beginning to teach the life of those around them. Teach and clean up what they think is poorly laid down or managed.
At this stage, hangers-on from the local begin to appear, who realized that it was necessary to adapt to the new order and should not speak out against the cohesive, rich and powerful new neighbors.
Then suddenly there are many beardless, but bearded men, in short canvas pants of a loose cut and the same shirts. Here, most likely, all kinds of security officers in "Tigers" are already arriving at the location. Either a local people who have gone into a rage, of which no one has thought, naturally takes a pitchfork and the security forces come anyway. This is inevitable, the conflict and the security forces in the last episode.
Of course, I have no doubt that nothing of the kind will emerge around the Aminovka ecovillage. And in Aminovka they will not listen to Said Buryatsky from the phone. Only believers and pious families with many children will live there, but, alas, according to their own laws. As it was announced to us. And what kind of laws they have - we do not know. This is what is annoying.
ONE IN THE FIELD IS NOT A JAMAAT
On a weekday, the village of Nechesovo was empty: as of 2010, there are only 2 permanent residents in it, the rest are summer residents. The village is a dead-end, in one street.
What everyone calls Aminovka is an empty 80 hectares, huddled on the outskirts of the village. Although, the "ecojamaat" itself does not exist in reality. There is a well in an open field and two shed cabins lined up in a row. There is a long table under the awning and everything is covered with carpets and pillows. On the horizon, some construction equipment was dusting, trying to lay roads in the future village. Underfoot - the familiar clay, in which the car sits like a fly in honey - pop, and that's it, you can go look for a tractor. As the locals explained to me later:
Someone will buy a plot from them, they will immediately drive the equipment. If they don't buy it, everything is quiet.
A fine-looking aksakal with a gray beard came out of the shed and introduced himself as John. John immediately identified me as a Tatar. I did not argue, half of the family is from the Volga.
But, to the question, "Am I a Muslim?", I had to answer in the negative, which was the real truth.
John was terribly surprised at this when he gave me tea: "How is it, a Tatar and an unbeliever?" Then the preaching of Islam was supposed to begin, but I turned the conversation to the polling stations. Like, I'm looking for land for my brother - here he is, and there is the most faithful. We drove senselessly across the field. According to John, all the land was sold out long ago and only some free areas remained on the edges.
They called Amina, she sent a map of the village. On the right is a list of Islamic buyers' names, among which is some Oksana. On the ground, in the map, it was absolutely impossible to make out - a bare field, in which sticks with red rags stuck here and there. Of course, there were no 50 Muslim families living here. There were not even sheds from which every Russian and non-Russian person begins to develop his land.
VILLAGE PLAN
But, John was optimistic, he clearly did not want to spend the winter in the shed:
- Now the roads will be finished, they will build houses. They will build it quickly, now they are building a house in a month.
I shook my head doubtfully. What is being built in the winter? He asked how the locals relate to him, to the first inhabitant of Aminovka? As expected, our people are kind:
- I have no electricity. The neighbors charge me everything, the phone, the flashlight, they take me to the store. They are well treated.
The neighbors themselves were slightly tense. Tatyana, a young lady with a stroller, logically remarked:
- I have nothing against Muslims, but we come here to rest, why do we need all these promised supermarkets, swimming pools and so on in our quiet village?
Yuri and Olga, a couple in years, was washing the gravel with a hose. At first they tried to refuse the conversation, then they say, "we don't care, we live on the outskirts." But then Yuri broke through, not for publication. When the curses had dried up, the interlocutor said that there was some kind of initiative group of old women, a gathering was going to go against Aminovka, but Yuri did not know how it all ended: he was not interested. But he told me everything, in fact, in vain he shook the air. Familiar paradoxes of Russian life. And I went to the authorities.
"IT'S ALL - ADVERTISING STROKE"
The district administration, of course, did not really want to talk to me until I noticed:
- The scandal started anyway. And I am the only one who came to the place, which means that I will understand objectively.
In the office of Olga Dementieva, the first deputy head of the administration, curious details surfaced. "Jamaat Aminovka" before our very eyes began to turn into a clever media project, in which the organizers already specifically haipanuli:
- These 80 hectares are the former share agricultural land, - Olga Nikolaevna explained to me. - In 2011, our local entrepreneur bought them, he has been living here for 37 years, Khizri Mutalov. Divided them into 171 lots and started selling.
As it turned out, land without communications and on the outskirts was selling poorly. And in 2019, the talented marketer Amina Shabanova joined the sale, without exaggeration.
Marketing, as they say, has surpassed all expectations.
I realized this when Khizri Mutalov himself appeared in the office, he had just talked to the head of the administration. It looks like it was an unpleasant conversation - the businessman was steamed, as after a bath, and overexcited:
- Yes, everyone! These plots are for sale to everyone! Nobody looks at the passport! No nationality in the passport, no religion! A Jewess bought 11 hectares from me, Orthodox families bought it!
Apparently, Khizri himself did not like the idea of the jamaat. Moreover, despite the ecumenical scandal, only 31 out of 171 sites have actually been sold so far. What was the deal?
Olga Dementieva, on the contrary, was absolutely calm:
- There is no Aminovka. There are plots for dacha construction, broken down according to the cadastre, this is not even a settlement. Aminovka was invented, this is a media project. And it has no legal basis. This is all a publicity stunt.
What everyone calls Aminovka is an empty field of 80 hectares, perched on the outskirts of the village.
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