The “Abu Bakr” mosque was demolished in Moscow

On Tuesday, April 16, a building of the Abu Bakr mosque was demolished in Moscow. It was destroyed by an excavator.

According to the Islam News agency, this marked the end of the confrontation between the Muslim community of the Troitsk urban district of Moscow and local residents and nationalist activists, who finally succeeded in getting the authorities to demolish the prayer house.

The struggle against the mosque lasted three years, during which the city administration and the Investigative Committee were inundated with numerous complaints. As a result, the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, ordered the initiation of a criminal case regarding the legality of the construction. The Investigative Committee stated that numerous appeals to the city administration yielded no results.

Residents claimed that one of the main streets in the city was impassable due to visitors to this prayer house, who did not follow traffic rules or basic behavioral norms. They jaywalked and parked cars on various curbs. According to them, visitors to the mosque increased the crime rate in the area, making it unsafe for parents to let their children go to school alone. Additionally, they stated that the mosque caused traffic jams on the roads.

The imam of this mosque reported that the prayer house was built in 2020, as local Muslims were in urgent need of a place for collective worship. “Many people from the North Caucasus region of Russia live in neighboring settlements. More than 2,000 people gathered for Friday prayers at the mosque, and slightly more for holidays. Most of the parishioners are Russian citizens by birth. Now the problem has arisen: where will all these people pray? The nearest place is the Memorial Mosque on Poklonnaya Hill, which takes about 1 hour and 20 minutes to reach by car.” Earlier, the Mufti of Moscow, Ildar Alyautdinov, expressed hope that the Muslim prayer house in Troitsk would not be demolished, as there is already a severe shortage of mosques, prayer rooms, and cultural-educational centers in the region. In this regard, the issue of demolition “sounds a bit absurd,” he noted.

The acute shortage of mosques in the Russian capital was also mentioned in 2021 by the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Mufti of the Moscow Region Rushan Abbyasov. According to Abbyasov, there are not enough mosques in Moscow for indigenous Muslims, let alone for immigrants.

The majority of Muslims in Moscow cannot even attend holiday prayers, let alone the weekly Friday prayers, as the 13-million-strong capital has only 4 full-fledged mosques, which cannot accommodate about 3 million Muslims living in the city.