Russian President Vladimir Putin has Chechen jihadis in Ukraine fighting for Russia, so he has good reason to say this, but it was still startling. On Tuesday, Putin declared that anyone who has been found guilty of burning a Qur’an would be sent to prison in one of Russia’s majority-Muslim regions. This would be tantamount to sentencing the Qur’an burners to death. Apparently, if you burn a Qur’an, Vladmir Putin wants you dead.
Middle East Monitor reported Wednesday that Putin said this about people who were found guilty of lighting up the Islamic holy book: “They will serve their sentences, as stated by the Minister of Justice, in places of deprivation of liberty located in one of the regions of Russia with a predominantly Muslim population.” Since Islamic law mandates death for blasphemers, this would all but ensure that someone who burned a Qur’an in Russia would ultimately be killed, very likely by an enraged mob in the area to which the offender had been sent.
Putin wasn’t just noting this out of the blue. He made his statement in connection with the case of Nikita Zhuravel, a Russian citizen who was arrested in May on suspicion of having gone to stand outside a mosque and setting fire to a copy of the Qur’an. According to Middle East Monitor, “the act, which was recorded, prompted outrage in the country, in particular, the Muslim-majority republic of Chechnya, where thousands protested against desecrating the sacred text.” At that protest, Chechnya’s chief mufti, Salah Mezhiev, said that the burning of the Qur’an was a “crime against Islam, against humanity, tolerance, an action that goes beyond all moral and ethical limits.”
In line with Putin’s declaration, Zhuravel, who is from Volgograd and burned his Qur’an in front of the mosque in that city, was sent directly into the overheated environment in Chechnya, to a pre-trial detention center in the Chechen capital of Grozny. The Moscow Times reported that “lawyers and activists have warned that the decision to transfer Zhuravel’s case to Chechen investigators puts him at risk of torture or even death. There is a long history of human rights abuses in Chechnya, which is ruled by strongman Ramzan Kadyrov.”
Putin likely doesn’t want to see Zhuravel tortured or killed only to please his Chechen allies; it would also strike at the West’s principle of freedom of expression. Few people in the West favor the burning of books, which is associated with sweaty National Socialists standing before bonfires of books containing forbidden knowledge, but this case isn’t quite that simple. The Danish activist Rasmus Paludan and others in Europe have recently begun burning the Qur’an in various places as a demonstration of their opposition to jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women, and to take a stand against those who are demanding that the West curtail the freedom of expression in order to conform to Sharia blasphemy laws.
As far as Putin is concerned, however, the freedom of expression is part of what’s ailing the West. Last February, he warned that “millions of people in the West understand they are being led to a real spiritual catastrophe.” He added, “Look at what they do with their own peoples: the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, and the abuse of children are declared the norm. And priests are forced to bless same-sex marriages.”
Related: Sweden Bans Burning the Qur’an, but Burning the Scriptures of Other Religions Is OK
This coincides with the March 2022 statements of the Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow: “We have entered into a struggle that has not a physical, but a metaphysical significance. … Pride parades are designed to demonstrate that sin is one variation of human behavior. That’s why in order to join the club of those countries, you have to have a gay pride parade. If humanity accepts that sin is not a violation of God’s law, if humanity accepts that sin is a variation of human behavior, the human civilization will end there.” While increasing numbers of people in the West would agree that the whole “Pride” business has gone way too far, most would be content if it went on without their being forced to participate and applaud. Few would endorse the curtailment of the freedom of expression in order to contain the madness.
However, those who would respond to Putin and Kirill by pointing out that the freedom of expression is the bulwark of the citizens’ protection against tyranny would get nowhere. Putin and Kirill have no problem with tyranny, as long as they’re the tyrants. Nor would they be likely to be moved by arguments pointing out that Islamic law doesn’t just require the death of the blasphemer, but the subjugation and submission of the infidel as well. At this point in Russia, that’s just an idea, without the remotest chance of becoming reality anytime soon. And so in their view, if Nikita Zhuravel dies, he dies.