Press Release: The Conviction of a Muslim Woman in Russia after Calling Muslim to Stop Celebrating Non-Muslim Holidays

The Conviction of a Muslim Woman in Russia after Calling Muslim to Stop Celebrating Non-Muslim Holidays
(Translated)

On Monday, 18/05/2015 inside the Bermoral City Court of Sverdlovsk County, the verdict was passed in the case of “the call for Muslims not to celebrate non- Islamic holidays”. The court sentenced Elvira Sultana Khamitova to 120 hours of forced labor for spreading a leaflet in social networks regarding the prohibition of Muslims celebrating the traditional Russian festival of the New Year.

This sentence demonstrates the extent to which Russia has reached in its war against Islam; the mere statement of a Muslim about New Year’s celebration has become quite an important issue to the state.  The Russian Federal Security Service searched the messages on her web page as a national security issue. Several months before this ruling, her name was placed on the official list of terrorists and militants published on the Rosfinmonitoring site. And thus the call of the young Muslim woman to abandon the celebration of non-Muslim holidays is considered as extremism in the eyes of the state, and hence added a new description of the Islamic Ummah. The case is the latest response by the authorities to the fact that the Muslims in Russia are learning their Deen and for their quest for the implementation of its rules.

Allah (swt) says:
وَدُّوا لَوْ تَكْفُرُونَ كَمَا كَفَرُوا فَتَكُونُونَ سَوَاءً ۖ
“They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike.” [An-Nisa: 89]

Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir
in Russia