Islamist sect found living underground near Russian city for nearly 10 years

[Lucy Goosey]

Islamist sect found living underground near Russian city for nearly 10 years

Seventy members of an Islamist sect in Russia have been found living in an underground bunker without heat or sunlight on the outskirts of the city of Kazan, according to Russian media.

The sect members – including 20 children, the youngest of whom was 18 months old – are thought to have been underground for nearly a decade.

Many of the children were born underground and had never seen daylight until the prosecutors discovered them on 1 August. After health checks, a 17-year-old girl turned out to be pregnant.


The group, known as the Fayzarahmanist sect, was named after its 83-year-old organiser Fayzrahman Satarov, who declared himself a prophet and his house an independent Islamic state, according to a report by state TV channel Vesti.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/aug/09/islamist-fayzarahmanist-sect-underground-kazan

It's hard for me to understand the kind of faith these people have in a leader that makes them live underground for ten years, but I do find it fascinating

[CBGLuthier]

1. Similar to the story of Underground

Underground is an allegorical fable that starts before WWII and runs until after the collapse of Eastern European communism. A man keeps an entire group underground for decades by telling them the war never ended.

[cbayer]

2. Yikes! What a scary story.

No sunlight? No medical care?

[trotsky]

3. They did it for religious reasons.

And were quite sincere about it. We have no reason to object, do we?

[MissMarple]

4. That depends...

You can't engage in criminal activity under cover of religious freedom. I guess we'll have to see.

[trotsky]

5. The courts in the USA have decided otherwise.

See: peyote.

[white_wolf]

6. I believe the Courts ruled you could not break the law for religious reasons in that very case.

It was Sclaia who wrote the opinion in Smith II and he went against the precedent that the Courts had established in prior cases. Before Smith II the Courts tried to balance the rights of the individual against the concerns of government so in some cases you could be given religious exemption for some laws, but not after the Peyote case. I actually do favor exemption in some cases, as long as it doesn't interfere with the rights of others and I think this example does interfere, because there were children involved. Just as I don't think the Amish should be allowed to force their children out of school if they don't want to leave, these people had no right to keep their kids underground.

[trotsky]

7. Smith was a special case.

From Wikipedia:

...Oregon's ban on the possession of peyote is not a law specifically aimed at a physical act engaged in for a religious reason. Rather, it is a law that applies to everyone who might possess peyote, for whatever reason—a "neutral law of general applicability," in the Court's phrasing. The Court characterized Smith's and Black's argument as an attempt to use their religious motivation to use peyote in order to place themselves beyond the reach of Oregon's neutral, generally applicable ban on the possession of peyote.

Peyote may be legally used by Native Americans for religious purposes.

U.S. v. Boyll, 774 F.Supp. 1333 (D.N.M. 1991)[28] addresses this racial issue specifically and concludes:

For the reasons set out in this Memorandum Opinion and Order, the Court holds that, pursuant to 21 C.F.R. § 1307.31 (1990), the classification of peyote as a Schedule I controlled substance, see 21 U.S.C. § 812(c), Schedule I(c)(12), does not apply to the importation, possession or use of peyote for 'bona fide' ceremonial use by members of the Native American Church, regardless of race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peyote#Legality