What stands behind the beating of Sergiev Posad Muslims leader? The Sergiyev Posad mosque does not immediately strike the eye. Even if you stand right in front of it, it is overshadowed by the town`s principal sight - the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, a symbol of Russian national glory. The mosque is an inconspicuous (although not architecturally unpretentious) two-level stone building owned by Arslankhazrat Sadriyev, head of the Muslim Ecclesiastic Administration for European Russia and chief imam of the Moscow region, which surrounds but does not include the capital. There are no indications that it is a religious building - no minarets or crescents or signboards. The imam lives nearby - in a two-room apartment in a brick five-story walk-up. In the past few weeks, he has rarely been to the mosque, as he has to meet with journalists and receive medical care. The young Islamic leader does not look very good - with left eye hematoma, facial bruises and stitched lacerations. The Mosque under Attack On the evening of October 14, during the namaz prayer, eight apparently intoxicated men aged 20 to 30 broke into the mosque. They looked like skinheads but did not wear skinhead clothes or trappings. There were only five people praying in the mosque. The assailants shouted obscenities and a couple of slogans, e.g., "This is not a place for Muslims!" and "You will not pray here!" and proceeded to beat the parishioners. They were "humane" only toward a 70-year-old woman: She was simply pushed out into the street. Sergiev Posad`s law enforcement agencies were rather indifferent to the incident: Police arrived at the mosque, detained a couple of assailants (who did not even try to run away from the crime scene), took them to a police station, and then let them go. They told the local media: "It was a personal conflict - an alcohol-related violence incident." Journalists verified that line with the imam, who dismissed it as utter nonsense since the mosque has a zero-tolerance alcohol policy. Another theory, aired by the Sergiev Posad Police Directorate press service, is more harmless: "ordinary hooliganism." Only the local Prosecutor`s Office suspected the beating was a hate crime, saying, however, it was not religiously motivated but based on an ethnic conflict: Apparently, there are too many ethnic Tatars in this Russian town. Nevertheless, Arslan Sadriyev insists that the assailants were clearly irked by the Muslims` faith, saying nothing about their ethnic background. A Wind That Blows from Moscow According to Arslan Sadriyev, a fourth-generation resident of Sergiev Posad, up until now he has not come across any manifestations of ethnic or religious intolerance in his home town. The furor over the plan to build a mosque "in the heart of Holy Russia" was started in Moscow. A special role here belongs to the Union of Orthodox Citizens. Three years ago, when Sergiev Posad`s Muslims asked for permission to build a mosque on the outskirts of the town, the Union voiced a loud protest. Citing its anonymous sources in Sergiev Posad, it insisted that the building of the mosque in the town be linked to "the end of segregation of Orthodox believers in Tatarstan," saying that the mosque construction project was as nonsensical as, for example, building an Orthodox church in Mecca. Soon afterward, the local administration, which had initially authorized the project, made a U-turn. Imam Sadriyev was shown a bundle of sheets purportedly with the signatures of local residents opposed to the project. The imam, however, was unable to make out a single signature or trace any of the opponents` names. This of course does not mean that there are none of them in Sergiev Posad - since xenophobia on the day-to-day level here is as strong as in Moscow. But there are no anti-Islamic ideologues, movements or at least people in the town who are ready to openly proclaim their xenophobic positions. The imam has a letter from Bishop Feognost (Guzikov), father superior of the Holy Trinity-St. Sergius Lavra, who completely dissociates himself from the dispute around the mosque, leaving the resolution of the matter to "God`s will." The conflict around the mosque is being fanned from Moscow. Arslan Sadriyev believes that Gen. Boris Gromov, governor of the Moscow region, is anti-Muslim. Of course, his position is not publicized, but heads of administrations in those districts where mosque construction projects had begun were invariably reprimanded by the governor. It must have been after one such reprimand that Vasily Goncharov, head of the Sergiev Posad district administration, came out with an anti-constitutional statement: "The district is exclusively an Orthodox [Christian] territory, and it is impossible to build any Muslim religious facilities here." Later, however, the district administration explained that there were just no concentrated Muslim settlements in the district. In other words, there are no ghettos or reservations where ethnic Muslims (incidentally, there are 10,000 Muslims in the district) may gather for communal prayer and practice their faith. Nor does the new head of the district administration intend to revisit the mosque project. Upyrev actively used patriotic (read nationalist) rhetoric in the course of his controversial election campaign. The Moscow News