RUSSIA: Persecution of Yunus Abdullayev, a Russian Muslim
By Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers
HRWF (29.01.2026) – President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that the Russian Orthodox Church is one of the foundations of the Russian nation and a multinational state.
Indeed, according to official statistics, more than 80% of the inhabitants of Russia consider themselves to be Orthodox. Muslims are in the second position in terms of number, with about 7.35% of the population. All other religions – other Christian confessions, as well as Buddhism, Judaism and others – account for less than 1%.
The question arises: to what extent does government support to religious freedom extend to other religions?
While the State Duma was adopting a law on the official consolidation of Orthodox crosses on the Russian coat of arms, the Semikarakorsky District Court of the Rostov Region fined Yunus Abdullaev 1,000 rubles for possession of a religious book, qualifying it as extremist material meant to be massively distributed (Article 20.29 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation).
According to the Moscow-based Sova Research Center, stigmatized in Russia as “foreign agent,” the basis of the prosecution was a search conducted on 25 September 2025 as part of a criminal case. In a box of books located in the back room, the book “40 Hadiths of Imam al-Nawawi” was found with comments by Mustafa al-Bugh and Muhya al-Din Mista.
Abdullayev pleaded not guilty, pointing out that the book was not in the public domain and was not intended for distribution. The court, however, came to a different conclusion, imposed a fine and ordered the confiscation of the publication.
The collection of hadiths by al-Nawawi was banned in 2012 by the decision of the Sol-Iletsky District Court of the Orenburg Region and included in the Federal List of Extremist Materials under number 1622.
SOVA considers to be wrong the court’s decision to recognise this classical religious treatise as extremist material and to combat its dissemination. It is especially unclear on what grounds the court qualified the storage of the book in a box located in the back room as an act aimed at mass distribution, SOVA points out.
Who is Imam al-Nawawi?
Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi (October 1233 – December 1277), born near Damascus in Syria, was a Sunni Shafi’i jurist and hadith scholar. He was a prolific writer and researcher as well as a tireless educator. Although he died at the relatively early age of 45, he authored numerous and lengthy works ranging from hadith, to theology, biography, and jurisprudence that are still read to this day.
In 2015, during the war, his tomb was demolished by Syrian rebels belonging to Al Nusra.
An-Nawawi’s lasting legacy is his contribution to hadith literature through his momentous works Forty Hadiths and Riyadh as-Saaliheen. This made him a respected scholar despite him being of Shafi’i jurisprudence.
Previous persecution of Yunus Abdullayev
This is far from the first state prosecution of Yunus Abdullayev.
According to Bloknot-rostov, he is the head of the Turkish religious organization Suleymanci (not a banned or undesirable organization in Russia), although Abdullayev himself denies this. The publication also reports that Abdullayev was trained in one of the specialized religious centers in Turkey.
In 2019, Abdullayev and an organization associated with him joined the so-called “Don Muhtasibat” – the Rostov representative office of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Russia. In 2020, he created a local religious organization of Muslims “Sincerity” in the Semikarakorsky district. On this basis, according to the authorities, the allegedly illegal activities of a madrasah, a Muslim educational institution, were organized.
On 15 September 2022, following an inspection by law enforcement agencies of the activities of Abdullayev and his madrasah, he was brought to administrative punishment by the Semikarakorsky District Court under Article 5.26 of the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (production or distribution by a religious organization as part of missionary activities of literature, printed, audio and video materials without indicating its full official name or with incomplete or knowingly false marking).
At the time of the searches there were accusations of extremism, and later on of indoctrination and mental manipulation of children but this was never confirmed by state bodies that carried out the investigation.
“I only taught children the basics of Islam and the Arabic language,” Abdullayev then said.
In 2023-2024, Yunus Abdullayev was also subjected to state persecution on charges of holding religious meetings in a private house. In September 2023, officers of the Volgodonsk department of the FSB and the police visited his place for an inspection. They concluded that Muslim meetings were held in a residential building, which formally did not correspond to the intended use of housing. Yunus Abdullayev did not hide the fact that meetings were held at that place and the address of the house was officially indicated when the organization was registered with the Ministry of Justice.
Picture: A praying Muslim (AI generated by HRWF)
