The linked article relates the Russian crackdown on Muslims in Dagestan, the southernmost republic in Russia. Admittedly the situation there is far more tense than the current atmosphere in the United States…but some of the things that Donald Trump has suggested, alluded to, or not repudiated (from databases to surveillance) sound distressfully like what is happening there:
Komsomolskoye (a town in Dagestan) is one of several places where officials routinely announce “counterterrorist operations” and send SWAT teams to raid houses of suspected militants at dawn. The main road in and out of the village is guarded around the clock by security officers armed with automatic weapons, and hundreds of residents are under surveillance, with their names kept on a so-called Wahhabi list.
Those on the list can expect to get stopped at police checkpoints and sometimes detained for hours. They are visited at home and get phone calls at any time of day from police asking about their plans and whereabouts. They are often required to provide DNA samples and fingerprints.
Magomed Magomedov, deputy editor-in-chief of Dagestan’s respected weekly newspaper Chernovik, said the systematic repression of the ultra-conservative Salafi Islam community is pushing its members to the margins of society.
“If someone goes to the wrong mosque, he knows that when he leaves he could be taken to the police station, where he would be questioned, he would be fingerprinted for the 20th time,” said the editor…
Russian officials have defended the police profiling and raids on the homes of suspected militants, describing them as steps designed to stave off radicalization and deter possible terrorist attacks.
After Friday prayers last week, police rounded up about 50 worshippers at the main Salafi mosque in Dagestan’s capital of Makhachkala. The men were taken to the police station, and some were fingerprinted and asked to give blood samples, according to the Caucasian Knot, a major Russian website that covers the region.
Because of this crackdown on Muslims in Dagestan, the local population is becoming radicalized instead of neutralized…I can’t imagine it would be much different here.
Of course this is assuming that Donald Trump gets elected and is allowed to destroy the Constitution and American Civil Rights and American Civil Liberties. To say it can’t happen here is total denial…as we watch his poll numbers show that he continues to lead in the GOP race and we see his followers assault a protestor at one of his events. This has become the lowest point in American politics in my adult lifetime.
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