KIZLYAR, Russia, Oct 21 (Reuters) - A "miracle" baby has brought a kind
of mystical hope to people in Russia's mostly Muslim southern fringe
who are increasingly desperate in the face of Islamist violence.
From hunchbacked grandmas to schoolboys, hundreds of pilgrims lined up
this week in blazing sunshine to get a glimpse of 9-month-old baby Ali
Yakubov, on whose body they say verses from the Koran appear and fade
every few days.
Pinkish in colour and several centimetres high,
the Koranic verse "Be thankful or grateful to Allah" was printed on the
infant's right leg in clearly legible Arabic script this week,
religious leaders said. Visiting foreign journalists later saw a single
letter after the rest had vanished.
"The fact that this miracle
happened here is a signal to us to take the lead and help our brothers
and sisters find peace," said Sagid Murtazaliyev, head of the Kizlyar
region about 150 km (95 miles) north of Makhachkala, the sprawling
Dagestani capital on the Caspian Sea.
"We must not forget there
is a war going on here," he told Muslim leaders who had invited the
press to witness what they unequivocally claim is a sign from God.
Islam in Russia is widely believed to have originated in ethnically
rich Dagestan, where 3 million people speak over 30 languages and whose
ancient walled city of Derbent claims to be Russia's oldest city.
A spate of recent suicide bombs and armed attacks on police and
security services in Dagestan, Ingushetia and neighbouring Chechnya,
where Russia has fought two separatist wars, has shattered a few years
of relative calm in the North Caucasus.
Local leaders have told
President Dmitry Medvedev they are struggling to contain an Islamist
insurgency pervading all spheres of society in the north Caucasus -- a
region named after the Caucasus mountains that divide Russia from
strategically important Georgia and Azerbaijan, where oil and gas
pipelines flow to the West.
Up to 2,000 pilgrims from Russia's
20 million Muslim population come daily to see the docile, blue-eyed
baby, whose pink brick house has become a shrine.
Vladimir
Zakharov, deputy director of the Caucasus Research Centre at the Moscow
State University of International Relations, said he was not in a
position to judge the veracity of the claims, but that it was clear
they were born out of desperation.
"Islam and fear of terrorism
now totally dominate the North Caucasus, and they are perhaps using
this to escape from a certain reality," he told Reuters by telephone.
POLICED SHRINE
Green satin flags mark the way to the baby's modest family home in
Kizlyar, a small town of lime-coloured mosques, cornfields and dirt
roads whose dust bellows into the sky.
Dagestan's omnipresent
armed police patrol the house while imams change photos of Yakubov's
arms and legs covered in Arabic script from previous episodes to both
jubilation and wails from the bustling crowd.
They say the fact
Yakubov's 27-year-old father Shamil works in the police force -- a
regular target by militants -- is proof of divine intervention.
Makhachkala's influential mayor Sayid Amirov, who has survived around a
dozen attacks on his life since the mid-1990s, interpreted the recent
buzz around the baby as a warning.
"What happened here is indeed a miracle, but this should also be a message to not take religion too far," he told reporters.
Authorities say Islamist extremism is as responsible for the growing
violence as widespread poverty, and experts add the insurgency is also
recruiting foreign al Qaeda militants who seek an Islamic state in the
north Caucasus.
Holding up his right foot where a single Arabic
letter remained from the latest episode, Yakubov's 26-year-old mother
Madina said she had no doubt the verses -- which first appeared two
weeks after birth -- were connected to extremism.
"Allah is
great and he sent me my miracle child to keep our people safe," she
told Reuters, adjusting her tight purple hijab which crowns a
multi-coloured kaftan.
Though divine "miracles" are common in
Christianity -- such as weeping icons and stigmata, bleeding wounds in
the hands and feet similar to those of Christ -- Islam rarely has them.
Outside her home, pilgrims prayed and gave thanks to Allah.
Supermarket attendant Madina Nikolayeva travelled from Ukraine to see
the baby. Behind her, Akhmed Khadzhy had been waiting all day in the
queue.
"Allah is watching over Dagestan," said the pensioner
from Khasavyurt near the Chechen border, where clashes with security
forces had killed three militants the night before. (Reporting by Amie
Ferris-Rotman; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)
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