(MENAFN- The Peninsula) In a new crackdown on Islamic literature, Russia has banned a new book on the detailed life of first Caliph in Islam, Abu Bakr Siddique (may Allah Be pleased with him), claiming it contains references to hatred and hostility towards non-Muslims.
"The book contains references to hatred and hostility against non-Muslims and shifts Muslims away from the principle of unity," prosecutors' office in the district of Kurgan said in a statement cited by World Bulletin.
The statement said that the book "Abu Bakr Siddique, the First Caliph", written by Ali Muhammed al-Salaybi, was labeled as a radical text and hence banned.
The claims were rejected by the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis as illegal.
"To ban a book that explains Muslims their own history is illegal. These books explain battles that have taken place in history," SOVA experts said in a statement.
"Many battles have taken place in Islamic history and other religions and these are etched in people's minds".
According to SOVA, no language expert has the skill to review a book and that a court decision should be based on concrete evidence.
The move to ban a book in the Islamic literature is not the first in Russia.
Since Russia's anti-extremism law was passed in 2002, with the purpose of curbing potential militant threats, over 2,000 publications have been placed on a blacklist posted on the Justice Ministry's website.
The inclusion of some texts, such as the Russian edition of the diaries of Nazi Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf", has won praise from human rights campaigners.
But critics say too many innocuous works have been added, threatening the rights of minority groups.
Once a court anywhere in Russia judges a text extremist, it is automatically added to the nationwide blacklist.
In September 2013, a Russian court ordered the destruction of an interpretive translation of Qur'an, inviting a storm of fury from Russian Muslims.
A similar ban in June 2012 included the ban of 65 Islamic books which were deemed extremist literature by the court.
The list of these books includes such famous titles like Riyadh as-Salihin and Forty Hadiths of Imam an-Nawawi, Prophetic Seerah of Ibn Hisham and al-Mubarakfury, Fortress of the Muslim by al-Qahtani, Criterion of Action of Imam al-Ghazali, and History of Prophets from Adam to Muhammad.
Moreover, this list includes books of Turkish thinkers such as Said Nursi, FethullahGulen, Osman Nuri Topbash, Omer Chelika, Mustapha Ozturk, and even modern post-Soviet Muslim authors like the book of the most popular Moscow Imam ShamilAlyautdinov "The Path to Faith and Perfection" and Azerbaijan translator of Quran ElmirKuliev's "On the Way to Quran."
The Russian Federation is home to some 23 million Muslims in the north of the Caucasus and southern republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan.
Islam is Russia's second-largest religion representing roughly 15 percent of its 145 million predominantly Orthodox population.
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