Islam Miracle Baby in Russia: 2,000 People/Day Visit

KIZLYAR, Dagestan — A “miracle” baby has brought a kind of mystical hope to people in Dagestan who are increasingly desperate in the face of Islamist violence.

...9-month-old baby Ali Yakubov, on whose body they say verses from the Quran appear and fade every few days.

Pinkish in color and several centimeters high, the Quranic 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 district...

...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.

 ...“Islam and fear of terrorism now totally dominate the North Caucasus, and they are perhaps using this to escape from a certain reality,” he said by telephone.

A spate of recent suicide bombings and armed attacks on police and security services in Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya has shattered a few years of relative calm in the North Caucasus.

...Dagestan’s omnipresent armed police patrol the house, while imams exchange 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 that Yakubov’s 27-year-old father, Shamil, works in the police force — a regular target by militants — is proof of divine intervention.

The first Muslims within current Russian territory were the Dagestani people... after the Arab conquests in the 8th century. 

Under Communist rule, Islam was oppressed and suppressed, as was any other religion. Many mosques—much like their Christian counterparts, the churches—were closed at that time.

There was much evidence of official conciliation toward Islam in Russia in the 1990s. The number of Muslims allowed to make pilgrimages toMecca increased sharply after the embargo of the Soviet era ended in 1990. The Union of Muslims of Russia is the direct successor to the pre-World War I Union of Muslims, which had its own faction in the Russian  Duma.