Excerpt:
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin recently said he did not want any more mosques being built in his city, claiming it would attract more Muslims. Such open displays of Islamophobia have been echoed elsewhere in Russia and show a deep rooted problem in the city of Moscow, which currently has a Muslim population of two million residents.
While there are two million Muslim residents living in Moscow, there are up to two million more Muslim migrant workers, most of who immigrated from Soviet Central Asia. As of today, there are only four public mosques in Moscow. With this shortage, Muslims have to wait hours to enter a mosque. Currently, only one new mosque is under construction.
The mayor made his decision that he will not be issuing any more permits to build further mosques. Sobyanin said that these Muslims are from outside the city and "don't have the right to be catered to" since they are not Russian citizens. However, he admits that the city's economy would not be able to manage without these Muslim workers.