Islamic University rector shot dead in Dagestan

The rector of an Islamic university in Dagestan was shot dead Tuesday. Maksud Sadikov, rector of the Islamic University of the North Caucasus, had argued that state support for Islam would reduce the growing influence of radical extremism in the troubled republic.

Sadikov and his nephew, who acted as the rector’s bodyguard, were shot as they walked from his home to a waiting car. Sadikov’s son managed to escape, having popped into a shop just before the two attackers approached, Life News said.

In an interview with the New York Times earlier this year, Sadikov said that a moderate Islamic education acted as an “anti-venom” against terrorism, a growing threat in the republic.

“The effort, and the government financing it received, had put him at odds with militants in the Islamic insurgency in Russia,” the New York Times wrote. Sadikov focused his work on traditional Sufi Islam, it added.

The attack comes two weeks after Shamil Dzhikayev, a poet who was also dean of the philology department at North Ossetia State University was brutally murdered in the neighboring Caucasus republic. Dzhikayev reportedly had his throat slit with a samurai sword as revenge for a 2008 poem that enraged radical Muslims. Local police have captured a suspect in the killing, saying 34-year-old David Murashev had embraced radical views in the past few years.

To learn more about the violence in the Caucasus, read my story as part of GlobalPost’s series “Al-Qaeda: What Next?”