being a vice-president of FECRIS (Federation of European Centers for Research and Information on Sects). This article gives an idea of the real results of Dvorkin‟s activities. It calls your attention to facts that are not apparent and are often ignored. The subject matter concerns every believer, no matter what religion he or she belongs to.
I had a personal experience with FECRIS recently. A friend of mine in Belgium in a conference gave me a booklet which was written by some German researchers, and the booklet is about religion state and society. When I read it, I was shocked. How much influence and power and money this organization gets to make negative campaigns about anyone they don’t like. So when a friend of mine told me there was a conference in Copenhagen, and as a journalist I could go there, I went there and I can tell you I was absolutely not happy. I was disgusted by the tone of the speeches there, the campaigns they were making against certain religions, and also how secretive they were. One speaker came after another and not one suggestion on how to deal with the issues. Just campaigns against certain sects and certain religions. That is not the way I think an organization which claims to be open, to protect the victims of sects and religions, to be themselves so secretive and so, I would call, you know, very strange way of acting.”
Bashy Quraishy explains in this talk, the discrimination taking place against religions by secular forces in Europe and how certain well funded and connected movements like FECRIS are spreading hatred against smaller religions. His reflections are based on 3 decades of work against racism, discrimination, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in Denmark and in EU.
The lecture about history of Islam which was given by leader of anti-sect movement in Russia Alexander Dvorkin is still fresh in memory. The lecture took place on 5 February 2013 in the Northern Arctic Federal University (Arkhangelsk city, Russia) under the title “Origins of Islam. Not-told stories” (length is 1h 25min).
The first reason is that in Russia, in the early 1990’s, anti-cultism was a marginal and rare occurrence. Then it gained strength and became common and ordinary. To me, as a religious expert concerned with problems related to freedom of conscience, anti¬cultism became a sort of addition to the two main problems in Russia – idiots and roads’. In my point of view, today anti-cultists are enthusiasts who suggest the most harmful and foolish ways of solving problems concerning religious life.The second reason – I like the documentary film by Mikhail Romm Obyknoveniy fashizm [Ordinary Fascise For me, the combination of documentation and logic is the key to solving problems, but we will talk about this later.
