On the finish of final yr, as warnings of an imminent assault grew louder, Ismahilov started coaching with a neighborhood territorial protection battalion. By then he had served as a mufti for 13 years.
Born and raised in Donetsk in japanese Ukraine, Ismahilov had already fled Russia as soon as earlier than, in 2014, when Moscow-backed separatists captured his metropolis.
He ultimately moved to a quiet suburb exterior Kyiv known as Bucha – solely to seek out himself, eight years later, on the coronary heart of Moscow’s assault on Kyiv, and the location of atrocities that shocked the world. It felt as if the specter of Russian occupation would by no means finish.
“This time I made the choice that I might not run away, I might not flee however I might struggle” he mentioned in an interview with The Related Press in Kostiantynivka, a city near the entrance traces in japanese Ukraine the place a battle for management of the area is intensifying.
Ismahilov started working as a army driver for paramedics evacuating the wounded from entrance traces or besieged cities.
Tasked with driving in extremely harmful situations, but in addition emotionally supporting the critically injured, Ismahilov says he sees his new job as “a continuation of my religious obligation earlier than God.”
“If you’re not scared and you are able to do this, then it is vitally vital. The Prophet was himself a warrior,” Ismahilov says. “So I observe his instance and I additionally won’t run, or cover. I cannot flip my again on others.”
Ismahilov was one in all dozens of Ukrainian Muslims who gathered on the mosque in Kostiantynivka Saturday to mark Eid al-Adha – an vital non secular vacation in Islam.
The mosque is now the final remaining operational mosque in Ukrainian-controlled territory in Donbas. Ismahilov instructed the AP that there are round 30 mosques within the area in complete however that the majority at the moment are within the palms of the Russians.
Final week, Russia captured the town of Lysychansk, the final main stronghold of Ukrainian resistance within the japanese province of Luhansk. The governor of the Luhansk area mentioned on Saturday that Russian forces at the moment are urgent towards the border with the neighbouring Donetsk area.
Muslims make up nearly 1 per cent of the inhabitants in Ukraine, which is predominantly Orthodox Christian. There’s a massive Muslim inhabitants in Crimea – house to the Crimean Tatars and illegally annexed by Russian in 2014.
Numbers there leap to 12 per cent. There may be additionally a sizeable Muslim group in japanese Ukraine, the results of waves of financial migration because the area industrialised and plenty of Muslims immigrated to the Donbas area to work within the mines and factories.
The battle in 2014 pressured many Muslims from Crimea and Donbas to relocate to different elements of the nation the place they joined long-established Tatar communities or constructed new Islamic facilities alongside Turks, Arabs and Ukrainian converts.
However the invasion has pressured many to flee as soon as once more. The mosque in Kostiantynivka used to cater for a neighborhood Muslim inhabitants of a number of hundred folks.
On Saturday, few native residents had been current, having journeyed west with their households. As a substitute the congregation was made up of troopers or fight medics from totally different items: Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian converts from Kharkiv, Kyiv and western Ukraine.
In his sermon following the normal Eid prayers, Ismahilov instructed the congregation that this yr’s Eid had a symbolic significance within the midst of the struggle, and requested them to recollect Muslims residing in occupied territories, the place many have misplaced their houses and a number of other mosques have been destroyed by shelling.
Referencing a collection of arrests of Crimean Tartars within the wake of the 2014 annexation, Ismahilov mentioned Muslims in occupied territories don’t really feel secure.
“There may be loads of worry. … The struggle continues and we don’t know what is going on within the occupied territories and what scenario Muslims are in there” he mentioned.
Ismahilov instructed the AP that he considers Russian Muslims invading Ukraine, together with Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov’s notorious Chechen battalions, as “criminals”.
“They’re committing sins and … they’ve come as murderers and occupiers, on a territory that’s the house of Ukrainians and Ukrainian Muslims, with none justification. Allah didn’t give them that proper” says Ismahilov. “They’ll reply for all this earlier than God.”
Olha Bashei, 45, a lawyer turned paramedic from Kyiv who transformed to Islam in 2015, says Russia is attempting “erase Ukraine from the face of the earth.” Bashei started working as a frontline paramedic in Donbas in 2014. She considers this struggle her jihad’, a time period to indicate a holy struggle or private battle in Islam.
“This struggle is my struggle, and I defend my jihad as a result of I’ve nephews, I’ve a mom and I defend my house. I don’t want my nephews to ever see what I, sadly, noticed on this struggle” she mentioned.
“Islam even helps me as a result of in Islam, in prayer, you by some means distract your self from the struggle since you learn the prayer and you’ve got a reference to the Almighty. For me, Islam is a power that helps me even in struggle.”
Because the troopers ready the customary sacrificial sheep for the Eid feast, a residential space in Kostiantynivka a number of kilometers away got here underneath violent shelling. The incoming artillery shook the bottom. Some troopers ran to the mosque’s bunker. Others shrugged it off and continued to drink their tea and eat dates. The shelling brought on a number of fires, injuring a number of inhabitants and burning roofs to cinders.
Ismahilov mentioned they might pray for victory and the liberation of the occupied territories.
“We pray that our Muslim compatriots will likely be secure, that our households will likely be reunited, that the slain Muslims will go to heaven, and that each one the Muslim troopers who’re defending their nation will likely be accepted as shahids (martyrs) by Allah.”