Talgat Tadzhuddin

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Talgat Tadzhuddin is Chief Mufti of Russia, and heads the Central Muslim Spiritual Directorate. Since Soviet times, the Russian government has divided Russia into a number of Muslim Spiritual Directorates, and appoints a head of each; Tadzhuddin heads the one incorporating Moscow and Central Russia. He was originally appointed in Soviet times but has managed to retain his post in the post-Soviet era. He is usually considered loyal to Putin's party line, but his extremist views have at times infuriated the Putin administration^{[citation needed]}: at the beginning of the Iraq War, Tadzhuddin advocated war against the USA.

More recently his homophobic comments have been widely published. The Independent (17 February 2006) quoted him as saying, in regards to a proposed Moscow gay pride parade, "If they come out on to the streets anyway they should be flogged. Any normal person would do that - Muslims and Orthodox Christians alike ... [The protests] might be even more intense than protests abroad against those controversial cartoons." The reporter, Andrew Osborn, added that "The cleric said the Koran taught that homosexuals should be killed because their lifestyle spells the extinction of the human race and said that gays had no human rights."