UWI reveals secret documents: How the Kyiv regime surveils Muslims over the Palestine issue

By Yiğit Saner

The Kyiv regime is persecuting, denouncing, and linking Ukrainian Muslim religious scholars, citizens and institutions that criticize the genocide against the Palestinians to “Islamic terrorism”. The documents you are about to read expose the attitude of the Zelensky administration towards Muslims under American pressure and to curry favor with Israel.

The internal correspondence of the Ukrainian State, obtained by UWI from reliable sources, shows that the Zelensky regime is not an ordinary supporter of Israel. It goes as far as labeling even an internationally respected cleric, whose expertise is combating bigotry, such as the Ukrainian Mufti Ahmed Tamim, as “linked with extremist activities”. Moreover, Ukraine administration investigates the financial sources of the institutions headed by Tamim on the “suspicion” that they are related to “terrorist organizations”.

Ukrainian Mufti on target

Tamim, the head of the largest Islamic religious organization in the country, the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Ukraine (DUMU), is a scholar who fights extremist movements, contrary to Kyiv’s accusations. The Ukrainian Mufti apparently does not have any issues with the regime and even helped to release more than 70 Ukrainian prisoners in the Donbas region. Still, his expression of support for Palestine is reason enough for Ukraine to target him.

Ahmed Tamim has become the subject of internal state correspondence due to the “threat” he poses by supporting Gazans. He is a Lebanon-born Ukrainian citizen. Tamim, who came to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1976, has a remarkable educational background. Graduating from the Faculty of Computer Science of the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute in 1982, the future Mufti of Ukraine then returned to his hometown and studied religion at the Faculty of Theology of the Arab University of Beirut ‘Imam Evza’i’.

Spreading Islam and combating extremism

In 1991, Sheikh Tamim was elected as the leader (imam) of the Kyiv Muslim community, and a year later, he united the country’s Muslim communities in the DUMU, whose mission was to spread Islam and combat extremist activities. In 1994, Tamim was elected Mufti of Ukraine at the First Congress of Muslims of Ukraine. He still holds this prestigious position.

However, Kyiv has set its sights not only on Sheikh Tamim but also on other Muslim organizations such as DUMU. Among them is the Islamic University in Kyiv. In fact, Kyiv seems to be breathing down many Islamic organizations’ neck headed by the Mufti of Ukraine.

Reported to the Ukrainian secret service

The first of the documents provided to UWI is dated December 2023, but the events date back to November. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington – apparently after being reprimanded by the Americans – wrote to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) to “snitch” on the misdemeanors committed by Tamim at meetings he attended in some American cities at the height of the conflict, when hundreds of Gazan civilians were being massacred every day. Moreover, according to Ambassador Oksana Markarova, not only the Ukrainian Mufti, but also other Ukrainians who attended these meetings “deserve special attention”. In order not to anger Tel Aviv, the Ukrainian Embassy also immediately informed the Israeli Embassy that they do not share Ahmed Tamim’s views.

The reason: Defending Palestine 

The accusations against Tamim are a pathetic demonstration of the Kyiv regime’s intolerance of Palestine and how it is more royalist than king. For Kyiv, the Ukrainian Mufti’s “offences” are: Allowing criticism of Israeli atrocities, calling on “believers to unite” and “offering” to organize a fundraising campaign for the relatives of “persecuted people”.

Tamim’s file is now in the SBU, the Ukrainian Gestapo, headed by Major General Vasiliy Malyuk. Malyuk’s organization is held responsible for a wide range of actions, from shadowy assassinations to the terrorist attack on the Crimean bridge in 2022 which claimed five people’s lives.

Once acceptable Muslim, now dangerous Muslim

What makes the matter even more interesting is Tamim’s transformation from an acceptable Muslim to a dangerous Muslim for the Kyiv regime. Sheikh Tamim’s name is also mentioned in the Ukrainian intelligence report targeting Crimean Tatars, which was also uncovered by UWI.

The report states that the relations between the DUMU, headed by the Ukrainian Mufti, and the supporters of the Spiritual Administration of Crimean Muslims have become more complicated, and that the latter is trying to discredit Tamim, accusing him of following illegitimate currents of Islam. Immediately afterwards, it is written that Crimean Muslims want to “establish his own religious leadership” and have an “uncompromising attitude” refusing to recognize religious leaders “under the auspices of Kyiv”. But, when Tamim went to the US in November 2023 and “called on believers to unite against Israel”, ties severed, and the “auspices” ended.

From embassy to the SBU 

Here we present the first document signed by Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian Ambassador in Washington:

The regime takes action

The second document shows that Kyiv has begun to take concrete steps against the religious and other Muslim organizations headed by Tamim. In December, the State Financial Monitoring Service of Ukraine sent a letter to the Ministry of Finance, which mentions measures such as suspending the financial transactions of individuals and organizations that “may be associated with Islamic terrorism in Palestine” as part of the “combat Islamic radicalism”.

We present the second document, in which the Mufti of Ukraine again plays a leading role:

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We already knew that the Zelensky administration, which covered Kyiv with Israeli flags immediately after the 7 October Operation Aqsa Flood, was pursuing a pro-Tel Aviv policy. But thanks to these documents, we have also learned that Kyiv has been keeping Muslim religious scholars, citizens and institutions under surveillance, denouncing them and taking measures against them for criticizing the genocide against Palestinians.

The following questions inevitably come to mind: 

 * Does the Ukrainian administration consider Muslims who support Palestine and complain about the atrocities in Gaza as “extremists”? And What about non-Muslims supporting Palestine and standing against Israel’s action in Gaza?

 * What is the relationship between the proposal to organize a fundraising campaign for the relatives of Gazans killed in the war and what the Embassy calls “Palestinian Islamic radicalism”?

 * Are Ukrainian citizens obliged to adopt Tel Aviv’s policy on the Palestinian issue, and if they express dissenting opinions, is this a sufficient reason to be monitored and reported to the SBU?

 * Does the Ukrainian Embassy in Ankara keep Ukrainian Muslims living in Türkiye under surveillance? Do they receive requests from the Americans to do so, and do they report the ones supporting Palestine to Israel or to the SBU?

Hypocrisy of the Ukrainian administration

And finally, we ask the following: How does it feel, on the one hand, to curry favor with Israel, whose occupation had been questioned by the State of Ukraine until 2022, who has killed 35,000 people in just six months, burned down Gaza, left children orphaned and hungry, who is accused of genocide in The Hague, who is worried that the International Criminal Court may issue an arrest warrant against its prime minister, and who has usurped Palestinian lands since the day it was founded, but on the other hand, to tell the whole world that Ukraine is being occupied?