Chechnya: 100,000 roubles for newborns named Mohammad on the Prophet’s birthday

Chechnya's Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation offers payments for families that name newborns after the Prophet Mohammed

A view of the Akhmad Kadyrov Mosque (Heart of Chechnya) and the Grozny City business centre in Grozny, the capital of Chechnya. ASS 

Babies born on Thursday in Chechnya who are named after the Prophet Mohammed or his followers will be eligible for a 100,000 roubles ($1,265) from a local foundation.

The Chechen foundation on Wednesday said it was expanding its annual charity grant for newborn to mark the Prophet’s birthday, which falls on Thursday.

Usually, the Akhmat Kadyrov Foundation, named after the former Chechen leader and father of current Head of the Chechen Republic Ramzan Kadyrov, gives 100,000 roubles to families of babies born on the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday. But this year they are expanding the grant to all families who name a baby born on October 29 after any member of the Prophet Mohammed’s family or close associates.

“The action is held annually in honour of the birthday of the Prophet [Muhammad], but this year it will become more widespread – last year only boys received payments,” Chechnya’s Information Minister Akhmed Dudayev told the Russian state news agency TASS.

Mr Dudayev told TASS that the foundation’s decision to expand the grants was “especially significant for us in the context of recent events.”

In recent days, anger has erupted across many Muslim-majority countries at cartoons published by French magazine Charli Hebdo that many see as offensive to Islam.

The issue has resurfaced after the killing of French teacher Samuel Paty who was beheaded by a teenage extremist after showing his students such cartoons, which are considered blasphemous under Islam, during a class on freedom of expression.

French President Emmanuel Macron has defended the schoolteacher and the cartoons as an expression of free speech.

"We will not give up cartoons, drawings, even if others back down," Mr Macron said during a national tribute to the slain teacher.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El Sisi on Wednesday rejected the use of freedom of expression to justify the drawings but called for tolerance and calm.

“To assume a sense of superiority driven from practicing the values of freedom is itself a kind of extremism when encroaching on the rights of others,” he said during a televised ceremony marking the prophet’s birthday.

The Grand Imam of Egypt's Al Azhar university, one of the world's most eminent seats of Muslim learning, also called on the international community to criminalise "anti-Muslim" actions.