Miracle

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report:
A "miracle" baby has brought hope to
people in Russia's mostly Muslim southern
fringe who are increasingly desperate in the
face of Islamist violence.
Thousands of pilgrims queued up this week
in blazing sunshine to get a glimpse of 9-
month-old baby Ali Yakubov, on whose body
verses from the Koran are said to appear
and fade every few days.
Pinkish in colour and several centimetres
high, the Koranic verse "Be grateful to Allah"
was printed on the infant's right leg in
clearly legible Arabic script this week,
religious leaders said. Visiting foreign
journalists later saw a single letter after the
rest had vanished.
"The fact that this miracle happened here is
a signal to us to take the lead and help our
brothers and sisters find peace," said Sagid
Murtazaliyev, head of the Kizlyar region
about 100 miles north of Makhachkala, the
sprawling Dagestani capital on the Caspian
Sea.
"We must not forget there is a war going on
here," he told Muslim leaders who had
invited the press to witness what they claim
is a sign from God.
Islam in Russia is widely believed to have
originated in ethnically rich Dagestan, where
3 million people speak over 30 languages
and whose ancient walled city of Derbent
claims to be Russia's oldest city.
A spate of recent suicide bombs and armed
attacks on police and security services in
Dagestan, Ingushetia and neighbouring
Chechnya, where Russia has fought two
separatist wars, has shattered a few years
of relative calm in the North Caucasus.
Up to 2,000 pilgrims come daily to see the
blue-eyed baby, whose pink brick house has
become a shrine.
Green satin flags mark the way to the baby's
modest family home in Kizlyar, a small town
of lime-coloured mosques, cornfields and
dirt roads whose dust bellows into the sky.
Dagestan's omnipresent armed police patrol
the house while imams change photos of
Yakubov's arms and legs covered in Arabic
script from previous episodes to both
jubilation and wails from the bustling
crowd.
They say the fact Yakubov's 27-year-old
father Shamil works in the police force - a
regular target by militants - is proof of
divine intervention.
Sayid Amirov, Makhachkala's influential
mayor who has survived around a dozen
attacks on his life since the mid-1990s,
interpreted the recent buzz around the baby
as a warning.
"What happened here is indeed a miracle,
but this should also be a message to not
take religion too far," he told reporters.
Authorities say Islamist extremism is as
responsible for the growing violence as
widespread poverty, and experts add the
insurgency is also recruiting foreign al-
Qaeda militants who seek an Islamic state in
the north Caucasus.
Holding up his right foot where a single
Arabic letter remained from the latest
episode, Yakubov's 26-year-old mother
Madina said she had no doubt the verses -
which first appeared two weeks after birth -
were connected to extremism.
"Allah is great and he sent me my miracle
child to keep our people safe," she told
Reuters.
Though divine "miracles" are common in
Christianity - such as weeping icons and
stigmata, bleeding wounds in the hands and
feet similar to those of Christ - Islam rarely
reports them.