AWID speaks with a women’s rights activist in Chechnya about the growing use of religious ideology to threaten, control and attack women there.

In the summer of 2008, Europe’s largest mosque to date was erected in Grozny, Chechnya, a federal republic within Russia. Two years earlier, the land where the USD$20 million mosque was built saw intense conflict between Chechen and Russian military forces. At the mosque’s opening, the Kremlin-appointed President of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadirov declared his loyalty to both Moscow and “traditional Islam.”