Jehovah’s Witnesses literature declared extremist

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12:00 04/09/2015

MOSCOW, September 4 (RAPSI) – A court has ruled in favor of a lawsuit filed by the prosecutor’s office of Kurgan in the Urals to declare the Jehovah’s Witnesses book Keep Yourselves in God’s Love and the booklet Resist the Spirit of a Changing World extremist, the Kurgan prosecutor’s office said on its website on Friday.

The trial, which lasted over a year, including an analysis of these publications’ essence and linguistic and theological evaluations, concluded that the ideas advocated in these books are extremist because they incite the religious intolerance of non- Jehovah’s Witnesses.

After the court decision comes into force, it will be forwarded to the Justice Ministry for inclusion in the ministry’s list of extremist materials.

Jehovah’s Witnesses have had many legal problems in Russia. In January 2014, a court in Kurgan ruled to ban the organization’s booklets as extremist. The books talk about how to have a happy life, what you can hope for, how to develop good relations with God and what you should know about God and its meaning.

In late December 2013, the leader of the sect’s group in Tobolsk, Siberia was charged with extremism and the prevention of a blood transfusion that nearly led to the death of a female member of the group.

In 2004, a court in Moscow dissolved and banned a Jehovah’s Witnesses group on charges of recruiting children, encouraging believers to break from their families, inciting suicide and preventing believers from accepting medical assistance.