Russian Muslim leader injured in car bomb and deputy shot dead Ildus Fayzov, mufti of Tatarstan, 49, was hurt as his Toyota Land Cruiser was blown up, a short while after his deputy Valiulla Yakupov, also 49, was gunned down outside his house. It has been peaceful in contrast to the bloody republics of Russia's North Caucasus region where a conflict between state security forces and Islamist insurgents has guttered for more than a decade, claiming thousands of lives. The attacks in Kazan will raise fears of radical Islam seeping to a majority Muslim region in the Russian heartland rather than on its distant southern periphery. One Moscow newspaper reported on Thursday morning, before the attacks, that conservative Salafi believers from North Caucasus republics such as Dagestan were gradually taking control of mosques in Tatarstan. Some of them were former insurgents, it said. Mr Fayzov was installed as mufti of Tatarstan last year, reportedly after his predecessor had come under criticism for allowing conservative Islam to flourish. Mr Yakupov, the deputy who died, was well known as an opponent of Wahhabism, the name of a branch of Sunni Islam which is widely applied to fundamentalists.