Russia's Chechnya to pay for pilgrims haj trip

MOSCOW, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Russia's mostly Muslim, volatile Chechnya region will pay for hundreds of pilgrims to go to Mecca for this year's haj, its leader's spokesman said on Thursday.

The free haj trip, ordered by regional president Ramzan Kadyrov, follows prizes for newborns named after the Prophet Mohammad, periodic alcohol bans and requiring women wear headscarves in government offices.

Some analysts say that Kadyrov is using religion to provide an outlet for people as desperation mounts in the face of Islamist violence in the North Caucasus.

A series of armed attacks and suicide bombs on law enforcement in Chechnya, where Moscow has fought two separatist wars, and neighboring Ingushetia and Dagestan has shattered a few years of relative calm across Russia's southern fringe.

"It's for those who do not have the means to go otherwise, and for the single and the young," Kadyrov's spokesman Alvi Karimov said by telephone.

Last week the president, an ex-rebel turned Kremlin loyalist, opened a competition for architects to build "the world's most beautiful mosque" in Chechnya, he said on his official website.

Four hundred Chechen pilgrims will fly from the regional capital Grozny direct to Saudi Arabia and will be flown back after they have performed the haj over several days, Karimov said.

Their journeys will be financed out of a fund Kadyrov has created in honor of his father and predecessor, Akhmad, who was assassinated in a bomb blast in 2004.

Around 3 million Muslims make the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia most years, a journey all Muslims must carry out at least once in their lifetime.