MOSCOW (AP) — A top Muslim cleric in Russia’s Tatarstan province was shot dead and another was wounded by a car bomb in two attacks that local leaders said were related to the priests’ criticism of radical Islamists, investigators said Thursday.

Valiulla Yakupov, the deputy to the Muslim province’s chief mufti, was gunned down Thursday as he left his house in Tatarstan’s regional capital of Kazan, Russia’s Investigative Committee said. Minutes later, chief mufti Ildus Faizov was wounded in the leg after an explosive device ripped through his car in central Kazan, it said.

Both clerics were known as critics of radical Islamist groups that advocate a strict and puritan version of Islam known as Salafism. Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin told Russian news agencies that his agency was looking into the clerics’ professional activity as a possible reason for the attacks.

The 49-year-old Faizov became Tatarstan’s chief mufti in 2011 and began a crackdown on radical Islamists by dismissing ultraconservative preachers and banning textbooks from Saudi Arabia, where the government-approved religious doctrine is based on Salafism.

He has also been criticized by media in Tatarstan for allegedly profiting on tours he organized for Muslim pilgrims and for trying to gain control of one of the oldest and largest mosques in Kazan that receives hefty donations from thousands of believers.