Posted on 09/29/2012 3:50:42 PM PDT by marshmallow
Until recently traditional Muslims and Salafists lived harmoniously side-by-side in Tatarstan. No longer
FOR years Tatarstan was held up as a model of stability and tranquillity as the Muslim-majority republics of the Russian north Caucasus became embroiled in a separatist conflict that spawned a still-continuing civil war along religious lines. More than half of Tatarstan’s 4m people are Sunni Muslims who have long enjoyed friendly relations with the rest of Russia. Kazan, the regional capital on the Volga river 450 miles (724km) east of Moscow, is a prosperous and attractive city.
That sense of calm has changed since July, when assassins shot dead a prominent Islamic leader, Valiulla Yakupov, and nearly killed Tatarstan’s chief mufti, Ildus Faizov, with a bomb detonated under his car. The exact motive remains unclear but many in Kazan seem to think it is related to the public campaign of both men to combat the rising influence of Salafism, a fundamentalist form of Islam.
In Soviet times, Islam in Tatarstan was largely a means of ethnic identification and had something of a “folk” character, says Akhmet Yarlykapov of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Yet in recent years Salafism, which has gained followers throughout the Muslim world, has made inroads in Tatarstan, especially among the young. Migrants from the republics of the north Caucasus and the post-Soviet countries of Central Asia have also spread more conservative interpretations of Islam.
Estimates of the number of Salafists in Tatarstan vary. A local mufti, Farid Salman, says the public figure of 3,000 is probably far too low. The older generation and those in official religious structures are wary of the Salafist groups, seeing them as imports and gateways to radicalisation. After he came to office in early 2011, Mr Faizov started to remove conservative imams and banned religious textbooks from Saudi....
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
Now the Russians are supportin Assad while we want to replace Assad with Islamic jihadis...
Have they not heard of Beslan?
Where were they when the Moscow theater thing happened in 2003? I remember being thrilled to read how the Chechen women were executed point-blank while anesthetized by the Fentanyl the KGB pumped in prior to raiding.
The article is about the Tartars, and the peaceful coexistence that had existed in Tatarstan, not about the Chechens. They are about 800 miles apart.
Especially since the American Left is eager to remember that while Reagan armed the Mujaheddin in the Soviet-Afghan war, but forgets how Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and the PLO were all clients of the USSR before that.
The Soviets never considered religiosity of the Third World a big problem as their real enemy was not religion in general but specifically Christianity. As the author rightly notes, Islam was treated as simply a charming folk culture.
On the other hand, Arafat, Nasser, Assad the Dad, and Hussein were not religious man in the Wahhabi mold either.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
It’s worth mentioning that Egypt, Syria and Iraq under Russian influence were SECULAR nations. Islamists were jailed and executed there.
As for a Palestinian terrorism it is of British design just like all the political islamism. British idea was to deter Israel as a US client and US itself to keep influence in Middle East. It hasn’t worked for the British and their Frankenstein has broke free. United States made just same mistake in 1980s supporting obvious islamists against Soviets.
Russians HAS considered religiosity of the Trird World a problem and specifically Islam. It was the main reason why an Afghan resistance has gained popularity at the time.
In fact Christianity was a single religion barely recognized by the Soviets. They declared peace with Orthodoxy soon after German invasion in 1941.
While all that is true, the fact remains that many terrorist/Islamic leaders and movements have been agents of Moscow, and today there exists a not so secret alliance between the Islamo-Marxists and the international communist movement, which, by the way, still lives in Moscow through the “former” KGB and communist party members who have claimed conversions to being mild-mannered politicians.
This is a good article on the subject:
http://leninandsharia.com/docs/preobrazhensky.pdf
That is true: the Soviet satellites in the Middle East were largely secular. Militant Islam started to be a problem for the Soviets only after they invaded Afghanistan; but as the other side of the coin, modern militant Islam grew out of the Afghani resistance.
The Orthodox Church of Russia fell to Sergianism — collaboration mode with the Soviet regime in the late 1920’s, I believe. This did not purchase them much if anything: the priests were murdered, parishes closed and churches blown up all the same. There was a small reprieve when Stalin had to hustle the war with Germany; the moment the war was over the reprieve was over also. Khruschev “predicted” that the last church in the USSR would close in 1980; it came close to that.
It is also true that with all atheistic brutality that the Orthodox faced, other Christian churches and denomination in the USSR fared much worse. Baptists and Catholics were simply seen as foreign agents and ended in the prison system massively.
I am not aware of any comparable oppression of Islam. Perhaps I am not informed. Serious oppression of Judaism started when the Jews began to emigrate, in 1970’s. Of course no religion was viewed favorably in the USSR, but the Christians, and especially non-Orthodox Christians or Catacomb Orthodox Christians were markedly worse off than any other religion, in my observation.
That is not the point if both KGB and CIA had terrorists as their agents sometimes for some tactical reasons. That is how intelligence works. The truth is Soviets were less likely to ally with islamist terrorists comparing to the West which supported and still supports “freedom fighters” of the worst kind. Ideology was everything for Soviet alliances and militant islam is as far from commie values as possible.
And there are tonns of terrorists who are agents of Washington. The entire Saudi Arabia which is the main sponsor of terrorism is a US client, here goes Pakistan and what?
Once again, it is wrong to equal Soviet-backed Baathists and traditionally Western-backed Jihadists. Baathism proved to be a single way of barely civilized nation-state existance for muslims and it worth supporting for that single reason despite many cons. Jihadism on the other hand is opposite. And it won’t be a friend no matter how much support they got.
“That is not the point if both KGB and CIA had terrorists as their agents sometimes for some tactical reasons.”
The CIA, so far as I know, does not use mass killing of civilians as an instrument of global communist revolution. The KGB/FSB has and does. Arafat, for example, was a KGB puppet, as was the entirety of the PLO. They did not belong to the CIA.
Can you give a few examples over the course of the cold war to the present day?
Since my last comment was removed I think I’ll keep examples from being posted. Anyway, I think US authorities including intelligence agency could play a different role during these Arab Spring events which already led to a numerous innocent deaths, including US citizens. And it seems to be only beginning.
Yet remember the we (stupidly) supported the Islamic leaders in Afghanistan fighting the Soviets and we still support the Saudis who are the font of jihadiism
Yes, just as that other Islamic nightmare -- Pakistan is also a British creation
Correct.
Mosques were shut and turned into sheds etc. The crackdown on all religions was hard, but Islam was a particular threat to the communists due to its link with nationalism.
cunning_fish is correct
cunning_fish is correct
Right now the best game we could have played was to have the secular murderous dictators in the Arab world fight and kill and be occupied with the jihadis and Moslem brotherhood (ok, the jihadis and Moslem brotherhood are one and the same)
Thank you Cronos.
The problem with secular Middle East regime is they’ve lost credibility after Arab Spring.
Sand monkeys aren’t afraid of dictators anymore. They won their freedom to kill and rape as far as they aren’t interested in classic freedoms much.
At first it were neocons who stolen the key from stability in a muslim world. But Zero&Hitlery went firther and neglectly lost this key chasing some false political goals. Just to make future generation busy changing the locks or building another door there.
Obama has created a much more dangerous world for everyone. However, just imagine what would happen if he gets a second term. boggles the mind, doesn’t it?
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