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.
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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.
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.
Yes, just as that other Islamic nightmare -- Pakistan is also a British creation
Correct.