"Investigators had previously said Russian nationalists were the most likely culprits"
-----------------------------------

This shows how far the Westernized elite will go to avoid anything that shows Muslim guilt. Especially if they can falsely pin the blame on us evil right wingers.

Posted by: Provoslavni at October 24, 2007 11:48 AM

Sometimes I think Dhimmi Carter and Ronald Reagan should have allowed the Soviets to crush OBL and his followers in 1980's Afghanistan.

I Chechnya, I don't doubt that the Russians have committed atrocities but the Islamic rebels in that part of Russia are by no means blameless.

Posted by: CTYankee at October 24, 2007 12:33 PM

...someone should tell the Russians that those crazed, bearded finger pointing Islamic clerics who they have been cozying up to are really not their friends or allies.....

Posted by: exsgtbrown at October 24, 2007 12:47 PM

I've said before, and I'll say again, that the U.S. administration ought to be HEAVILY lobbying Russia to recognize it's common interests with the West in defeating this insane Islamist menace. Russia's current relations with Iran are a repetition of the mistake that it made in the Nazi-Soviet pact of the 1930s. Russian leaders should be warned that they are likely to get bitten in the same way as they did back then. American diplomacy ought to be working on Russia' memory of Chechnya and Beslan, pointing out the futility of relying on Iranian politicians' Shi'a aspirations - if that's what Russia is thinking - as a buffer against Sunni extremism, and possibly offering Russia certain favours or concessions in return for its cooperation.

Russia is a traditionally Christian nation and as such shares a common cultural heritage with the West and a history of repression and terror inflicted by Muslims. A nationalist like Putin ought to be capable of being made to understand this. (For that matter, there is scarcely a country or region in the world that isn't threatened or doesn't have some potential Islamist spectre waiting for a trigger or an opportunity to come to life).

I have a question for American readers. Who is the president-in-waiting who will have the insight to seek that kind of broadbased global coalition, and work hard to argue and persuade both at home and abroad? Is there one? For that matter am I completely out to lunch about this?

It seems to me that the U.S. needs someone with the leadership skills that FDR employed, and should be doing a lot more arm-twisting and bargaining about this around the world. What say you all about this?

Posted by: templar at October 24, 2007 3:52 PM

Templar
Agree with your Posting. Unfortunately Dumbo Bush
& his advisers have gone out of their way to prove hostility against Orthodox Christians-Serbia & Kosovo being recent examples.

Posted by: Morgane at October 24, 2007 4:13 PM

The sort of thing you're talking about, templar, needs to consider the grassroots. If our heads of government are too clueless perhaps something can be begun people-to-people.

Can anyone here tell us what the Russian Orthodox Church leaders think about Islam and the Third Jihad? Have they been as hypnotised by the 'inter-faith dialogue' ploy, as most of the rest of the world churches seem to have been?

Or how clued up, say, the Russian Baptists are, or the Catholics?

I don't know - perhaps someone needs to get 'Legacy of Jihad" and "PIG to Islam and the Crusades" , or "The Truth About Muhammad", or "Onward Muslim Soldiers" translated into fluent everyday Russian. Anyone out there able to do it for Robert and game to try?

Or just send copies of Robert's books in English, specially the 'PIG', to the top local official in Beslan and the mayor (or whatever he's called) of Moscow, anyway, as a friendly donation to expand the 'books in English' section of their city libraries. it would be a start. Does anyone reading or lurking here come from an American or Canadian city that is 'sistered' with a Russian city? Something could perhaps be attempted within that framework.

Lots of ordinary Russians, especially in the districts south-aways, probably have (like a lot of Italians and Greeks) a deep cultural memory of the Muslim slave-raiders. Hey, perhaps Fallaci's final three books, put into Russian, might help rekindle and focus that cultural memory.

Is there anyone who can tell Putin straight out - and every Russian general, and every member of the Duma - "if you want to go down in history as Russia's greatest heroes, period, if you want to bring everlasting glory to Holy Mother Russia, there is no better way to do it than to openly and wholeheartedly join the defence of humanity against the Jihad"? Fight in the names of the children of Beslan, or the thousands and thousands of girls from southern Russia and the Caucasus who were kidnapped, degraded and abused through the dark centuries by the Muslim slave raiders.

Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at October 24, 2007 5:42 PM

Templar and dumbledoresarmy,

While there have been many great leaders who rolled back Islam, Vlad Dracul and Shivaji come to mind, only two nations have successfully converted large populations of conquered Muslims to Christianity: Spain under Blessed Isabella of Castille and Russia under Ivan (III) the Great.

When Ivan took Kazan, it was completely populated by Tatar Muslims. Within a generation, it was over 60% Christian. The beautiful Cathedral of Kazan and the sacred ikon of Our Lady of Kazan are testimonies to this victory. Even in the Caucasus, there are large Christian populations whose anscestors were once Muslim. This still eats at the Muslims which is why they targeted the children of Beslan, forcing them to "revert" by killing them as children, a particularly perverse idea unique to Muslims.

Russian history is full of Muslim princes and other prominent people who joined the Russian nobility on converting to Christianity. The ancestors of Prince Felix Yusopov were in this category. Yusopov, a brother-in-law of Nicholas II and the assassin of Rasputin, was a direct descendant of Muhammed. Other prominent converts to Christianity include the great linquist, historian and philologist Alexander Kazembek (1802-1870). There are many others.

Posted by: Provoslavni at October 24, 2007 6:41 PM

Thank you Provoslavni. Quite an insight. Can you recommend any reading on this part of Russia's history?

Posted by: PorkyPig at October 24, 2007 9:10 PM

PorkyPig,

There is much about this in Russian and French but not as much in English. Some of the most useful info often comes from unusual places such as http://www.internetstones.com/sultan-of-morocco-diamond-famous-jewelry.html

A quick web search also found:
http://www.spbguides.com/yussoupov.html
which shows how the Yusupovs (before the Bosheviks they were the richest family in Russia)were once a major Muslim dynasty. They have been Orthodox Christians now for over two centuries.

There is also this rather long article on the Muslim Tatars relating to Ivan IV,
http://www.moskva-krym.com/msk3eng.html
which reveals:

"In fact, analyzing that epoque one could find out with surprise that the motive forces of the conflicts between the independent post-Horde states were neither territorial claims, nor moreover the ethnic ones that couldn't exist at that time, but were exclusively religious, excluding purely profit interests. At this, the most aggressive was Orthodox Church whose aim was converting all Tatars to Orthodoxy. What is peculiar, the newly converted very often then became the most zealous and implacable advocates of religion. For them the religion and nation united into one single whole. Every newly-converted Christian first of all became Russian. That was the principle. Nobody cared his Tatar origin after that. Bilingualism was left out of account as well. On the contrary, it helped in interrelation, because Muscovite Russia was really packed with newly-converted and Tatar language was used equally along with Russian.
Not in vain Russian language contains so many borrowing from Tatar (more than one quarter of the vocabulary). Ivan the Terrible himself spoke well Tatar, because his mother Elena Glinskaya was pureblooded Tatar and from his very childhood taught him her mother language which he used all his life interrelating with Tatar noblemen that surrounded him all the time. However, at this, he severely executed all Tatars who didn't want converting to Orthodoxy (in fact, his father did the same).
All this considering, the wars with Kazan - practically the vassal of Moscow in fact could be regarded as religious (especially after coming of Girays) with the elements of profit interest of course (at that time the wars had no sense without it)."

There are many other sources including some very good English language histories of Russia but I'm too short of time to compile a complete bibliography. My apologies.

Posted by: Provoslavni at October 25, 2007 10:35 AM

Much appreciated Provoslavni. Many thanks

From Melbourne Australia

Posted by: PorkyPig at October 25, 2007 9:09 PM

Well, despite the pretending russia's doing (as per my take on why we haven't hit iran yet), they finally admitted it (in a cheap copycat of 1962, only they keep forgetting the circumstances were completely opposite, and we were right then, too).
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ26Ak06.html

So much for the masqueraded soviets...I knew they couldn't hide behind their mask for long.

Hey, Vlad...thanks once again for proving me right...again.
lol

Posted by: jcom972 at October 27, 2007 12:56 PM