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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Russian imam who converted suspected Moscow jihad bomber had explosives manual, yet was defended by head of Council of Muftis of Russia

Jan 29, 2011 6:05 am By Robert Spencer

The imam Abdullah Stepanenko “was convicted of holding a man captive in 2006, and police found Wahhabist literature, audio and video materials, as well as a manual on explosives, in his home.” Nonetheless, he “received a suspended sentence after the Muslim community, including the head of the Council of Muftis of Russia Ravil Gainutdin, spoke in his defence and wrote an open letter to then-president Vladimir Putin.”

Now wait a minute. We’re constantly told — by government officials, law enforcement, and Muslim spokesmen in the West — that jihad terrorists represent a Tiny Minority of Extremistsâ„¢ within the larger, peaceful Muslim community, and that the Vast Majority of Peaceful Muslims abhors those Extremists and rejects their ideology.

If that is so, why did “the Muslim community, including the head of the Council of Muftis of Russia Ravil Gainutdin,” speak out in defense of Abdullah Stepanenko and even write “an open letter to then-president Vladimir Putin”? Shouldn’t they instead have been repudiating Stepanenko and everything he stood for?

More on this story. Tiny Minority of Extremistsâ„¢ Update: “Airport bomber converted by Russian imam: Report,” from AFP, January 28:

MOSCOW: The man who has emerged as the initial suspect over the suicide bombing at Moscow Domodedovo airport lived in south Russia and was converted to Islam by an ethnic Russian imam, a report said Friday.

Police reportedly honed in on Vitaly Razdobudko after connecting him with Islamist militant group Nogaisky Dzhamaat and a December 31 blast in Moscow where a would-be female suicide bomber accidentally blew herself up.

Investigators said Razdobudko has been missing from his apartment in the southern resort town of Pyatigorsk in the Stavropol region since last November along with his wife and a newborn baby.

Razdobudko, 32, converted from Christianity and adopted Islam when he was a student in the local technical university. He was formally converted by a local imam in Pyatigorsk, a Russian named Anton Stepanenko, the report said.

Stepanenko, whose Muslim name is Abdullah, was convicted of holding a man captive in 2006, and police found Wahhabist literature, audio and video materials, as well as a manual on explosives, in his home.

He received a suspended sentence after the Muslim community, including the head of the Council of Muftis of Russia Ravil Gainutdin, spoke in his defence and wrote an open letter to then-president Vladimir Putin….

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Filed Under: "Tiny Minority of Extremists", Russia


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