Israel is the last bastion of democracy in the Middle East.
Once when I was going to Chechnya to interview the President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, I traveled from Baku along with two Jordanians and one Saudi Arabian.
The Jordanians were young mujahideen who wanted to join the jihad.
They believed that it was the duty of every Muslim to take part in jihad that would liberate the world from the Zionists and infidels. It was two guys, but many before and after them were attending military training camps and were sent to practice in areas where Muslims were waging jihad against the infidels.
They are very bad at speaking Russian, but I learned that they had been sent to Chechnya by one of the very wealthy sponsors of jihad, an old Sheikh who was confined to a wheelchair.
The Sheikh himself could not take part in a “holy war,” and so his relatives and friends recruited younger “warriors of Allah” to become mujahideen. The Sheikh prepared them for a “meeting with Allah.”
I personally knew one of those people. The Chechen national Vakha Ibragimov engaged in recruiting and transportation of Mujahideen from the Middle East, Iran, and Turkey to the North Caucasus and back.
It was his business. He gathered a group of several dozen people. He arranged for their transportation with a rich Sheikh.
He took 10,000 in U.S. dollars in cash for every Mujahid, and sent them to the North Caucasus.
The Mujahideen who accept participation in jihad until death receive a stipend from the Sheikh. If anyone ever died in battle, they took care of his family.
Vakha Ibragimov certainly made a good living, as the real price of delivery to the destination for each Mujahid was five to seven times less than the amount he took from the sponsor of jihad.
The corrupt power structures of the Caucasian states and Russia let the Mujahideen enter the region without any difficulty. They were not thinking about the consequences: that they themselves could become victims of these jihadists.
As for my third traveling companion, Abdul-Walid, from even a cursory glance you could see that he was a mujahid with experience. He was well versed in all kinds of weapons and explosives. He spoke Russian, English and French fluently. He wore a satellite phone, but never spoke to anyone for more than a minute, and spaced his calls four to five hours apart. He explained to me that if he spoke on the phone for a long time or frequently, the Zionists would discover his location and kill him. He said he did not fear death for the sake of Allah, but he still had unfinished business on earth.
In the woods a few miles from the entrance to a small town in Dagestan, Abdul-Walid and I struck up a conversation about Islam, during which the Arab persistently pressured me to become a Muslim. He said:
“We have not yet finished off the Zionists and their allies. Soon the whole world will see what is the reward of Allah.”
“They (the Jews) think that money can buy everything, but the Muslims will prove to them that their money is powerless before the retribution of Allah. Money is not protection against suicide bombers, bombs and missiles.”
“Jerusalem belongs to the Muslims. And it will be ours even if the whole world will burn in the fire,” said Abdul-Walid.
He showed me two large boxes which were labeled “Koran.” He said:
“We have the Koran that tells us what to do. We will restore the Sharia. Allah gave us oil and martyrs. We cannot stop. Soon the whole world will recognize our strength and become Muslim. The only ones will will not convert to Islam will be the Jews, and we will destroy them.”
I thought that the Mujahid said that in order to persuade me to accept Islam, but by analyzing his speech today, knowing what is happening NOW in the world, I know that he did not lie.
With well-established channels for the transport of weapons, the Mujahideen, Sharia finance, high oil prices, and the economic expansion of Islam in promoting political tolerance of the jihadists, as well as a massive assault on the people who are critical of the Islamic supremacists, I see that Abdul-Walid was right.
The balance shifted in their direction and the jihadists and their allies began to attack and criticize Israel, the only democratic state constraining Jihad in the Middle East.