Byzantine Catholic Culture

On Wednesday, September 1, 2004 in the city of Beslan in southern Russia well armed Muslim terrorists seized a school and took captive as hostages hundreds of children, their parents and teachers. Thus another day of infamy in Islam's unrelenting jihad against mankind began. The Muslims set about securing the school, placing explosives and fending off attempts by Russian police and military to free the captives. The terrorists demanded the release of Muslim prisoners and the withdrawal of Russian military forces from Chechnya as the price for releasing the captives. Nothing came of these efforts. On Friday, September 3 the Muslims set off explosives in the school in an effort to cover their escape. In the confusion which followed over 360 children, parents and teachers perished. Many others were injured. These events caused profound sorrow throughout Russia and a growing demand for changes in the country's response to Islamic jihad in Russia and elsewhere.

Muslim terror is not new in Russia as it was in the United States until recent times. In the 13th century the Mongols and their Tatar allies invaded the Russian lands, plundered and devastated the same and reduced the Russian city/states to bondage and the payment of tribute. Annually the princes of Russia journeyed to the capital of the Golden Horde to abase themselves and render tribute. In time the invaders adopted the religion of Muhammad. In the following centuries as the Russian city/states grew stronger and the Golden Horde weaker, the former began to challenge the hegemony of the latter. In 1552 Tsar John IV of Moscow led an army against the Tatar city of Kazan east of Moscow, conquered the same and added it to his kingdom. In the two centuries that followed, the dominion of Moscow spread throughout the Eastern Slavic lands. Eastward and southward moved armies of Moscow to push back the Muslim populations and to reduce them to obedience. By the 18th century Moscow had conquered all of the lands of its Muslim enemies except for Persia and the Ottoman Turkish empire.

In 1917 the Russian Empire collapsed amid famine and social upheaval occasioned by World War I. Almost immediately the Muslim populations of the former empire rose in rebellion against the new order established by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. By 1922 the Red Army suppressed the revolts south and east of the Slavic lands. With the ascent of Joseph Stalin to complete control of the Soviet Union in 1927, the Muslims had met a Russian ruler who was their match in brutality and ruthlessness. Agitators were summarily executed and whole populations were deported to Siberia thus ending Muslim resistance to Soviet rule. In World War II many Muslims joined with the invading Germans to defeat the Soviet state. They too were crushed.

By the early 1990ies the Soviet Union was in collapse and the Bolshevik interregnum ended. Again the Muslim populations rose up in rebellion. Many were given their independence by the new Russian state. Others with mixed populations remained in the Russian Federation. Taking advantage of the breakdown of law and order in the Muslim lands, thousands of Wahhabi fanatics from Saudi Arabia, well financed with petro-dollars, invaded these territories to re-islamify the inhabitants. Everywhere there were calls for Islamic republics and the return of the Sharia. Instead of relying on the political process to achieve their objectives, many Muslims resorted to jihad by attacking government officials, military and police and civilians, adults and children. The response of the new Russian state was anything but resolute. On the other hand the state did not capitulate to the demands of jihadists which would lead the latter to conclude that they would prevail against the Russian state.

Given the complete lack of success by Muslim terrorists to intimidate the Russian state and to achieve the tactical purposed of jihad, one can only inquire whether the some of the purposes of jihad may lie elsewhere, as they indeed do. The Quran, Muhammad's "Mein Kampf" for the conquest of the world and subjugation of all mankind, offers a key to understanding the strategy of jihad. Therein Muhammad's god states:

Jihad has two purposes, namely to achieve tactical goals such as the release of prisoners and the withdrawal from territory inhabited by Muslims plus a strategic objective of killing as many infidels as possible, terrorizing them, rendering them less able to resist conquest, forcing their conversion to Islam, or enslaving them, thereby bringing about the complete subjugation of all mankind to Islamic world rule known as khilafah. The author, Bat Ye'or, describes the cosmology of Islam as follows:

In understanding the events of September 1 - 3, 2004 in Beslan in the context of the above, wherein the tactical goals of the jihadists had not a ghost of a chance, the strategy thereof is eminently clear. They did, in fact, terrorize the infidels and killed over 360 of them thus advancing in their minds the ultimate goal of jihad. To the Western mind this seems anomalous at best because the attack in Beslan served mightily to urge upon the Russian state the desire and will to crush the Islamic beast. The Muslim's mind has never emerged from the Arabian desert of the 7th century. He remains a Bedouin through and through. "If I injure my enemy, I strengthen myself." with little regard to the ultimate consequences. See LONDON BOMBINGS at: http://www.islamreview.com/articles/hatredinislam.shtml

How will the Russian state respond to the outrage of September 1? It is likely that the Russian state will look to the past for guidance. Throughout their millennium of history the Russian lands have been attacked repeatedly by invaders - by Mongols, Turks, Swedes, Poles, Lithuanians, Germans and French - and in each case have prevailed over them. The Russians like the Jews have a great capacity for suffering and similarly an ability to persevere and defeat their enemies. In this as in other travails they shall struggle and overcome. [3]

On September 5 - 7 Russians gathered to mourn their dead. The churches were filled with incense, chanting priests and mourners. Again and again they responded to the ancient litanies with Godpodi, pomilui! and called upon God's mercy for the repose of the souls of their murdered brethren:

SUMMARY AND OPINION

September 11, 2001 and September 1, 2004 bear striking similarities. Although different in space and time they both represent episodes in Islam's fourteen century long war against the civilized world and served to arouse the United States and Russia respectively from the lethargy of inaction in responding to the threats of Islamic militancy from abroad. For seventy years the United States and Russia viz Soviet Union confronted each other in hostility but now they should join together in a common struggle against the ancient foe which is Islam. This war is not what we and they sought but what came to our and their doors uninvited and with intent to destroy us. The United States responded with attacks on Afghanistan and the unfortunate war in Iraq accompanied by profound changes at home. How the Russian Federation meets the enemy can only be conjectured at this time, but if past remains prolog and the history of Russia is any model, then the enemies of Russia are in for a hard time. The pundits would have us believe that Russia is headed back to the despotism of the past. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is not fascism, but Islamofascism which threatens the welfare of the Russian state. We in the United States should refrain from pedantic preachments to the Russians on how they might deal with Islamic terror, and instead assist the Russian people as allies in a common struggle to restrain the Islamic menace and to purge from our world that pestilence of mind and soul which emerged long ago from the desolation of Arabia. [4]

FOOTNOTES

1) The icon of the Holy Protection of the Mother of God commemorates an event in the early 10th century when Constantinople was attacked by a Muslim horde. The faithful gathered in a church to implore the aid of the Holy Virgin. She appeared in a vision to St. Andrew, Fool for Christ, and to his disciple, St. Epiphanios, high above all accompanied by a multitude of saints. She knelt, removed and extended Her veil over the people in a sign of protection for those who sought Her intercession. Heartened by this the Greeks repulsed the Muslims and saved the city. We remember this event on October 1, Feast Day of the Holy Protection of the Mother of God.

2) Killing infidels in jihad is of no moral or legal consequence for Muslims. On the contrary it is a mandate of the Quran. Fear of retribution and risk of death are no deterrent. To a Muslim, death in jihad is the noblest end to his life for it admits him immediately into Muhammad's paradise of alabaster palaces accompanied by an allotment of 72 black-eyed perpetual virgins (Surah 44: 51-54) plus a coterie of perpetual youths dressed in fine green silks and gold embroidery and adorned with silver bracelets (Surah 76: 19-22) Thus the Muslim's eternal reward is perceived as an everlasting bisexual orgy. The jihadist does not fear death; he welcomes it. Any response to militant Islam must acknowledge and accommodate this. However absurd the Muslim's expectation of paradise seems to rational people, the men of the Bedouin mind find this promise irresistible and are willing to die for it.

3) The Russian Federation's sympathy for the Palestinian cause and its opposition to the war in Iraq have earned it no accommodation whatsoever in deflecting the wrath of Islam against it. For the Muslims Russia remains unfinished business in their quest for world domination.

THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO ISLAM (AND THE CRUSADES) by Robert Spencer, ISBN: 0895260131

THE MYTH OF ISLAMIC TOLERANCE, HOW ISLAMIC LAW TREATS NON-MUSLIMS by Robert Spencer, ISBN: 1591022495
In this book, editor Robert Spencer illustrates from his contributors whom he has assembled that the notion of Islam as a peaceful and tolerant religion is fiction created originally to defame Christianity and is wholly without support in the QURAN, the HADITH, and the SHARIA illustrated by 14 centuries of Islamic history. The political and ideological reality of Islam, past and present, is intrinsically fascistic and discriminatory by its own terms and detrimental to all who reject the cult of Muhammad. We recommend this book to our readers.

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ISLAM - RUSSIA'S CHALLENGE

TROPARION FOURTH TONE

SUMMARY AND OPINION

FOOTNOTES