It’s not Islam — It’s Moscow.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/09/14/moscow-the-terror-with-one-reservation/
“Moscow” has chosen a revanchist feudal path for Russia using militarism and patriotism to achieve its aims.
There’s a relevant old saying in the Jewish tradition: “Those who are kind to the cruel will themselves be made to be cruel to the kind.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_nationalism
https://www.britannica.com/topic/absolutism-political-system
Putin’s Russia represents the medieval world revolving around Absolute Power. So does the Syrian Theater — no more true description than theater for that. And so do Hamas and Hezbollah and so many others bent on imposing their will on the free of the open democracies through the application of violence.
The Palestinian platform from within the unsettled territories has long been a Soviet project intended to block the west’s own liberation and security story and produce money for its figureheads and associates, but never the disenfranchised.
https://conflict-backchannels.com/2016/10/03/palestinian-kgb/
Stimulus for this post: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9065/europe-good-terrorists
The problem has been Moscow’s connection with 20th Century terrorism and its perhaps cynical leveraging of the same in this still young century.
This 2014 Guardian article about Moscow’s expulsion of journalist David Satter may merely hint at Putin’s considerable success at trying to move Russia forward while turning the clock backward:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/13/russia-expels-american-journalist-david-satter – 1/14/2014.
Related
http://www.hudson.org/research/12507-how-putin-became-president – 5/19/2016.
On this blog: search term “Cold War”.
On this blog: search term “Russia, medieval”.
On Wikipedia and relevant to the long view of Russian history
I would much prefer a book walk me through time (recommendations may be welcomed), but for a browse-and-peruse session, or several, these entries found on Wikipedia provide an arc from the brigands of the feudal world to Putin’s surreal narrative predicated, at least partly, on massive information and perceptual control of the Russians.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varangians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kievan_Rus%27
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_invasion_of_Rus%27
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kulikovo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_stand_on_the_Ugra_river
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_III_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsardom_of_Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_the_Great
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Romanov
Despite its occurrence at the height of World War I, the roots of the February Revolution date much further back. Chief among these was Imperial Russia’s failure, throughout the 19th and early 20th century, to modernize its archaic social, economic and political structures while maintaining the stability of ubiquitous devotion to an autocratic monarch. As historian Richard Pipes writes, “the incompatibility of capitalism and autocracy struck all who gave thought to the matter”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_Revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_Days
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_of_the_Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Soviet_Union_(1927-1953)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia_(1991-Present)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Russia
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