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Russia Battles Radical Islam within its Borders
03-02-2009 10:52 pm - Kathy Shaidle
In the wake of the horrific Mumbai massacre, a recent warning about the spread of Islamic extremism in Russia is particularly chilling.

On December 12, the Interfax news service quoted Major General Yury Tomchak, interior minister of the Kabardino-Balkaria Republic, as saying that “the wide-scale expansion of radical Islam into practically all regions of the Russian Federation” is a “source for concern.”

He added that, “cells of international extremist organizations have developed intensive activities lately in individual constituent territories [of Russia], activities that include takeovers of “lucrative sectors of business.”

This growth of Islamic extremism within Russia’s borders, especially in Chechnya and Dagestan, comes even after the Russian government banned seventeen radical Muslim organizations.

For whatever reason, deadly atrocities of the recent past, such as the Moscow Theatre seige or the Beslan school massacre, are frequently attributed to regional, secular separatists rather than Muslim terrorists. This, despite statements made by the terrorists themselves, which reference “Allah” and the establishment of a caliphate “from the Red Sea to the Caspian.”

Of course, the situation is extremely complex, and religion plays only one part, as Russia expert David Satter of the Hudson Institute explained to me via email. In terms of Major General Tomchak’s Kabardino-Balkaria, which was rocked by attacks on police and security facilities in 2005, the spread of Islamic radicalism “is often fueled less by religious fervor than by the corruption of the local pro-Russian authorities and the brutality of the police,” said Satter.

Due to high birth rates and immigration levels, Islam is poised to become the primary religion in the Russian Federation by 2050, in part because the native Russian population is in decline due to high rates of abortion.

This has led some observers to the worrying conclusion that Russia’s all-conscript armed forces will also be majority Muslim by 2015.



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