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[Order a copy of Robert Spencer’s newest book, Empire of God, by clicking here.]
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, the Western intelligentsia has been busy portraying Vladimir Putin as a man who, unlike, say Lyin’ Joe Biden or Rachel Levine or your local drag queen, has transgressed all the bounds of decency. He’s an authoritarian. He’s an imperialist. He’s an autocrat. He’s a new Hitler.
But while the media and numerous government officials have not hesitated to portray Putin as evil incarnate, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone claiming that he is stupid. Few people, if anyone, doubt that he is as shrewd as he is ruthless, as thoughtful as he is menacing. Putin himself, however, has just put a massive dent in his fearsome reputation with his response to the ISIS attack in Russia.
When the Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for Friday’s jihad terror attack in Moscow, in which the death toll is currently 139, its claim met with widespread skepticism. ISIS issued a statement boasting that “the Islamic State dealt a strong blow to Russia with a bloody attack, the most violent targeting it in years.” It added that “security sources told Amaq Agency that a coordinated attack was launched by Islamic State fighters, on Friday, on a large crowd of Christians in the city of Krasnogorsk on the outskirts of the capital, Moscow.” Amaq Agency is ISIS’ mouthpiece for its announcements of various jihad activities.
Despite this, however, the usual suspects of conspiracy paranoia, notably the CIA and Mossad, were accused on social media of being the real culprits. And Putin himself, in his initial statement on the attack, blamed the massacre on “international terrorism” but didn’t mention ISIS and suggested that Ukraine had something to do with it: “They tried to hide and moved towards Ukraine, where, according to preliminary data, a window was prepared for them on the Ukrainian side to cross the state border.”
On Monday, however, Putin issued another statement, in which he acknowledged the truth he had skirted previously: “We know that the crime was committed by radical Islamists, whose ideology the Islamic world itself has been fighting for centuries.” Really, Vlad? Where?
As “The History of Jihad” demonstrates, one constant amid 1,400 years of jihad warfare around the world was that there was never any pushback from within the Islamic world. In all the centuries of jihad warfare and bloody jihad conquest, there was never an Islamic group dedicated to fighting against “radical Islamists” and showing that Islam is a religion of peace. There were never even any protests until a handful of Muslims began standing against jihad terrorism in the modern West.
Putin wasn’t finished. He asked, “And how do radical Islamists, who position themselves, by the way, as devout Muslims, professing so-called pure Islam, commit serious atrocities and crimes during the holy month of Ramadan for all Muslims?” Well, Mr. Putin, it’s like this: Ramadan is the month in which Muslims are supposed to redouble their efforts to please Allah. A hadith has a Muslim asking Muhammad: “Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward).” Muhammad replied, “I do not find such a deed.” (Bukhari 4.52.44) So if there is no greater deed than jihad, and Ramadan is the month to do great deeds for Allah, Ramadan is the month of jihad.
Many Muslim authorities have said as much. In April 2022, the Palestinian Authority’s Supreme Sharia Judge, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, declared that “Ramadan is not a month of laziness but rather a month of activity, of effort, and of hard work, and as it also was in the life of the Prophet, a month of jihad, conquest, and victory.” The jihad he had in mind was violence against unbelievers, as a Muslim cleric in India, Maulana Bashir Ahmad Khaki, made clear in 2018: “Ramadan is the pious month of ‘Jihad-o-Qital’ (Jihad and killing). Those who attain martyrdom while waging Jihad, doors of heaven remain open.” In 2012, a jihad group in Bulgaria explained that “Ramadan is a month of holy war and death for Allah. It is a month for fighting the enemies of Allah and God’s messenger, the Jews and their American facilitators.”
So is Vladimir Putin retreating into Bidenesque, FBI-style denial and willful ignorance regarding the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat? It certainly seems as if he is. After all, he has restive Muslim populations in Chechnya and elsewhere in Russia, and he doesn’t want them to get the idea that their ruler is an “Islamophobe.” And as Russia continues to cultivate relationships with the Islamic Republic of Iran and other Islamic entities, it would be poor business sense to risk saying something that might ruffle the ever-so-easily ruffled feathers of the motherland’s partners.
That means that just as in the West, Russia’s most respected foreign policy analysts will continue to look everywhere except in Islam for the motivating ideology behind the massacre in Moscow and so many others. The jihadis, meanwhile, will keep plotting more bloodshed and murder.
He’s not a good strategist. The Ukraine invasion was botched in numerous ways, such as the wrong time of year and bad weather. Anyone who read the history should have known that.
He claims to be an expert in history. He appears not to be.
Putin is making the mistake common to all dictators: overstaying both his usefulness and effectiveness.
He’s not getting better with age. His critical thinking and strategic skills are past their prime.
By all appearances, he is not mentoring anyone to be his replacement, either. He seems to have the same attitude shared by all the Soviet-era Russian leaders: “What do I care what happens to Russia after I am dead?”
Russians are slavs. We get our word “slave” from them. It seems to be Russia’s eternal curse: to be a nation of slaves, bound to whatever delusions run through the skulls of their current leaders.
But hey. somewhere between one third and one half of Americans shares that same attitude. We call them “Democrats” here…
The attackers were 4 muslim morons but they were financed and helped by Ukraine , and that’s why they were trying to escape back there
ISIS K claimed responsibility for it, but they would as they crave attention and notoriety, so if 4 muslims did it then that’s good enough for them to claim it as theirs
If they were financed and helped by Ukraine, you and the Russian government can present evidence of the matter. And evidence beyond the tortured testimonies of the jihadis, given how utterly unreliable those can be as the Great Terror showed. Even if they were trying to get back to Ukraine (and that’s a big if) it could be for all kinds of reasons, starting with the chaos and porous border being a good place to disappear (especially in the Russian occupied areas of the Donbas) and the sizable number of their co-religionists in the are. It could also be trying to slip jurisdiction to catch a flight back to whatever rat hole they crawled out of.
Could Vladimir Putin be as clueless as Joe Bite-Me? No, Karine Jean-Pierre.
No one can be as clueless as Joe Biden. Which does not mean that Biden cannot be as evil as Putin.
As clueless as Mumbles? Not possible.
Call me naive, but I have a hope that Russia’s return to Eastern Orthodoxy might in the future pave a way for finding more common cause with the West. Culturally, they have always had far more in common with Europe than China–just listen to Tchaikovsky.
I hate to say it, but I do think you are naive. Russia’s “return to Orthodoxy” is either false or oversold. I’d highly suggest watching the “Putin is a Progressive” series that exposes him. The current Patriarch of the Orthodox Church in Moscow is a Judas who is not merely corrupt, but is outright betraying the gospel by having served as a KGB mole back in the day and now doing things such as claiming absolute , unconditional manumission of sins to any that die fighting Ukrainians (this is WAY beyond what the Papacy ever promised Crusaders, and Crusading and manumissions for it were not much of an Eastern Orthodox thing to begin with). Putin has bragged about building more mosques in Russia than any other country has, and is giving Kadyrov and his Chechen cabal more power. And of course Putin has made it clear he and the other former KGB and military bureaucrats dominating the government have more in common with China than the West. I don’t see common cause with them.
The silver lining is that while church attendance to the corrupt Patriarchate has dropped off a cliff, there seems to be a homegrown, independent spiritual revival among Russians . And if Putin goes maybe whoever replaces him will be more amiable to common cause with the West.
Well argued, and now I am even more depressed.
Thanks Turtler, very interesting, as always.
There is no place in the civilized world for Islam. That said, there are at least a billion who call themselves muslims, and Putin would be prudent to keep the tame ones quiet rather than to declare war on the entire evil enterprise.
Evil will be with us until the Last Day, when God will destroy it. Until that glorious day, choosing one’s wars wisely is good policy. If only Bush and his Democrat colleagues had been so prudent.
Mr Putin is not a fool. And, unlike Mr Biden, he has a memory like a steel trap. The thing that does occur to me is that appearing to be a fool when it suits him may be consistent with his habit of understatement in his speeches.
I believe that about 1/3rd of his military is Muslim, so he has to watch his words; and say what you will about Putin, I agree wholeheartedly with his new law declaring LGBTQMNOPQRS’s a ‘terrorist organization’ with severe jail time ( four years to twelve years, initially) for participants and promotors of this degenerate group and lifestyle. And he said it so well…”I don’t care what they do in their homes, but when they promote that degenerate lifestyle in our faces and teach our children, that is a line not to cross’ (or something close to that.
He also said that Trans fall under a different category and different ‘treatment’. He said that it is a mental issue and they will be treated medically for their psychosis.
Both statements are bang on and the punishments are fair and just. Go Vlad !!
Whatever else he does as the ruler of a 1,200 year old Empire is his business, I guess.
Rev. Roy…….<
Could be that he has his hands full with Ukraine and doesn’t fancy ANOTHER FRONT to fight – right now! Civilized Nations will have to decide if they REMAIN CIVILIZED or FALL to islam! As we’ve seen in parts of the US the FALLS have been made possible through “immigration” and ILLEGAL VOTING – neither one is considered bad per islam!
I would give Putin a better chance at doing the CIVILIZED thing than biden for sure – PRESIDENT TRUMP may help – till the next DEMONcrat President disgraces the Oval Office!
‘All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.’
Sun tzu, The Art of War
Don’t believe a word they say.
Actually, if you stretch the time span to the whole history of Islam, there was a sort of pushback against jihadism. During a good part of the Ottoman era, the Sultans found enthusiasm for jihad a distraction from running their empire and enjoying a sensual “good life”. They had a clever way of dealing with would be jihadis: they were tasked with taking an essentially impregnable Venetian fortress that could be resupplied by sea (the Venetian fleet, not the Ottoman fleet being in control of the shipping lanes). The Sultans got to ignore the concept of jihad because everyone who wanted to fight one died “as a martyr” in pointless siege after pointless siege.
Putin has been using muslims as his ‘foot soldier’ for decades for his conquest of the West. Maybe it never occurred to him that since islam is composed of various factions, each one claiming its right to the supreme power, it was inevitable that sooner or later, one of these would turn against him in spite of all his gifts – the #1 of which is the palestinian myth invented by the KGB in 1962?