“There are now countless Islamic centers, mosques and extremist organizations of all kinds incorporated in the U.S. that officially swear allegiance to shariah in their bylaws in blatant disregard to the law of the land. These are American non-profit organizations that pledge fealty to a reactionary code which requires rape victims to find four male witnesses to prove the crime, or face being stoned to death for adultery.”

That was Alex Alexiev in a 2007 piece headlined, “Playing by Islamofascist Rules.” A longtime California resident, Alexiev passed away last Sunday in his native Bulgaria at the age of 77. The relentless foe of radical Islam got his start fighting Communism, which he knew firsthand.

Alex was the son of Rayko Alexiev, founder of the satirical newspaper Shturets in 1932. His caricatures of Josef Stalin outraged Bulgarian Communists. As the memorial to Alex on Bulgaria Analytica explains, Rayko Alexiev, “was tortured and killed in 1944, following the communist takeover of Bulgaria.” After years of repression, son Alex “fled Bulgaria in 1968 and settled in the U.S., where he had a remarkable life, starting with his graduation from the University of California, Los Angeles and work for the Hudson Institute, the Rand Corporation and the Department of the Defense in a senior advisory role.”

Alex Alexiev “was a member of the famous ‘B’ team that won the debate on US policy on countering Soviet Russia, which led to a shift in President Jimmy Carter’s agenda toward the Soviet Union and later on President Ronald Reagan’s tough line, ultimately leading to the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact.” Alex Alexiev duly “returned to his country of birth after the fall of the Berlin wall and became a senior advisor to the first Prime Minister who belonged to the opposition to the Communist Party – Philip Dimitrov.” About that time, Alex also directed the Bulgarian bureau of Radio Free Europe.

Alex Alexiev’s books include Inside the Soviet Army in Afghanistan and  Marxism and Resistance in the Third World: Cause and Effect. His newspaper articles include “Gorbachev Has Met His Match,” in the Los Angeles Times, and the author was right about that. Even under alleged “reformers,” Communism could not stand.

Alex’s many pieces for the American Thinker include “Doomsday elections in Europe,”  “Freezing Weather and the Left’s Charlatans,” “Appeasement of Evil Returns to Europe,” “Europe Opting for Submission to Islam” and many others.

In 2011, Alexiev founded Center for Balkan and Black Sea Studies, based in Sofia, and the website Bulgaria Analytica, where served as managing editor. In recent years, Alex shuffled back and forth between Bulgaria and his home in Templeton, California, where he lived from 1999 to 2014.

“Alex was a beacon of reason and wisdom earned over a long life that he shared with his followers and readers, friends and even opponents,” Ilian Vassilev, former Bulgarian ambassador to Russia, told Josh Friedman of Cal Coast News, for which Alex wrote many pieces. As Vassilev explained, Alexiev “rarely spoke in public on anything else but topics which he had mastered — radical Islam and Kremlinology,” and despite his heroic work in the cause of freedom, Alex was largely unknown on the national scene.

That didn’t bother Alex Alexiev in the slightest. He doubtless achieved many victories that will never be known, but his legacy is secure.

“His insight and intellectual prowess,” Bulgaria Analytica recalled, “were only matched by his devotion to help readers navigate through the risks and challenges of life.” Alex Alexiev knew full well that those risks and challenges would outlive him. In the 2007 piece about Islamofascism, he warned about the advances of Shariah law in the United States:

“A historian once remarked that civilizations do not die of old age: they commit suicide. He might have added that a civilization that submits to the rules of those who would destroy it is halfway there already.”