Texas: American teen, a convert to Islam uses social media to recruit for Pakistani jihad terror group

Thanks for the link, ace.

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The Bolsheviks and Islam 41

The Russian Revolution of 1917 took place in an empire that was home to 16 million Muslims –
some The collapse of Tsarism radicalized Muslims, who demanded religious freedom and national rights denied them by the tsars.

On 1 May 1917 the First All-Russian Congress of Muslims took place in Moscow. After heated
debates the congress voted for women’s rights, making Russia’s Muslims the first in the world to
free women from the restrictions typical of Islamic societies of that period. At the same time,
conservative Muslim leaders were hostile to revolutionary change. So how did the Russian
Marxists, the Bolsheviks, respond?

Atheism

Marxism is a materialist worldview and so is thoroughly atheist. But because it understands
religion to have roots in oppression and alienation, Marxist political parties don’t demand that
their members or supporters are atheists too. So atheism was never included in the Bolsheviks’
programme. Indeed, they welcomed left wing Muslims into the communist parties (CPs). The
Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in 1923 that in some former colonies as many as 15 percentof CP members were believers in Islam. He called them the ‘raw revolutionary recruits who come knocking on our door’. In parts of Central Asia, Muslim membership was as high as 70 percent.

The Bolsheviks took a very different approach to Orthodox Christianity, the religion of the brutal
Russian colonists and missionaries. Party policy in Central Asia, endorsed by Moscow, stated
that ‘freedom from religious prejudice’ was a requirement for Russians only. So in 1922 over
1,500 Russians were kicked out of the Turkestan CP because of their religious convictions, but
not a single Turkestani.

This was part of Bolshevik policy to try to make amends for the crimes of Tsarism in the former
colonies. Bolshevik leaders such as Lenin and Trotsky understood that this was not only basic
justice, but it was also necessary to clear the ground and enable class divisions in Muslim society to come to the fore.

After the revolution in 1917 of Russian colonists in Central Asia had gone over to the
Bolsheviks, but had usurped the slogan of ‘workers’ power’ and turned it against the mainly
peasant local population. For two years the region was cut off from Moscow by the civil war, so
these self styled ‘Bolsheviks’ had a free hand to carry on persecuting the indigenous peoples. As a result, the Basmachi movement – an armed Islamic revolt – broke out.

Lenin talked about the ‘gigantic, all-historical’ importance of setting things right. In 1920 he
ordered ‘sending to concentration camps in Russia all former members of the police, military,
security forces, administration etc, who were products of the Tsarist era and who swarmed
around Soviet power [in Central Asia] because they saw in it the perpetuation of Russian
domination’.

Sacred Islamic monuments, books and objects looted by the tsars were returned to the mosques.Friday – the day of Muslim celebration – was declared to be the legal day of rest throughout Central Asia. A parallel court system was created in 1921, with Islamic courts administering justice in accordance with sharia laws. The aim was for people to have a choice between religious and revolutionary justice. A special Sharia Commission was established in the Soviet Commissariat of Justice.

Some sharia sentences that contravened Soviet law, such as stoning or the cutting off of hands,
were forbidden. Decisions of the sharia courts that concerned these matters had to be confirmed
by higher organs of justice. Some sharia courts flouted the Soviet law, refusing to award divorces on the petition of a wife, or equating the testimony of two women to that of a man. So in December 1922 a decree introduced retrials in Soviet courts if one of the parties requested it. All the same, sharia courts resolved some 30 to 50 percent of all court cases, and in Chechnya the figure was 80 percent.

A parallel education system was also established. In 1922 rights to certain waqf (Islamic)
properties were restored to Muslim administration, with the proviso that they were used for
education. As a result, the system of madrassahs – religious schools – was extensive. In 1925
there were 1,500 madrassahs with 45,000 students in the Caucasus state of Dagestan, as opposed to just 183 state schools. In contrast, by November 1921 over 1,000 soviet schools had some 85,000 pupils in Central Asia – a modest number relative to the potential enrolment.

The Muslim Commissariat in Moscow oversaw Russia’s policy towards Islam. Muslims with few
communist credentials were granted leading positions in the commissariat. The effect was to split the Islamic movement. Historians agree that a majority of Muslim leaders supported the soviets,convinced that Soviet power meant religious liberty. There was serious discussion among Muslims of the similarity of Islamic values to socialist principles. Popular slogans of the time included: ‘Long live Soviet power, long live the sharia!’; ‘Religion, freedom and national
independence!’ Supporters of ‘Islamic socialism’ appealed to Muslims to set up soviets.

(This is very interesting. You can see this being played out again…I hope others read all of it. There is too much to post on Islam. I sure wasn’t taught this!)

http://www.withchrist.org/Postmodernism%20Truth%20And%20Deception.pdf