ISLAM IN THE CASPIAN AND THE CAUCASIAN FOOTHILLS BORDERLAND: SOCIAL AND RELIGIOUS REVIVAL ON THE FRINGES OF THE MUSLIM WORLD

Arbakhan MAGOMEDOV, Viktor VIKTORIN

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Arbakhan Magomedov, D.Sc. (Political Science), professor, head of the Public Relations Department, Ulianovsk State University (Ulianovsk, Russia)

Viktor Viktorin, Ph.D. (Hist.), assistant professor, advisor to the governor of the Astrakhan Region (Astrakhan, Russia)

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Tested by Islamophobia: Russia and the Muslim Question

Islam is rapidly gaining weight across the world. Islamophobia is escalating just as rapidly in the West, while in Russia certain highly influential segments of its political class have begun aping the West. By 2004, the unchecked wave developed into anti-Islamic hysteria.

After writing The Rage and the Pride in the wake of 9/11, Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci produced an anti-Muslim Western manifesto. She poured her hatred out on Islam and the Islamic world and addressed her affection and pride to the West. Her ideas are limited to only one thought: an anti-Islamic struggle without conditions and without mercy. In Russia, certain sources have done their best to familiarize the Russian public with her ideas. Vagrius Publishers put out a Russian translation of her book in 2004.

We can only marvel at the tenacity of the anti-Islamic and anti-Islamist ideas: the passions bring to mind the atmosphere of the anti-Communist “witch hunt” of the early 1990s. In 2002, guided by her anti-communist syndrome, Margaret Thatcher tagged Islamism as “new Bolshevism.” Like many others, Daniel Pipes equated fascism and Islamism in his article “Contemporary Fascism” translated and published in the Moskovskiy komsomolets newspaper. In the West, people no longer distinguish between Islamism and fascism—it was Alexey Malashenko who familiarized the Russian audience with the……………….

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