Daniel Pipes: ”Paul Goble, an expert on Russian minorities, concludes that “Russia is going through a religious transformation that will be of even greater consequence for the international community than the collapse of the Soviet Union.” A Russian commentator he quotes envisions a mosque on Red Square in Moscow. The facile assumption that Moscow is and will remain Western-oriented “is no longer valid,” he argues. In particular, he predicts that the Muslim demographic surge “will have a profound impact on Russian foreign policy.”
Russia Getting Eaten Alive by Black Widows
Monday’s suicide bomb attack in Volgograd was not the first such attack in Russia, and it will not be the last. Since 2000, suicide bombings have become increasingly frequent in Russia, and “black widow” suicide bombers have been integral to this.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed at least six people and injured at least 33 others. Reports in Russia, however, suggest that the bomber was Naida Asiyalova, a 30-year-old woman from Dagestan — an insurgency-ravaged and predominantly Islamic republic in Russia’s troublesome North Caucasus region — who had recently converted to Islam and who was married to a known Islamic militant. If this is the case, it would represent the latest in a long line of terrorist attacks by black widows from the North Caucasus. From 2000 to 2004, all but five of the 25 Chechen-linked separate suicide bombings in Russia included women.
Read more: h/t Fjordman
