Russian Muslim clerics outraged by lies about developments in Ukraine

UFA, July 28. /ITAR-TASS/. The Central Spiritual Board of Muslims of Russia is outraged by shameless lies and double standards of politicians about the developments in Ukraine, the head of the board, the country's Supreme Mufti Talgat Tadzhuddin said in a sermon on Monday in connection with the holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

"Sufferings, pain and losses of dear ones, violence and cruel murders of civilians in the southeast of Ukraine and on the holy land of Palestine fill with pain and anger hearts of millions of Russians, all the true believers of the one Lord of people worldwide."

Mufti said the tragedy of the Malaysian airliner in Ukraine shocked not only relatives and friends of the victims, but also all Russian citizens.

"At the same time, we are deeply outraged by the shameless lie and double standards of those who try to use any grounds to set nations and states against each other, those who speak about fight against terrorism, but makes it (terrorism) a state policy," he said, adding Russians could not indifferently watch the outrage and attempts to dictate.

The Central Spiritual Board of Muslims supports the Russian president's steps to ensure the state's independence and unity, reliable protection of its territory and timely neutralization of internal and external threats. "First of all, these are strengthening of inter-religious peace and accord, brining up of the youth in the spirit of patriotism and responsibility for the motherland's fate and effective contribution to the prevention of extremism and radicalism," the mufti said.

Muslims of Russia also express their solidarity with much-suffering people of Palestine and support Russian efforts to stop the Israeli military aggression, resume peace talks and establish peace on the holy land, the Russian Muslim leader added.

Thousands of Muslims gathered in the Russian capital's mosques on Monday morning for praying, marking the holiday of Eid al-Fitr.

The Head of Russia's Council of Muftis, Ravil Gainutdin, participated in the early praying in the city's main mosque. He congratulated the faithful with one of Muslims' main holidays.

The press service of the Council of Muftis said congratulations were received from Russian regions, CIS countries, the Islamic world, ministries and departments and international religious and public organizations.

More than 230,000 Muslims were expected to come to mosques in the Russian capital later on Monday. Moscow authorities prepared additional grounds for mass events. People will gather for prayers in six mosques and on special grounds in park and near cultural centers.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated Russian Muslims on Eid al-Fitr, the Kremlin press service said.

One of Muslims' main and most important holidays that marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan, turns the faithful to Islam spiritual and moral sources. From ancient times, it is marked with good deeds and care for the needy. Russia's Muslim community actively participates in the country's life, makes a great contribution to inter-religious dialogue, fruitfully cooperates with state and public organizations in the causes of charity, education and bringing up of young generations and contributes to saving of the country's rich cultural and spiritual heritage, the president said in the congratulation.

The KGB and their successor, the FSB, were big-time terrorists themselves.

From a 2007 article titled “Putin’s Russia”...

“KGB influence ‘soars under Putin,’ “ blared the headline of a BBC online article for December 13, 2006. The following day, a similar headline echoed a similarly alarming story at the website of Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s largest news magazines: “Putin’s Russia: Kremlin Riddled with Former KGB Agents.”

In the opening sentences of Der Spiegel’s article, readers are informed that: “Four out of five members of Russia’s political and business elite have a KGB past, according to a new study by the prestigious [Russian] Academy of Sciences. The influence of ex-Soviet spies has ballooned under President Vladimir Putin.”

The study, which looked at 1,061 top Kremlin, regional, and corporate jobs, found that “78 percent of the Russian elite” are what are known in Russia as “siloviki,” which is to say, former members of the KGB or its domestic successor, the FSB. The author of the study, Olga Kryshtanovskaya, expressed shock at her own findings. “I was very shocked when I looked at the boards of major companies and realized there were lots of people who had completely unknown names, people who were not public but who were definitely, obvious siloviki,” she told Reuters.

Other supposed experts — in Russia and the West — have also expressed surprise and alarm at the apparent resurrection of the dreaded Soviet secret police. After all, for the past decade and a half these same experts have been pointing to the alleged demise of the KGB as the primary evidence supporting their claim that communism is dead.

From the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, the Russian security apparatus Cheka (and its later permutations: OGPU, NKVD, MGB, KGB) had been the “sword and shield” of the communist world revolution.

“We stand for organized terror,” declared Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first chief of the Cheka for Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin. In 1918, Dzerzhinsky launched the campaign of arrests and executions known as the Red Terror. Krasnaya Gazeta, the Bolshevik newspaper, expressed the Chekist credo when it reported approvingly in 1918 of the terror campaign: “We will make our hearts cruel, hard and immovable, so that no mercy will enter them, and so that they will not quiver at the sight of a sea of enemy blood.”

Unflinching cruelty and merciless, bloody terror have been the trademark of the communist secret police, from the Cheka to the KGB. Obviously, the demise of such an organization would be cause for much rejoicing. Hence, when the KGB was ordered dissolved and its chairman, General Vladimir Kryuchkov, was arrested in 1991 after attempting to overthrow “liberal reformer” Mikhail Gorbachev in the failed “August Coup,” many people in the West were only too willing to pop the champagne corks and start celebrating our supposed victory over the Evil Empire.

But, as Mikhail Leontiyev, commentator for Russia’s state-controlled Channel One television, recently noted, repeating a phrase popular among the siloviki: “Americans got so drunk at the USSR’s funeral that they’re still hung over.” And stumbling around in their post-inebriation haze, many of these Americans have only recently begun noticing that they had prematurely written the KGB’s epitaph, even as it was arising vampire-like from the coffin.

However, there is really no excuse for Olga Kryshtanovskaya or any of her American counterparts to be stunned by the current siloviki dominance in Putin’s Russia. For nearly a decade, even before he became Russia’s “president,” THE NEW AMERICAN has been reporting on Putin’s KGB pedigree and his steady implementation of a long-range Soviet deception strategy, including the public rehabilitation and refortifying of the KGB-FSB. ...” (continues at link)

http://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/8420-putins-russia

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