Matthew Omolesky at The Brussels Journal looks at Russia and Islam.

Russia and the Policing of Political Islam

Last week, a Russian law banning foreigners from retail stalls and markets, announced by the cabinet last November, finally took effect. While facially neutral, the law essentially targets immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries. Meanwhile, a Russian city court in Pyatigorsk convicted Anton Stepanenko of promoting Wahhabism, inciting ethnic and religious hatred, and encouraging vigilantism. Yet Stepanenko’s case had become a cause célèbre for many Russian Muslims, and after public appeals to President Vladimir Putin on behalf of the imam (an “exemplary, heroic figure for all the nation’s Muslims,” according to some), the charges were reduced and Stepanenko went free.

And this interesting quote from Dostoevsky:

“In Europe we were hangers-on and slaves, but in Asia we are masters. In Europe we were Tatars, but in Asia we too are Europeans,” Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote in 1881.

And a Chechen history lesson:

In 1871, for instance, an elderly Chechen could tell Nikolai Dubrovin in all honesty that “I don’t remember the crosses, but I heard that we once professed some other faith, but as to what it’s called I don’t know.”