A Step At A Time

Reflections on the world post-9/11, by a British writer, translator and musician who engaged for many years in the debates of the Cold War, and who tends to see the world's present troubles as a continuation of the old common struggle with tyranny and oppression. The blog can also be accessed here

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Finnish Islamists back Russia

The possibility that Islamist movements in Europe and probably also further afield to some extent work in harmony with the Putin/Medvdev schemes in the field of military and foreign policy is evidenced by an interesting statement by the Finnish Islamic Party (Suomenislamilainenpuolue), which aims to represent the interests of Finland's small Muslim minority. The statement condemns the "aggressive acts of the Georgian leadership" and gives the party's full support to Russia. It also makes a savage attack on the president and government of Estonia, and demands that President Saakashvili be put on trial for war crimes. Although Finland's Muslims are mostly Tatars, and have little time for fundamentalist ideology, the document is a curious and revealing indicator of the sort of sources where the Kremlin may really be deriving support in today's world. The fact that the Hamas organization was the first to recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia may not be a coincidence.

That some voices in Finland may be helping to foment a movement which they call a "Russian Intifada" among Estonia's Russian-speaking minority is shown by this blog, which is dedicated to the subject.

There has long been a noted connection between the Kremlin and Islamist groupings, and it is no secret that, as Alexander Litvinenko pointed out before he was brutally murdered in London, Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri trained at a Federal Security Service (the former Russian KGB) base in Dagestan in 1998.

Labels: Baltics, Estonia, Finland, FSB, Georgia, Hamas, Islamism, Litvinenko, Russia