- Let's not tie this to Islam.
Okay, then what am I supposed to tie it to? Ballet?
Watch these two and a half minutes:
- I killed the child to take revenge on Putin for the bombing of Syria.
- I wanted to go live in Syria, where women are allowed to cover their faces.
- I have three children, but you can kill them; they don't read the Quran and they don't perform namaz (Islamic ritual prayer).
And so on and so forth.
Yes, yes, we get it. No religion sets out to murder children. But hearing "Islam is a religion of peace" and "let's not bring religion into this" every single time has become unbearable. That cannot be the answer to every crisis involving Islamists.
It is obvious that the spread of this kind of half-mad religious extremism is a problem rooted in the current state of the Muslim religious community. I do not mean Muslims in general—they are as horrified as everyone else—but its religious wing itself.
If a person has lost their mind amid personal problems and mental health issues and turns to religion, then it is precisely the community's job—not the state's or society's as a whole—to ensure they are met by people who will help them through that crisis within the faith, without friendly advice like "it would be good to take revenge for the bombings" or "it would be good to kill everyone who doesn't perform namaz (Islamic ritual prayer)."
What is needed is an honest conversation about the fact that, unfortunately, the situation now is such that if a slightly unstable person goes to a mosque or starts discussing Islamic topics online, there is a very real chance they will be turned into a shahid (martyr) and sent to ISIS. Not because mosques are full of terrorists, but because terrorists are the most active and are the first to target newcomers.
To be fair, in theory you could also go to a Russian Orthodox church and end up being taught to hack someone to death with an axe.
It's just that, empirically, we have found that the risk zone for Muslims is a thousand times greater.
The leading authorities of Islam must crush extremism, because the FSB (Russia's Federal Security Service) or Center "E" (Russia's anti-extremism police unit) will never be able to do it—human history proves that.
And right now, what we need to say is not "Islam has nothing to do with this," but rather: "Islam and all its religious leaders condemn this; they are mourning. In every mosque across the country, people are speaking about this horror and denouncing those who filled a mentally ill woman's head with Syria and all the rest of it. Here is the plan we have drawn up to make sure this never happens again."
Otherwise, it will not work. Radical Islamism can only be defeated by the humanity and moderation of Muslims themselves.