Islam Versus the Pleasure Principle

On November 14 of last year the chairman of the Council of Russian Muftis, Mufti Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin, announced that the victims of the war in Afghanistan were not the perpetrators of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The real victims, he said, were the "completely innocent civilian population of Afghan villages and cities." He went on to warn that the "struggle with international terrorism" was "taking on an ever more bellicose, anti-Islamic character" and was "intensifying confrontational moods between followers of Islam and other religious traditions." Gainutdin's statement, issued on behalf of the Muslim community of Russia, followed the even harsher comments made in a press conference eleven days earlier by his vice-chairman, Mufti Sheikh Nafigulla Ashirov, who had described the war as "criminal" and had denounced the Russian government for supporting a "U.S.

crusade against Islam." Ashirov concluded his remarks by citing the "direct threat" that the American presence ...