Muslims of Russia & the Devil

According the New York Times Week in Review,

There are now an estimated 14 million to 23 million Muslims in Russia, as much as 16 percent of the population. They are in the majority in Russia's turbulent south, but more live quietly in places like Tatarstan and Bashkortostan on the Volga River, and in virtually every city.

Given the historic domination of the church, the czars and then Communism, Islam here has adopted an essentially Russian character. Believers pick and chose tenets of faith to follow, just as Orthodox Christians do. Even in predominantly Muslim cities, for example, alcohol flows abundantly."

No one challenges me if I drink coffee during Ramadan," Murat Khokon, a physics professor at the University of Kabardino-Balkariya, a southern republic, said in an interview over an afternoon coffee during Ramadan. "It is between me and God. This is the culture we have here.

One million muslims are said to live in Moscow, a city of some 10 million. Though, it would seem that many of them are Muslims in the way that some would call themselves Christians (whether Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox) on a census form, as long as what they really believe and practice is "between me and God."

The "between me and God' approach to religion is the best ploy yet attempted by the devil, since once a man has retreated into his own psyche, he abandons his best allies, the saints who otherwise stand as eloquent and stirring witnesses for all time of what is true, good, and noble. A man unaided by the whole Body of the Church through time is no match for the delights lyingly offered him by the devil.