Monday Miscellany, 6/26/23

Civil war breaks out in Russia, Muslims step up in the culture wars, and Christianity surges in Iran.

Civil War Breaks Out in Russia

The one Russian force having even a little success in the war in Ukraine is the Wagner Group, the paramilitary organization led by “Putin Chef” Yevgeny Prigozhin. It consists largely of convicts promised their freedom if they would fight in Ukraine. Its main battlefield strategy is the cannon fodder tactic, sending waves of convicts against Ukrainian positions, where, though many of them are mowed down, they sometimes overwhelm the opposition.

Ukraine is not the Wagner Group’s first fight. They have also been deployed in Africa and the Middle East, giving Putin plausible deniability that he has troops there, while using this private army to project Russian power.

But now Prigozhin, who has been long feuding with the Russian military establishment, has turned against Putin’s regime. Claiming that the Russian military has shelled his men, Prigozhin is staging an insurrection, seizing military bases and marching on Moscow. Putin has denounced him for treason and has mobilized troops to defend the capital and put down the rebellion:

Read this. Go here for updates.

UPDATE: Prigozhin has stopped his march on Moscow, reportedly in a deal orchestrated by Belarus.

UPDATE: Prigozhnin has gone into exile in Belarus.

UPDATE: Putin’s “enemies are now circling“: “When a Russian leader has to contain a coup by offering the coup leader a place in exile rather than defeating him directly then you know power is draining from the Kremlin.”

Muslims Step Up in the Culture Wars

Muslims take a hard line against sexual immorality, homosexuality, transgenderism, etc., etc., so it has long been a puzzle why they are so often in league with progressives, who demonize such views when Christians hold them, yet let them pass with their Muslim allies.

But now Muslim parents have been leading the charge against public school systems that are attempting to indoctrinate their children with pornography and propaganda.

Yasir Qadhi, Dean of The Islamic Seminary of America, praises this involvement in a column for Al Jazeera, no less, entitled Muslims opposed to LGBTQ curricula for their kids aren’t bigots, with the deck, “It boils down to moral values rooted firmly in one’s faith, not in a political ideology — left or right.”

Muslims in the West are at the forefront of a social movement that transcends any one faith or ethnicity. For those following the news, protests led by parents have erupted across the United States and Canada against school boards that wish to teach schoolchildren content about the acceptability of LGBTQ lifestyles.

While parents of all ethnicities and religions are involved, Muslim parents have been playing a central role in all of these cases, both as organisers and protesters, and their highly visible presence is creating waves on social media.

[Keep reading. . .]

Meanwhile, the cultural left feels betrayed. After all we’ve done for you, you turn against us! I thought we were intersectional allies!

Actually, Muslims and Christians should be the allies on moral issues such as this. So should white evangelicals and the Black Church.

Along this line, Hispanic Catholics, though often assumed to be part of the progressive base, came out in force at the protests at Dodger Stadium over the team’s honoring the blasphemous drag act, “The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.”

The Left’s identity politics might get torn apart by religious and moral forces, with new alignments taking shape, as the sexual transgressive faction goes way too far.

Christianity Surges (Secretly) in Iran

As Christianity seems in decline in the United States and western Europe, it is growing dramatically in other parts of the world. Including the Islamic world, even where conversion to Christ can mean persecution, repudiation by one’s family, and even death.

From Lela Gilbert, in The Washington Stand, Good News from Iran: A Million New Christian Believers:

Amazingly, there’s an explosive number of conversions to Christianity taking place in Iran. . . .

A significant survey taken in 2020 by Gamaan, a secular Netherlands-based research group, reported that there are far greater numbers of Christian believers in Iran than ever before — more than a million. In fact, those involved with the “house church” movement in Iran are convinced that there are likely several million Christian believers there.

In my research and interviews, it has become clear that new Christians’ witness to others is mostly shared in quiet conversations, encouraged by low-profile online Bible studies, and affirmed by visions, dreams, and miraculously answered prayers. Due to their risky circumstances, recent Christian converts are enthusiastically communicating about their changed lives with friends and loved ones — but quietly and carefully. However, their discreet but persistent witness accounts for the extraordinary number of new Iranian believers, who meet in small house churches.