....there is no need to say that these apples did not have an apple tree

Among the children captured in the Beslan school was 13-year-old Sasha Pogrebov. "- They (militants. -Note. Author.) In the morning, they began to mock us. We were all sitting naked, and the terrorist saw a cross around my neck. At this time, the first explosion had already exploded under the windows of the school. The boy was poked in the chest with a barrel, crushing the cross into his thin body, then they demanded: "Pray, infidel!" Sasha shouted: "Christ is Risen!" and then the bandits began to throw grenades into the crowded gym! Sasha realized that there was nothing more to lose. In the midst of the explosions and screams, he shouted something, but he did not remember what he himself remembered, and threw himself into the open window. And another hundred children ran after him" (this is how his story is reported by Komsomolskaya Pravda on September 6).

But even if this episode had not happened, we would still have to say that what happened in Beslan was not just a crime. This is a religious crime. Ritual murder. The killing of children committed with prayer and in the name of the terrorist's faith. With a cry of "Allahu Akbar", the terrorist kills people, sacrificing them to his religious idea[2].

Therefore, the assessment of these, legally speaking, "acts" cannot rise above the bar that Patriarch Alexy emphasized in his message to the President of the Russian Federation V. V. Putin in connection with the mass death of hostages in Beslan on September 3: Satanism ("Throwing off all masks, terrorism has revealed its satanic face: trampling on all that is holy, not fearing God and not ashamed of people, the so-called "freedom fighters" raised their hands, stained with innocent blood, against the children").

A Christian sacrificed by a Satanist undoubtedly falls to Christ - to the One Who sacrificed no one to Himself, but sacrificed Himself for all. Such was the path of the first Russian saints: the Martyrs Theodore and John (Comm. 12 July). In 983 – five years before the Baptism of Rus – the Kievan pagans decided to sacrifice Theodore's son, John, to their gods. The Christians did not express their consent to this – and were killed.

This episode should be compared with the story that took place in Constantinople in the same tenth century. Today, there are wars between armies whose armaments are separated by technological abysses: missiles and robots against guns made in the century before last. But in past centuries, the quality of the weapons of the belligerents was more or less the same, as well as the tactics and physical qualities of the warriors. And so victory depended on the desire to achieve it. Why did the Arab armies overwhelm the Roman armies over and over again? The Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus Phokas decided that it was due to the higher religious spirit of the Arabs. Their religion promises that every "shahid" who falls in the field will immediately enter the Muslim paradise with the houris (and for those who wish to do so with the young men, "they are bypassed by the boys who are eternally young" (Surah 56:17)). Of course, such confidence in their own salvation allowed Muslim soldiers to show fearlessness in the face of a threat. The emperor decided that such faith should inspire his soldiers. And therefore he demanded that the Patriarch of Constantinople, St. Polyeuctus, number all the soldiers, without distinction, who fell in the war with the Arabs. The Patriarch (whose name is also significant for the history of Russia: it was he who baptized St. Princess Olga) not only refused, but also replied to the emperor that the surviving soldiers were allowed to receive the Holy Mysteries only by condescension, from which they would have to be excommunicated for five years as having shed blood. The Patriarch's motive is clear: it is impossible to fight without hatred. And hatred scorches the soul. Just as a fireman who throws himself into the fire and saves a child, nevertheless receives burns and needs treatment, so, in the sense of the church canons, a soldier who has returned from war needs spiritual treatment and repentance, and therefore is subject to temporary excommunication from Communion... [3]. As for the fallen soldiers, it is not always possible to be sure that the man who died in battle was inspired in it not by malice and thirst for revenge, but by the desire to protect his loved ones.

But when it comes to the fallen without weapons in their hands, the religious consequences are clearer. Especially when the murderers are not bandits and thieves, but people of a foreign faith, who kill Christians in the name of their faith.

Perhaps it is time to proclaim the anti-shahid "dogma" in the name of the Church: it is not the terrorist shahid who goes to heaven, but, on the contrary, the people killed by the fanatic of the satanic sect are accepted by the Lord, regardless of how these people previously lived on earth. If the Lord, by His Providence, brought the paths of the Satanist, who commits his ritual murder against a person, to this person himself, it means that the Lord decided that for this person exactly such an exodus from earthly life would be the shortest path to good Eternity.

We need this kind of confidence today to neutralize the main bomb that terrorists are trying to detonate in our minds. They want to blow our minds with fear, paralyze our will. How can we save ourselves from the complex of a hunted victim, if death can really be everywhere? Courage can only be restored by a religious worldview. Because it is the only thing that is able to get rid of the fear of death at all. Only religion allows us to look beyond death. Without faith in God's Providence and in the Eternity He grants, today it is already difficult to cross the borders of the metro and airports.

What previously seemed to be only lofty words (I mean the refrain of the Church's sermon that without faith there will be no revival of Russia) has now become psychologically obvious. Because if you do not have faith in God's Providence, which will either preserve you, or through these sufferings will lead you into Heavenly glory, if you do not have such trust in God's Providence, if you do not have faith that nothing ends for your soul with the death of the body exploded, then you will be paralyzed and will sit in some cellar 101 kilometers from Moscow. Then you will become a victim of history, not its creator.

And one more thing - the believing hostages will not beg the authorities to fulfill any ultimatums of their executioners.

Of course, when I talk about the satanic intrigues that hold terrorists, I am not saying that Satanism is an evaluation of Islam. Very different people profess Islam and they experience and comprehend their faith in very different ways.