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. Shouting "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 vengeance, 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.

For example, on September 6, in the Moscow subway, a man approached me with a face by which it is customary to guess about the "Caucasian nationality". He said that he had found a baptismal cross on the street and did not know what to do with it now. He rejected my advice to take the cross to the temple with the following words: "I am a Muslim. I can't go into your churches. But my conscience does not allow me to throw away the cross. Take it for yourself!" A Satanist would not do that. He would rather trample on the cross or throw it into a heap of rubbish...

History presents unexpected surprises. Well, who would have thought that at the beginning of the 21st century, the fate of mankind would be in the hands of theologians? And this is indeed so, however, with the clarification that we are talking about Muslim theologians. The Islamic ummah (church) is organized differently from the Orthodox or Catholic churches. The Ummah is governed by scholars; Personal education means more than going through an initiation ceremony. The voice of Islam is the voice of ulema - experts in theology (from the Arabic alim - expert in religion). These people, who have devoted at least 12 years of their lives to the study of the Qur'an, receive the right to its public interpretation. And it depends on them today how the Qur'anic commandment of jihad will be interpreted. It depends on them whether they will apply the lofty name of "shahid" (martyr) to terrorists who blow themselves up along with the children of "infidels", or whether they will call terrorists terrorists, suicides and murderers of children...

Mullah Omar (and he was not the only one) supported the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack in New York. Other Muslim authorities condemned the attack. Of course, it is uncomfortable to live in a world in which such discussions are being held about one's life, but it would be even worse if these discussions did not exist at all and the Islamic world retained the medieval monolithic nature of opinions. And so we can find a certain consolation in the contemplation of these discussions.

How, for example, to translate verse 5 of Surah 47 of the Qur'an: "God will not allow those who fight for His glory to fail"? Some researchers of the Qur'an suggest reading the passive form instead of the active active verb form: instead of katalu - read kutilya, that is, instead of "those who kill" - "those who were killed". Similarly, in Surah 22 (verse 40) it is proposed to replace the active form with a passive one: yukatalyukhum instead of yukalun; "Affirmation is given to those who are killed" instead of "Affirmation is given to those who kill."4 Until the twentieth century, most interpreters adhered to traditional, active reading; Jalal-ud-Din generally considered this verse to be the first passage of the Qur'an that permits jihad... 5