Chapter 1000

• The second factor was the boogeyman of the West that had been burning bright-hot over the past twenty years - the Islamic Identity movement. It wasn't just fanatics running around the Syrian Desert, or the Afghan/Pakistan border. It was a strong undercurrent in the Muslim world that recalled the halcyon days of the Caliphate.
• The original Mongol Khanate hadn't championed any religious doctrine. It had been the Mongol-Turkish successor states that had turned Islam into a weapon to strike down their enemies. That was the history that Temujin and the Earth & Sky were embracing. This was both a jihad and a struggle to reassert their ethnic identity.
• The Russian Federation had arrogantly discarded Turkish appeals. Turkish nationalists were incensed, but they were never big fans of Russia anyway. It was the commuters on their way to work who found this utter dismissal to be insulting. It was the Imams who spoke out against still more sectarian oppression. It was the journalists who wrote a few scathing articles about the new Russian imperialism.