Moscow Patriarchate Denounces as Heresy Call by Senior Russian General to Draw on Traditional Values of Both Orthodox Christianity and Islam

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 16 – In a recent book, Lt.Gen. Apti Alaudinov, the deputy head of the Main Military-Political Administration of the Russian defense ministry, suggested that Moscow combine the best ideas of Orthodoxy and Islam which support traditional values against those who oppose such values.

            That has brought a sharp rejoinder from Sergey Fufayev, the deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s missionary department. He has denounced Alaudinov’s call as “heresy” and as  form of the kind of syncretism among faiths that the Russian Orthodox Church has always opposed (ng.ru/ng_religii/2026-02-16/9_612_syncretism.html).

            Alaudinov clearly intended that such sharing of ideas about values would help traditional Christianity and traditional Islam come together to fight those in the West challenging those ideas; but Fufayev, speaking for the ROC MP, has made it clear that Christians and Muslims can cooperate but that Orthodox Christianity cannot allow any admixture of Islam in its teachings.