With its vast territory, energy resources, nuclear-strategic military power, and controversial foreign policy, Russia plays a central role in world politics. Despite this centrality, for many years, the presence of radical Islam and the spread of religious terrorist networks inside Russia received little scholarly attention. Bridging this gap, Gordon Hahn provides the very first comprehensive examination of Russia's emerging revolutionary religious terrorist-extremist networks and their implications for both Russian domestic and international security. Hahn asks what explains the spread of radical combat networks inside Russia. What are their implications? What are the vices and virtues of the Russian response? How can Russia effectively fight back without undermining democracy? With rich statistical data and extensive illuminating notes, Hahn provides answers to these questions in his scrupulously researched and well-written work.

Little is known about Russia's Muslim minority, which accounts for approximately 14 million people (10% of the Russian population). However, Hahn outlines the demographic, historical, social, economic, and political conditions of Russian Muslims. He traces how radical jihadism is thriving inside Russia. The book's central thesis is that these globally linked radical terrorist networks, primarily driven and coordinated by Chechen rebels, are spreading across Russia by posing a real threat both to Russia's security and to global security.

By connecting the dots to reveal the complex web of Chechen-led radical Islamic networks across Russia, Hahn identifies three causal factors responsible for the emergence, spread, and increasing currency of these groups: (1) the Chechen-led radical terrorist network is a result of ongoing war; (2) Vladimir Putin's re-centralization/anti-federalist policies, which revoked regional autonomy; and (3) foreign influence by global extremist networks in the region (e.g., al Qaeda). Hahn asserts that the “global jihadi network or any one of its regional hubs need not be a mass movement to cause great damage to the U.S., Russia, or the international community, as 9/11 proved” (x). Thus, Hahn warns that any emerging or already operational radical network of any size in or near Russia, given its proximity to stockpiles of strategic weapons, should be taken seriously when assessing security threats.

On one hand, Hahn acknowledges that Russia is not innocent in Chechnya. On the flipside, he situates Chechen-led networks as the main driving engine of other radical Islamic combat groups operating inside Russia. Thus, this “infection from Chechnya and abroad, rather than from Islamist indigenous” movements, is sparking “state-Islamist, intra-Islamic, and somewhat inter-ethnic conflicts” in other Muslim titular republics (106).

The second major cause of the rise of Islamist nationalism in Russia is Putin's re-centralization policies: by “dismantling federalism and democracy, Putin is destabilizing regional politics, providing an additional opening for ethno-nationalism, radical Islam, and Islamist jihadism in Russia. This, in turn, is creating fertile soil for foreign Islamist jihadists to recruit and mobilize through their Chechen allies” (19). Hahn stresses that Putin's move to appoint provincial governors by abolishing local elections; banning the formation of any ethnic, religious, or gender-based parties; and forcing regional authorities to adopt new constitutions (with extremely limited rights granted to Muslim republics) is bearing counterproductive results. These “constraints” imposed by the Russian government on the “formation of a mass Islamic movements may in part explain the emergence of what is to date a small, though growing and effective, underground jihadist terrorist networks” (29).

Hahn concludes with eight policy prescriptions that revolve around three themes: (1) strengthening security measures by engaging in more transparent cooperation with the West; (2) lessening the cultural divide between the largely secular Russian state and newly observant Muslims by promoting moderate Islam; (3) and urging Russia to expand and protect the political, civil, and human rights of its Muslim citizens.

Absent from the book are explicit conceptual clarifications. The author uses “Islamism,” “radical Islam,” “official Islam,” “unofficial Islam,” and similar terms with little definition. For instance, the term “Islamism” is widely defined as a form of instrumentalization of Islam by individuals, groups, and organizations that pursue political objectives in a general context. Hahn, however, interchanges the terms “Islamism,” “Islamists,” and “radical Islam” in reference to “radical” Islamic extremists. It also seems that “unofficial Islam” is used to mean “radical Islam.” While it is possible to deduce Hahn's meaning from the context of his arguments, more explicit conceptualization would add clarity, and minimize confusion.

While Hahn acknowledges that “neither official, traditional, or more moderate forms of Islam are not taught in state schools, and independent and official madrasahs remain strapped for cash, radicals who receive funding from abroad ignore the strictures of the state in order to propagandize their extremist interpretations of Islam underground” (150), he does not recognize “Islamic education” as a factor carrying important implications. The lack of access to Islamic education may indeed create an intellectual vacuum that can then be filled by outside forces. Hahn does not explicate “why” Islamic education was critical, “what went wrong” in regards to Islamic education, and finally “what needs to be done” to pull Muslim youth out of extremists' underground schools.

Hahn concludes that traditional “Sufi Islam,” which historically has characterized Russia's Muslims, “can produce jihadism and ally itself with syncretic Islamic jihadists” (216). This conclusion is premature. Even though Russia's Muslims have long identified with Sufism, Soviet rules long uprooted many of the existing Islamic institutions by forcing them underground. This policy severely damaged the tenets of the Sufi order that once defined North Caucasian Muslims and left a vacuum in understanding and practicing mainstream Islam. This vacuum, in turn, provided a fertile ground for radical foreign Muslim leaders.

Overall, Gordon Hahn has given us the critical background and tools, which are long overdue, to explore further aspects of the Islamic radicalization inside Russia and its potential impact on the West. “Russia's Islamic Threat” is not only a valuable addition to Russian studies, but also a landmark contribution to the broader literature on international terrorism and security studies from which all students of politics can and should benefit.