Kristiane Backer and the Maryamiyya

In the 1980s and 1990s, Kristiane Backer, of German origin, was a glamorous MTV presenter. She was introduced to Islam by Imran Khan, and although her relationship with him ended, her interest in Islam did not. Her 2009 autobiography, From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life, tells of her first encounters with Islam, her meeting with Shaykh Nazim and her conversion in the Naqshbandi milieu, and then her involvement with the Maryamiyya. Imran Khan introduced her to Gai Eaton, who introduced her to Martin Lings, who after some time became her shaykh. She followed him until his death.

From MTV to Mecca is a very personal and honest account of its author’s experiences, difficulties (often related to gender), and triumphs. We meet not only Lings and Eaton but Seyyed Hossein Nasr and many other Maryamis, all referred to with respect, never judged. Schuon is mentioned only in passing; she never met him. Others who appear in the book are never judged either, but what we read of some of the men in her life (not of the Maryamis) may provoke more negative judgments in the reader.

Backer’s autobiography shows the Maryamiyya at its best: profound, inspiring, supportive. Theological issues are occasionally visible, but never noted.

Dugin, the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, and Russian intelligence

The Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE, logo to left), based in Moscow and directed by Alexander Dugin’s right-hand man Valery Mikhaylovich Korovin, has just (December 9, 2025) been sanctioned by the UK government, following the lead of the EU and US. As a result, “internet access services and application stores must take reasonable steps to prevent users in the UK from accessing content, sites or applications provided by” CGE.

According to the EU, the CGE has been “involved in creating and disseminating false information by utilising artificial intelligence tools to produce deepfake videos, and supporting a network of hundreds of fake news websites. CGE is alleged to have worked closely with Russia’s military intelligence agency.” The UK agrees, identifying the “network of hundreds of fake news websites” as Storm-1516.

This is hard to verify using open sources. The CGE exists as a legal entity, and Korovin is listed as its director, but it has no internet presence. Storm-1516 is the name assigned by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center to a Russian network it detected that was involved in attempting to influence the 2024 US presidential election. The source for the connection between the two is Microsoft, according to an October 2024 NBC news report, but there is nothing about this online at the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center. One source for the connection between the CGE and Russian intelligence is a January 2024 public report by the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service, according to which “Russian intelligence agencies have repeatedly used the Centre as a cover to get involved in organising press tours” of Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

An EU report gives two URLs for the GCE. One, cge.su, operated from 2017 to May 2024 with the CGE’s articles as a placeholder and no other content save the logo reproduced above. The other, cge.evrazia.ru, seems never to have existed, and may be a mistake for evrazia.su, which does exist and does organize tours of the “post-Soviet space,” which may well include occupied areas of Ukraine, but does not seem to be related to Korovin or Dugin.

The EU and UK information, then, may not be entirely reliable. There is certainly confusion when it comes to a related matter. Dugin’s daughter Darya was killed by a Ukrainian operation inside Russia in August 2022. She was sanctioned by the US in March 2022 and by the UK in July 2022, even though the UK had not then sanctioned Dugin himself, and did not do so until December 2025 (the EU sanctioned him in 2022, and the US in 2015). The UK then tightened its sanctions on her in 2023 and 2024, first imposing “trust services sanctions” and then a “Director Disqualification Sanction,” even though she had been dead for some time.