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Such fears buttress suspicions among non-Muslim Soviets elsewhere that their country, tied with Turkey as the fifth largest Muslim community in the world (after Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India), is in fact on the brink of the Islamic conflagration that commentator Belyaev feared. Those suspicions are unfair to the vast majority of Soviet Muslims, who may be nationalistic but do not embrace any brand of vengeful fundamentalism. As Ilios Ibragimov, a Tadzhik truck driver in Dushanbe, put it, "Those people who caused the damage and looted, they were fools, bad people." The question is whether Mikhail Gorbachev will also recognize the distinction and avoid further polarization of the restive Muslims along volatile religious lines.