HITLER AND JIHAD
By Andrew G. Bostom
FrontPage magazine.com
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Friday, October 24, 2008
CA
A recent report (summarized in translation here) by the Hamburg
intelligence service –the Office for the Protection of the
Constitution [Verfassungsschutz]– stressed the hostility of the
neo-Nazi North German Action Office toward "Anti-Islamification"
efforts in Cologne. At the North German Action Office’s [Aktionsburo
Norddeutschland], "campaigns" page website, links are featured
with titles such as "National Socialists in Lower Saxony,"
"Free! Social! National!," and "May 1 — Day of struggle for
national Socialism." The Hamburg domestic intelligence report
noted the neo-Nazi group’s repeated allusions–commonplace in
Nazi "analyses"–to the American "east coast," which are meant
to characterize "Jewish" domination of America and, by extension,
the world. And in a statement published on its website (German link)
September 25, 2008, five days after an "Anti-Islamification Congress"
was banned by Cologne municipal authorities, the North German Action
Office elucidated its solidarity with the global jihad:
Inasmuch as it is a determined opponent of the western-plutocratic
one-world policy, we regard Islam, globally considered, as an ally
against the mammonistic dominance of the American east coast. The
freedom of nations is not threatened by Islam, but rather by the
imperialism of the USA and its vassals from Jerusalem to Berlin.
Such concordance between Nazism and jihadism reflects an historical
continuum evident since the advent of the Nazi movement. This nexus was
already apparent in Hitler’s own observations from 1926, elaborated
upon over the following decades by both the Nazi leader, and other
key Nazi officials, and ideologues. Not surprisingly, there are two
predominant, recurring themes in this discourse: jihad as total war,
and the annihilationist jihad against the Jews.
Perhaps the earliest recorded evidence of Hitler’s serious interest
in the jihad was provided by Muhammad ‘Inayat Allah Khan [who adopted
the pen name "al-Mashriqi"–"the Orientalist" or "the Sage of the
East"]. Born in the Punjab in 1888, al-Mashriqi was a Muslim polymath
who attended Cambridge on a government scholarship, and excelled
in the study of oriental languages, mathematics, engineering, and
the sciences.
Not only did Mashriqi translate the standard abridged version of
Mein Kampf (then commonly available) from English into Urdu, during
one of his sojourns in Europe, which included time spent in Berlin,
he met Hitler in the early years of the Fuehrer’s leadership of the
National Socialist [Nazi] Party. Their meeting took place in 1926
at the National Library. Here is the gist of Mashriqi’s report on
his interaction with Hitler as described in a letter to the renowned
scholar of Indian Islam, J.M.S. Baljon:
I was astounded when he [Hitler] told me that he knew about my
Tazkirah. The news flabbergasted me. . . I found him very congenial
and piercing. He discussed Islamic Jihad with me in details. In 1930
I sent him my Isharat concerning the Khaksar movement with a picture
of a spade-bearer Khaksar at the end of that book. In 1933 he started
his Spade Movement.
Mashriqi also wrote this independent summary of his 1926 encounter
with Hitler on May 31, 1935:
If I had known that this was the very man who was to become Germany’s
savior I would have fallen around Hitler’s neck, but on the occasion
I was engaged in small talk and tried to find out what he understood
about Germany’s weakness at the time. Professor [Weil, the host]
said, introducing Hitler to me: "This is also a very important man,
an activist from the Worker’s Party." We shook hands and Hitler said,
pointing to a book that was lying on the table: "I had a chance to
read your al-Tazkirah." Little did I understand at that time, what
should have been clear to me when he said these words!
The astonishing similarities–or shall we say the unintentional
similarity between two great minds–between Hitler’s great book and
the teachings of my Tazkirah and Isharat embolden me, because the
fifteen years of "struggle" of the author {Hitler] of "My Struggle"
[Mein Kampf] have now actually led his nation back to success. But
only after leading his nation to the intended goal, has he disclosed
his movement’s rules and obligations to the world; only after fifteen
years has he made the means of success widely known. It is possible
that he has arrived at those means and doctrines by trial and error,
but it should be absolutely clear that Mashriqi [referring to himself
in the third person] has identified those means and doctrines in
al-Tazkirah a full nine years and in the Isharat a full three years
before the success of the Nazi movement, simply by following the
shining guidance of the Holy Koran.
Mashriqi founded the Khaksar Movement, an Indian Muslim separatist
(i.e., promoting the Pakistan "idea"), and global jihad supremacist
organization. Its ethos is revealed in Mashriqi’s writings (for
example, his Qaul-i-Faysel): "…we {Muslims] have again to dominate
the whole world. We have to become its conqueror and its rulers." His
widely circulated pamphlet Islam ki Askari Zindagi further declared:
"The Koran has proclaimed in unequivocal words to the world that
the Prophet was sent with the true religion and definite instruction
that he should make all other religions subservient to this religion
[Islam]…"
Mashriqi emphasized repeatedly in his pamphlets and published articles
that the verity of Islam could be gauged by the rate of the earliest
Muslim conquests in the glorious first decades after the Muslim prophet
Muhammad’s death (Mashriqi’s estimate is "36,000 castles in 9 years, or
12 per day"). He asserted "Nearly three-quarters" of the Koran concerns
conquest, jihad (holy war), and related themes. And Mashriqi reminded
that the Koran promises hellfire to all those who do not participate
in Jihad bi-l-saif ("jihad with the sword"), or object to it. Mashriqi
also believed the Koran’s jihad verses confirmed that if a Muslim
fought for the cause of Islam, this action alone was sufficient for
his salvation, requiring no other good deeds. According to Mashriqi,
Islam’s "five pillars"–the confession of the oneness of Allah and
Muhammad’s prophetic mission, the ritual prayer five times daily,
the pilgrimage (haj) to Mecca, the giving of alms, and the fast in the
month of Ramadan–were all aspects of military exercise: the confession
of faith actually meant that the true Muslim had to forsake all worldly
gains in the interest of military revival, prayer (to be performed
in uniform and in a regimented way) was a kind of military drill,
the haj was something like a grand counsel of Muslim soldiers where
plans against enemies could be formulated, the fast was a preparation
for the deprivations of siege warfare, the giving of alms, lastly, was
a means of raising funds for Muslim re-armament. In short, he stated,
"To leave the martial way of life is tantamount to leaving Islam."
But it was the "Ten Principles" Mashriqi elucidated in the
Tazkirah–the work Hitler discussed with him in 1926–which produced a
quintessential message of Islam enshrining the ideals of militaristic
nation-building. This vision sounded almost identical to sections
of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (compare to Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf,
pp. 169-179, Reynal and Hitchcock trans, 1941)–certainly in the
following paraphrase from al-Tazkirah prepared by some of Mashriqi’s
colleagues for foreign consumption:
A persistent application of, and action on these Ten Principles is the
true significance of "fitness" in the Darwinian [sic] principle of
"Survival of the Fittest", and a community of people which carries
action on these lines to the very extremist limits has every right
to remain a predominant race on this Earth forever, has claim to be
the ruler of the world for all time. As soon as any or all of these
qualities deteriorate in a nation, she begins to lose her right to
remain and Fitter people may take her place automatically under the
Law of Natural Selection.
Albert Speer, who was Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War
Production, wrote a contrite memoir of his World War II experiences
while serving a 20-year prison sentence imposed by the Nuremberg
tribunal. Speer’s narrative includes a discussion which captures
Hitler’s effusive praise for Islam, "…a religion that believed
in spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations
to that faith. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the Germanic
temperament." Hitler, according to Speer’s account, repeatedly
expressed the conviction that, "The Mohammedan religion…would have
been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to
be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?" These sentiments
were also expressed by Hitler to Dr. Herman Neubacher, the first Nazi
Mayor of Vienna, and subsequently, a special delegate of the Nazi
regime in southeastern Europe. Neubacher wrote that Hitler had told
him Islam was a "male religion," and reiterated the belief that the
Germans would have been far more successful conquerors had they adopted
Islam in the Middle Ages. Additional confirmation of Hitler’s very
favorable inclination towards Islam is provided by General Alexander
Loehr, a Lutwaffe commander (executed in 1947 for the mass-murders
of Yugoslav civilians). Loehr maintained a smiling Hitler had told
him that Islam was such a desirable creed the Fuehrer longed for it
to become the official SS religion.
Hitler appears to have viewed the uniquely Islamic institution of
jihad as an appropriate model for waging genocidal, total war. During
the mid to late 19th century, jihad total war campaigns–adapted to
the conditions of modern warfare–were waged by the Ottoman Empire
against its Bulgarian and Armenian Christian minorities. The Ottoman
tactics included innumerable atrocities, mass slaughter, and extensive,
murderous deportations. Official Ottoman jihad declarations during
World War I assured that the genocidal aspects of Islamic doctrine were
"updated" by the application of modern total war offensive doctrines,
and directed at the Armenians, in particular. This jihad-inspired
policy begot razzias (raids), massacres of villagers, massacres of
Armenian conscripts in work battalions, and mass deportations–all
representative of an overall total-war strategy implemented by the
Ottoman state, and military high command.
And the disintegrating Ottoman Empire’s World War I jihad
genocide against its Armenian minority, specifically, served as an
"inspirational" precedent to Hitler. During August of 1939, Hitler
gave speeches in preparation for the looming invasion of Poland
which admonished his military commanders to wage a brutal, merciless
campaign, and assure rapid victory. Hitler portrayed the impending
invasion as the initial step of a vision to "secure the living space
we need," and ultimately, "redistribute the world." In an explicit
reference to the Armenians, "Who after all is today speaking of the
destruction of the Armenians?," Hitler justified their annihilation
(and the world’s consignment of this genocide to oblivion) as an
accepted new world order because, "The world believes only in success."
Vahakn Dadrian–the foremost scholar of the Armenian genocide–observes
that although Hitler’s motives in seeking to destroy the Jews were
not identical with those of the Ottoman Turks’ in their attempts
to eliminate the Armenians, "…the two victim nations share
one common element in Hitler’s scheme of things: their extreme
vulnerability." Moreover, Hitler emphasized the urgent task, "…of
protecting the German blood from contamination, not only of the Jewish
but also of the Armenian blood." Predictable impunity–the ease with
which the Armenian genocide was committed and how the perpetrators
escaped retributive justice–clearly impressed Hitler and his henchmen,
considering a similar action against the Jews. Indeed, the German
Jew, Richard Lictheim who as a young Zionist leader had negotiated
with Ottoman leaders in Turkey during World War I, characterized
the "…cold-bloodedly planned extermination of over one million
Armenians…[as] akin to Hitler’s crusade of destruction against the
Jews…" And as historian Abram Sachar noted, "…the genocide was
cited approvingly twenty-five years later by the Fuehrer…who found
the Armenian ‘solution’ an attractive precedent."
Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS (Nazi Secret Service), and eventually
all German police forces, was another champion of Islam’s singular
bellicosity. Accordingly, Himmler foresaw that within the framework of
the Waffen-SS, several Muslim divisions would be created to wage jihad
"shoulder to shoulder" with Nazi and Axis power soldiers. Himmler
was the guiding force behind the establishment of a Waffen-SS 13th
(later dubbed Handzar) Division–comprised exclusively of Muslims
from Bosnia and Herzegovina. He argued in support of the creation
of this Muslim division that the global Islamic community (umma)
was very sympathetic to Nazism, and that the targeted Balkan Muslims
had a special consciousness of their Muslim Bosnian-Herzegovinian
identity. Indeed, Himmler and his collaborators believed that these
Balkan Muslims were ideally suited to forge a nexus between the Nazi
Germanic "racial north," and the Islamic east. SS General Gottlob
Berger described how Himmler’s creation of the Handzar division was
the apotheosis of this vision:
For the first time a connection is being established between Islam
and National Socialism on an open, honest base, since it will be ruled
from the North where blood and race are concerned, and from the East
ideologically and spiritually.
As the ultimate fulfillment of his vision, Himmler also strove to
re-create a contemporary version of the Ottoman Muslim devshirme levy,
and form a modern janissary corps, not only in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
but the Sanjak (regions in Serbia and Montenegro), most of Croatia,
and the major part of Srem (which includes provinces in Serbia and
Croatia between the Danube and Sava rivers). Historian Jennie Lebel
describes this effort:
In order to supply the Reich on time with a "loyal population" for this
planned SS border area [i.e., as outlined above in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
Croatia, and Serbia], Himmler gave orders to collect children, male
and female, who had been left without one or both parents and send
them to Germany in order "to create a kind of Janissaries" and the
"future soldiers and soldiers’ women of the old military border of the
Reich." The collection of the children was to be taken care of by the
commanders of the Waffen-SS divisions. They had to report once monthly
to Himmler personally on the number of children collected. This was
stated in two letters by Himmler, one addressed to General Arthur
Phleps on May 20, 1944, and the other to General Gottlob Berger on
July 14 of the same year. Copies were sent to General Kammerhofer,
SS representative for the NDH [Croatia], to General Erwin Rosener
in Slovenia, General Hermann Behrends in Serbia and General Herman
Foegellein, liason officer of the Waffen-SS with Hitler.
Hajj Amin el-Husseini–the pre-eminent Arab Muslim leader of the
World War II era–was viewed by Hitler (and also the Waffen-SS)–as
a "Muslim Pope." For example, the Nazi regime promoted this former
Mufti of Jerusalem in an illustrated biographical booklet (printed
in Berlin in 1943) which declared him Muhammad’s direct descendant,
an Arab national hero, and the "incarnation of all ideals and hopes
of the Arab nation."
On June 30, 1922, a joint resolution of both Houses of Congress of
the United States unanimously endorsed the "Mandate for Palestine,"
confirming the irrevocable right of Jews to settle in the area of
Palestine–anywhere between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean
Sea. The Congressional Record contains a statement of support from
New York Rep. Walter Chandler which includes an observation, about
"Turkish and Arab agitators… preaching a kind of holy war [jihad]
against…the Jews" of Palestine. During this same era within
Palestine, a strong Arab Muslim irredentist current–epitomized
by Hajj Amin el-Husseini–promulgated the forcible restoration of
Shari’a-mandated dhimmitude for Jews via jihad. Indeed, two years
before he orchestrated the murderous anti-Jewish riots of 1920, i.e.,
in 1918, Hajj Amin el-Husseini stated plainly to a Jewish co-worker
(at the Jerusalem Governorate), I.A. Abbady, "This was and will
remain an Arab land…the Zionists will be massacred to the last
man…Nothing but the sword will decide the future of this country."
Despite his role in fomenting the1920 pogroms against Palestinian
Jews, el-Husseini was pardoned, and subsequently appointed Mufti of
Jerusalem by the British High Commissioner, in May 1921, a title
he retained, following the Ottoman practice, for the remainder
of his life. Throughout his public career, the Mufti relied upon
traditional Koranic anti-Jewish motifs to arouse the Arab street. For
example, during the incitement which led to the 1929 Arab revolt in
Palestine, he called for combating and slaughtering "the Jews", not
merely Zionists. In fact, most of the Jewish victims of the 1929 Arab
revolt were Jews from the centuries old dhimmi communities (for eg.,
in Hebron), as opposed to recent settlers identified with the Zionist
movement. With the ascent of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 1940s,
the Mufti and his coterie intensified their anti-Semitic activities
to secure support from Hitler’s Germany (and later Bosnian Muslims,
as well as the overall Arab Muslim world), for a jihad to annihilate
the Jews of Palestine. Following his expulsion from Palestine by the
British, the Mufti fomented a brutal anti-Jewish pogrom in Baghdad
(1941), concurrent with his failed effort to install a pro-Nazi
Iraqi government. Escaping to Europe after this unsuccessful coup
attempt, the Mufti spent the remainder of World War II in Germany and
Italy. From this sanctuary, he provided active support for the Germans
by recruiting Bosnian Muslims, in addition to Muslim minorities from
the Caucasus, for dedicated Nazi SS units. The Mufti’s objectives
for these recruits, and Muslims in general, were made explicit during
his multiple wartime radio broadcasts from Berlin, heard throughout
the Arab world: an international campaign of genocide against the
Jews. For example, during his March 1, 1944 broadcast he stated:
"Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history,
and religion."
Hajj Amin made an especially important contribution to the German war
effort in Yugoslovia where the Bosnian Muslim SS units he recruited
(in particular the Handzar Division) brutally suppressed local Nazi
resistance movements. The Mufti’s pamphlet entitled, "Islam and
the Jews", was published by the Nazis in Croatian and German for
distribution during the war to these Bosnian Muslim SS units. This
incendiary document hinged upon antisemitic motifs from the Koran
(for example, 5:82), and the hadith (including Muhammad’s alleged
poisoning by a Khaybar Jewess), and concluded with the apocalyptic
canonical hadith describing the Jews’ annihilation. And Jan Wanner
has observed that,
His [the Mufti’s] appeals…addressed to the Bosnian Muslims
were…close in many respects to the argumentation used by contemporary
Islamic fundamentalists…the Mufti viewed only as a new interpretation
of the traditional concept of the Islamic community (umma), sharing
with Nazism common enemies.
This hateful propaganda served to incite the slaughter of Jews, and
(Serb) Christians as well. Indeed, the Bosnian Muslim Handzar SS
Division was responsible for the destruction of whole Bosnian Jewish
and Serbian communities, including the massacre of Jews and Serbs, and
the deportation of survivors to Auschwitz for extermination. However,
these heinous crimes, for which the Mufti bears direct responsibility,
had only a limited impact on the overall destruction of European Jewry
when compared with his nefarious wartime campaign to prevent Jewish
emigration from Europe to Palestine. Wanner, in his 1986 analysis
of the Mufti’s collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II,
concluded,
…the darkest aspect of the Mufti’s activities in the final stage
of the war was undoubtedly his personal share in the extermination
of Europe’s Jewish population. On May 17, 1943, he wrote a personal
letter to Ribbentrop, asking him to prevent the transfer of 4500
Bulgarian Jews, 4000 of them children, to Palestine. In May and June
of the same year, he sent a number of letters to the governments of
Bulgaria, Italy, Rumania, and Hungary, with the request not to permit
even individual Jewish emigration and to allow the transfer of Jews to
Poland where, he claimed they would be "under active supervision". The
trials of Eichmann’s henchmen, including Dieter Wislicency who was
executed in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, confirmed that this was not
an isolated act by the Mufti.
Invoking the personal support of such prominent Nazis as Himmler
and Eichmann, the Mufti’s relentless hectoring of German, Rumanian,
and Hungarian government officials caused the cancellation of
an estimated 480,000 exit visas which had been granted to Jews
(80,000 from Rumania, and 400,000 from Hungary). As a result, these
hapless individuals were deported to Polish concentration camps. A
United Nations Assembly document presented in 1947 which contained
the Mufti’s June 28, 1943 letter to the Hungarian Foreign Minister
requesting the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Poland, includes this
stark, telling annotation: "As a Sequel to This Request 400,000 Jews
Were Subsequently Killed." Moreover, in the Mufti’s memoirs (Memoirs
of the Grand Mufti, edited by Abd al-Karim al-Umar, Damascus, 1999)
he describes what Himmler revealed to him during the summer of 1943
regarding the genocide of the Jews. Following pro forma tirades on
"Jewish war guilt," Himmler told the Mufti that "up to now we have
liquidated [abadna] around three million of them."
According to historian Howard M. Sachar, meetings the Mufti held
with Hitler in 1941 and 1942 lead to an understanding whereby
Hitler’s forces would invade Palestine with the goal being "..not
the occupation of the Arab lands, but solely the destruction of
Palestin(ian) Jewry…" And in April, 2006, the director of the Nazi
research center in Ludwigsburg, Klaus-Michael Mallman, and Berlin
historian Martin Cueppers, revealed that a murderous Einsatzgruppe
Egypt, connected to Rommel’s Africa Korps, was stationed in Athens
awaiting British expulsion from the Levant, prior to beginning their
planned slaughter of the roughly 500,000 Jews in Palestine. This plan
was only aborted after Rommel’s defeat by Montgomery at El Alamein,
Egypt, in October/November 1942.
The Mufti remained unrelenting in his espousal of a virulent
Judeophobic hatred as the focal tenet of his ideology in the aftermath
of World War II, and the creation of the State of Israel. And the
Mufti was also a committed supporter of global jihad movements,
urging a "full struggle" against the Hindus of India (as well as the
Jews of Israel) before delegates at the February 1951 World Muslim
Congress: "We shall meet next with sword in hand on the soil of
either Kashmir or Palestine." Declassified intelligence documents
from 1942, 1947, 1952, and 1954 confirm the Mufti’s own Caliphate
desires in repeated references from contexts as diverse as Turkey,
Egypt, Jerusalem, and Pakistan, and also include discussions of major
Islamic Conferences dominated by the Mufti, which were attended by
a broad spectrum of Muslim leaders literally representing the entire
Islamic world (including Shia leaders from Iran), i, e., in Karachi
from February 16-19, 1952, and Jordanian occupied Jerusalem, December
3-9, 1953. Viewed in their totality these data do not support the
current standard assessment of the Mufti as merely a "Palestinian
Arab nationalist, rife with Jew hatred."
During an interview conducted in the late 1930s (published in 1939),
Karl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytical psychiatry,
was asked "…had he any views on what was likely to be the next
step in religious development?" Jung replied, in reference to the
Nazi fervor that had gripped Germany,
We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is
already on the way; he is like Muhammad. The emotion in Germany is
Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god. That
can be the historic future.
Although now, inexplicably, almost ignored in their entirety,
writings produced for 100 years between the mid-19th through mid-20th
centuries, by important scholars and intellectuals, in addition to Carl
Jung–for example, the historians Jacob Burckhardt and Waldemar Gurian,
Protestant theologian Karl Barth, and most notably, the renowned 20th
century scholar of Islamic Law, G.H. Bousquet–referred to Islam as
a despotic, or in 20th century parlance, totalitarian ideology.
Being imbued with fanaticism was the ultimate source of Muhammad’s
great strength, and lead to his triumph as a despot, according to
the 19th century Swiss historian Burckhardt:
Muhammad is personally very fanatical; that is his basic strength. His
fanaticism is that of a radical simplifier and to that extent is quite
genuine. It is of the toughest variety, namely doctrinaire passion,
and his victory is one of the greatest victories of fanaticism and
triviality. All idolatry, everything mythical, everything free in
religion, all the multifarious ramifications of the hitherto existing
faith, transport him into a real rage, and he hits upon a moment
when large strata of his nation were highly receptive to an extreme
simplification of the religious.
The Arabs, Burckhardt emphasizes, Muhammad’s henchmen, were
not barbarians and had their own ingenuities, and spiritual
traditions. Muhammad’s successful preaching among them capitalized
upon an apparent longing for supra-tribal unification, "an extreme
simplification." Muhammad’s genius, "lies in divining this." Utilizing
portions of the most varied existing traditions, and taking advantage
of the fact that "the peoples who were now attacked may also have
been somewhat tired of their existing theology and mythology," Muhammad
…with the aid of at least ten people, looks over the faiths of the
Jews, Christians, and Parsis [Zoroastrians], and steals from them
any scraps that he can use, shaping these elements according to his
imagination. Thus everyone found in Muhammad’s sermons some echo of
his accustomed faith. The very extraordinary thing is that with all
this Muhammad achieved not merely lifetime success, the homage of
Arabia, but founded a world religion that is viable to this day and
has a tremendously high opinion of itself.
Burckhardt concludes that despite this achievement, Muhammad was not
a great man, although he accepts the understandable inclination,
…to deduce great causes from great effects, thus, from Muhammad’s
achievement, greatness of the originator. At the very least, one wants
to concede in Muhammad’s case that he was no fraud, was serious about
things, etc. However, it is possible to be in error sometime with
this deduction regarding greatness and to mistake mere might for
greatness. In this instance it is rather the low qualities of human
nature that have received a powerful presentation. Islam is a triumph
of triviality, and the great majority of mankind is trivial…But
triviality likes to be tyrannical and is fond of imposing its yoke upon
nobler spirits. Islam wanted to deprive distinguished old nations of
their myths, the Persians of their Book of Kings, and for 1200 years
it has actually prohibited sculpture and painting to tremendously
large populations.
University of Notre Dame historian Waldemar Gurian, a refugee, who
witnessed first hand the Communist and Fascist totalitarian movements
in Europe, concluded (circa 1945) that Hitler, in a manner analogous
to the 7th century precedent of Muhammad, had been the simplifier of
German nationalism.
A fanatical simplifier who appeared as the unifier of various German
traditions in the service of simple national aims and who was seen by
many differing German groups–even by some people outside Germany–as
the fulfiller of their wishes and sharer of their beliefs, with
some distortions and exaggerations–such, as long as he had success,
was Adolf Hitler.
Based upon the same clear understandings, and devoid of our era’s
dulling, politically correct constraints, Karl Barth, like Carl Jung
(cited earlier), offered this warning, also published in 1939:
[Karl Barth] Participation in this life, according to it the only
worthy and blessed life, is what National Socialism, as a political
experiment, promises to those who will of their own accord share in
this experiment. And now it becomes understandable why, at the point
where it meets with resistance, it can only crush and kill–with
the might and right which belongs to Divinity! Islam of old as we
know proceeded in this way. It is impossible to understand National
Socialism unless we see it in fact as a new Islam [emphasis in
original], its myth as a new Allah, and Hitler as this new Allah’s
Prophet.
Investigative journalist John Roy Carlson’s 1948-1950 interviews
of Arab Muslim religious and political leaders provide consummate
independent validation of these Western assessments. Perhaps most
revealing were the candid observations of Aboul Saud, whom Carlson
described as a "pleasant English-speaking member of the Arab
League Office." Aboul Saud explained to Carlson that Islam was an
authoritarian religio-political creed which encompassed all of a
Muslim’s spiritual and temporal existence. He stated plainly,
You might describe Mohammedanism as a religious form of State
Socialism…The Koran give the State the right to nationalize industry,
distribute land, or expropriate the right to nationalize industry,
distribute land, or expropriate property. It grants the ruler of
the State unlimited powers, so long as he does not go against the
Koran. The Koran is our personal as well as our political constitution.
And after interviewing Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna
himself, who "preached the doctrine of the Koran in one hand and the
sword in the other," Carlson observed:
It became clear to me why the average Egyptian worshipped the use
of force. Terror was synonymous with power! This was one reason
why most Egyptians, regardless of class or calling had admired Nazi
Germany. It helped explain the sensational growth of the Ikhwan el
Muslimin [Muslim Brotherhood]
In a brilliant, dispassionate contemporary analysis, Ibn Warraq
describes 14 characteristics of "Ur Fascism" as enumerated by Umberto
Eco, analyzing their potential relationship to the major determinants
of Islamic governance and aspirations, through the present. He adduces
salient examples which reflect the key attributes discussed by Eco:
the unique institution of jihad war; the establishment of a Caliphate
under "Allah’s vicegerent on earth," the Caliph–ruled by Islamic
Law, i.e., Shari’a, a rigid system of subservience and sacralized
discrimination against non-Muslims and Muslim women, devoid of basic
freedoms of conscience, and expression. Warraq’s assessment confirms
what G.H. Bousquet concluded (in 1950) from his career studying the
historical development and implementation of Islamic Law:
Islam first came before the world as a doubly totalitarian system. It
claimed to impose itself on the whole world and it claimed also,
by the divinely appointed Muhammadan law, by the principles of fiqh
[jurisprudence], to regulate down to the smallest details the whole
life of the Islamic community and of every individual believer… the
study of Muhammadan Law (dry and forbidding though it may appear)… is
of great importance to the world of today.
Thirty-fours years ago (1973/74) Bat Ye’or published a remarkably
foresighted analysis of the Islamic antisemitism and resurgent jihadism
in her native Egypt, being packaged for dissemination throughout
the Muslim world. The primary, core Antisemitic and jihadist motifs
were Islamic, derived from Islam’s foundational texts, on to which
European, especially Nazi elements were grafted. Nazi academic and
propagandist of extermination Johannes von Leers’ writings and personal
career trajectory–as a favored contributor in Goebbel’s propaganda
ministry, to his eventual adoption of Islam (as Omar Amin von Leers)
while working as an anti-Western, and antisemitic/anti-Zionist
propagandist under Nasser’s regime from the mid-1950s, until his death
in 1965–epitomizes this convergence of jihad, Islamic antisemitism,
and racist, Nazi antisemitism, as described by Bat Ye’or. Upon his
arrival in Egypt in 1956, it was Hajj Amin el-Husseini who welcomed
von Leers, stating, "We are grateful to you for having come here
to resume the struggle against the powers of darkness incarnated
by international Judaism." The ex-Mufti oversaw von Leers’ formal
conversion to Islam, and remained one of his confidants. And von
Leers described the origins of the Muslim "forename," Omar Amin,
that he adopted as part of his conversion to Islam in a November,
1957 letter to American Nazi H. Keith Thompson,
I myself have embraced Islam and accepted the new forename Omar
Amin, Omar according to the great Caliph Omar who was a grim enemy
of the Jews, Amin in honor of my friend Hajj Amin el Husseini, the
Grand Mufti.
Already in essays published during 1938 and 1942, the first dating back
almost two decades before his conversion to Islam while in Egypt, von
Leers produced analyses focused primarily on Muhammad’s interactions
with the Jews of Medina. These essays reveal his pious reverence for
Islam and its prophet, and a thorough understanding of the sacralized
Islamic sources for this narrative, i.e., the Koran, hadith, and
sira. which is entirely consistent with standard Muslim apologetics.
Von Leers’ 1942 essay, for example, concludes by simultaneously
extolling the "model" of oppression the Jews experienced under Islamic
suzerainty, and the nobility of Muhammad, Islam, and the contemporary
Muslims of the World War II era, foreshadowing his own conversion to
Islam just over a decade later. And even earlier, in a 1938 essay,
von Leers further sympathized with, "the leading role of the Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem in the Arabians’ battles against the Jewish
invasion in Palestine." Von Leers observes that to the pious Muslim,
"…the Jew is an enemy, not simply an ‘unbeliever’ who might perhaps
be converted or, despite the fact that he does not belong to Islam,
might still be a person of some estimation. Rather, the Jew is the
predestined opponent of the Muslim, one who desired to bring down
the work of the Prophet."
Until his death in 1965, von Leers remained unrepentant about the
annihilationist policies towards the Jews he helped advance serving
Hitler’s Reich. Indeed he was convinced of the righteousness of
the Nazi war against the Jews, and as a pious Muslim convert,
von Leers viewed the Middle East as the succeeding battleground to
seal the fate of world Jewry. His public evolution over the course
of three decades illustrates starkly the shared centrality to these
totalitarianisms–both modern and ancient–of the Jews as "first and
last enemy" motif. Finally, an October 1957 US intelligence report
on von Leers’ writings and activities for Egypt and the Arab League
confirmed his complete adoption of the triumphalist Muslim worldview,
desirous of nothing less than the destruction of Judeo-Christian
civilization by jihad:
He [Dr. Omar Amin von Leers] is becoming more and more a religious
zealot, even to the extent of advocating an expansion of Islam
in Europe in order to bring about stronger unity through a common
religion. This expansion he believes can come not only from contact
with the Arabs in the Near East and Africa but with Islamic elements
in the USSR. The results he envisions as the formation of a political
bloc against which neither East nor West could prevail.
Fifty years later ignorance, denial, and delusion have engendered the
sorry state of public understanding of this most ominous conversion
of hatreds, by all its potential victims, not only Jews. This lack
of understanding is little advanced by the current spate of analyses
which seek "Nazi roots" of the cataclysmic September 11, 2001 acts of
jihad terrorism, and see Nazism as having "introduced" antisemitism to
an otherwise "tolerant", even philosemitic Islamic world beginning in
the 1930s. Awkwardly forced, and ahistorical, these analyses realign
the Nazi cart in front of the Islamic steed which has driven both
jihad and Islamic antisemitism, since the 7th century advent of the
Muslim creed, particularly during the last decade of Muhammad’s life.
But even if all vestiges of Nazi militarism and racist antisemitism
were to disappear miraculously overnight from the Islamic world, the
living legacy of jihad war against non-Muslim infidels, and anti-Jewish
hatred and violence rooted in Islam’s sacred texts–Koran, hadith,
and sira–would remain intact. The assessment and understanding of the
uniquely Muslim institution of jihad, and Islamic antisemitism, begins
with an unapologetic exposure of both the injunctions sanctioning jihad
war, and the anti-Jewish motifs contained in these foundational texts
of Islam. Yet while the West has engaged in self-critical mea culpa,
acknowledging its own imperialistic past, shameful role in the slave
trade, and antisemitic persecution–taking steps to make amends where
possible–the Islamic nations remain in perpetual denial. Until Muslims
acknowledge the ugly realities of jihad imperialism, and anti-Jewish
persecution in their history, the past will continue to poison the
present, and there will be no hope of combating resurgent jihadism,
and Islam’s unreformed theological hatred of Jews in modern times,
from Morocco to Indonesia, and within Muslim communities living in
Western, and other non-Muslim societies across the globe.
Andrew G. Bostom is a frequent contributor to Frontpage Magazine.com,
and the author of The Legacy of Jihad, and the forthcoming The Legacy
of Islamic Antisemitism.