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July 29, 2005

National Socialism and the nucleus of Islamism

Hebrew University of Jerusalem political scientist, Matthias Küntzel describes the relationship between National Socialism and anti-semitism in the Arab world. The Nazi power was defeated at the end of World War II but only in Europe. Its ideas have metastasized elsewhere sheltered by a West that forgot its peril, distracted by other challenges and largely indifferent to the fate of a people who culture, after all, was different than our own and whose masters kept the oil flowing. Some have said we have brought the current troubles upon ourselves. They have a point. But not for al Qaeda's latest version of the grievance of Versailles or the old fascist story of injured "racial" pride but for abandoning a people to live in darkness, without the law. Never believing their masters would visit us in our turn (via Harry's Place).

Anti-Semitism based on the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy is not rooted in Islamic tradition but, rather, in European ideological models. The decisive transfer of this ideology to the Muslim world took place between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi propaganda. Important to this process were the Arabic-language service broadcast by the German shortwave transmitter in Zeesen between 1939 and 1945, and the role of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, who was the first to translate European anti-Semitism into an Islamic context. Although Islamism is an independent, anti-Semitic, antimodern mass movement, its main early promoters - the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the Mufti and the Qassamites in Palestine - were supported financially and ideologically by agencies of the German National Socialist government.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at July 29, 2005 08:17 AM

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