Wednesday, October 17, 2007

ISLAMIC ANTI-SEMITISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST -- AND ITS NAZI CONNECTIONS

By Matthias Kuentzel

This is the lecture that the University of Leeds tried to suppress. On March 14, 2007, Kuentzel was due to address the University of Leeds in England on the topic ‘Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East.’ However, several hours before the talk was due to take place, the talk was unexpectedly cancelled due to "security concerns," following protest e-mails from some of the university's Muslim students. Excerpts only below. Full text here. Background on Kuentzel here

Despite common misconceptions, Islamism was born not during the 1960s but during the 1930s. Its rise was inspired not by the failure of Nasserism but by the rise of Fascism and of Nazism. It was the Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 in Egypt, that established Islamism as a mass movement. The significance of the Brotherhood to Islamism is comparable to that of the Bolshevik party to communism: It was and remains to this day the ideological reference point and organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas or the group around Sidique Khan.

It is true that British colonial policy produced Islamism, insofar as Islamism viewed itself as a resistance movement against "cultural modernity." Their "liberation struggle", however, had more in common with the "liberation struggle" of the Nazis than with any kind of progressive movement. Thus, the Brotherhood advocated the replacement of Parliamentarianism by an "organic" state order based on the Caliphate. It demanded the abolition of interest and profit in favour of a forcibly imposed community of interests between capital and labour.

At the forefront of the Brotherhood's efforts lay the struggle against all the sensual and "materialistic" temptations of the capitalist and communist world. At the tender age of 13, the pubescent al-Banna had founded a "Society for the Prevention of the Forbidden", and this is in essence what the Brothers were and are - a community of male zealots, whose primary concern is to prevent all the sensual and sexual sins forbidden according to their interpretation of the Koran. Their signature was most clearly apparent when they periodically reduced their local night clubs, brothels and cinemas - constantly identified with Jewish influence - to ashes.

Gripped by this phobia, the Society of Muslim Brothers, from the day of its foundation, provided a haven for any man dedicated to the restoration of male supremacy. At the very time when the liberation of women from the inferiority decreed by Islam was gradually getting under way, the Muslim Brotherhood set itself up as the rallying point for the restoration of patriarchal domination.

It was on the one hand a conservative religious movement: For al-Banna, only a return to orthodox Islam could pave the way for an end to the intolerable conditions and humiliations of Muslims, and newly establish the righteous Islamic order. It was at the same time a revolutionary political movement and as such in many respects a trailblazer. The Brotherhood was the first Islamic organization to put down roots in the cities and to organize a mass movement able in 1948 to muster one million people in Egypt alone. It was a populist and activist, not an elitist movement and it was the first movement that systematically set about building a kind of "Islamist international."

The Islamists' answer to everything was the call for a new order based on Sharia. But the Brotherhood's jihad was not directed primarily against the British. Rather, it focused almost exclusively on Zionism and the Jews. Membership in the Brotherhood shot up from 800 to 200,000 between 1936 and 1938. In those two years the Brotherhood conducted only one major campaign in Egypt, a campaign directed against Zionism and the Jews.

The starting shot for this campaign, which established the Brotherhood as an Anti-Semitic mass movement, was fired by a rebellion in Palestine directed against Jewish immigration and initiated by the notorious Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini. The Brotherhood organized mass demonstrations in Egyptian cities under the slogans "Down With the Jews!" and "Jews Get Out of Egypt and Palestine!" Their Jew-hatred drew on the one hand on Islamic sources. First, Islamists considered, and still consider, Palestine an Islamic territory, Dar al-Islam, where Jews must not run a single village, let alone a state. Second, Islamists justify their aspiration to eliminate the Jews of Palestine by invoking the example of Muhammad, who in the 7th century not only expelled two Jewish tribes from Medina, but also beheaded the entire male population of a third Jewish tribe, before proceeding to sell all the women and children into slavery. Third, they find support and encouragement for their actions and plans in the Koranic dictum that Jews are to be considered the worst enemy of the believers.

Their Jew-hatred was also inspired by Nazi influences: Leaflets called for a boycott of Jewish goods and Jewish shops, and the Brotherhood's newspaper, al-Nadhir, carried a regular column on "The Danger of the Jews of Egypt," which published the names and addresses of Jewish businessmen and allegedly Jewish newspaper publishers all over the world, attributing every evil, from communism to brothels, to the "Jewish danger."

The Brotherhood's campaign used not only Nazi-like patterns of action and slogans but also German funding. As the historian Brynjar Lia recounts in his monograph on the Brotherhood, "Documents seized in the flat of Wilhelm Stellbogen, the Director of the German News Agency affiliated to the German Legation in Cairo, show that prior to October 1939 the Muslim Brothers received subsidies from this organization. Stellbogen was instrumental in transferring these funds to the Brothers, which were considerably larger than the subsidies offered to other anti-British activists. These transfers appear to have been co-ordinated by Hajj Amin al-Husseini and some of his Palestinian contacts in Cairo.

To summarize our first trip into history: We saw that the rise of Nazism and Islamism took place in the same period. This was no accident, for both movements represented attempts to answer the world economic crisis of 1929 and the crisis of liberal capitalism. However different their answers may have been, they shared a crucial central feature: in both cases the sense of belonging to a homogeneous community was created through mobilizing against the Jews.

Initially, however, European Anti-Semitism had proved to be an ineffective tool in the Arab world. Why? Because the European fantasy of the Jewish world conspiracy was foreign to the original Islamic view of the Jews. Only in the legend of Jesus Christ did the Jews appear as a deadly and powerful force who allegedly went so far as to kill God's only son. Islam was quite a different story. Here it was not the Jews who murdered the Prophet, but the Prophet who in Medina murdered the Jews. As a result, the characteristic features of Christian Anti-Semitism did not develop in the Muslim world. There were no fears of Jewish conspiracy and domination, no charges of diabolic evil. Instead, the Jews were treated with contempt or condescending tolerance. This cultural inheritance made the idea that the Jews of all people could represent a permanent danger for the Muslims and might control the media and politics in league with Freemasons seem absurd. This brings us to our second point: The transfer of European Anti-Semitism to the Muslim world between 1937 and 1945 under the impact of Nazi Propaganda.

Islamism and National Socialism.

Amin al-Husseini, the infamous Mufti of Jerusalem, who was closely connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, was already seeking an alliance with Nazi Germany as early as spring 1933. At first, however, Berlin was dismissive. On the one hand, Hitler had already stated his belief in the "racial inferiority" of the Arabs in Mein Kampf while, on the other, the Nazis were extremely anxious not to jeopardise British appeasement. In June 1937, however, the Nazis changed course. The trigger was the Peel Plans two-state solution. Berlin wanted at all costs to prevent the birth of a Jewish state and thus welcomed the Muftis advances. Arab antisemitism would now get a powerful new promoter.

A central role in the propaganda offensive was played by a Nazi wireless station, now almost totally forgotten. Since the 1936 Berlin Olympics, a village called Zeesen, located to the south of Berlin, had been home to what was at the time the worlds most powerful short-wave radio transmitter. Between April 1939 and April 1945, Radio Zeesen reached out to the illiterate Muslim masses through daily Arabic programmes, which also went out in Persian and Turkish. At that time listening to the radio in the Arab world took place primarily in public squares or bazaars and coffee houses. No other station was more popular than this Nazi Zeesen service, which skilfully mingled Anti-Semitic propaganda with quotations from the Koran, and Arabic music. The Second World War allies were presented as lackeys of the Jews and the picture of the "United Jewish Nations" drummed into the audience. At the same time, the Jews were attacked as the worst enemies of Islam: "The Jew since the time of Muhammad has never been a friend of the Muslim, the Jew is the enemy and it pleases Allah to kill him".

Since 1941, Zeesens Arabic programming had been directed by the Mufti of Jerusalem who had emigrated to Berlin. The Muftis aim was to "unite all the Arab lands in a common hatred of the British and Jews", as he wrote in a letter to Adolf Hitler. Anti-Semitism, based on the notion of a Jewish world conspiracy, however, was not rooted in Islamic tradition but, rather, in European ideological models.

The Mufti therefore seized on the only instrument that really moved the Arab masses: Islam. He invented a new form of Jew-hatred by recasting it in an Islamic mould. He was the first to translate Christian Anti-Semitism into Islamic language, thus creating an "Islamic Anti-Semitism". His first major manifesto bore the title "Islam-Judaism, Appeal of the Grand Mufti to the Islamic World in the Year 1937". This 31-page pamphlet reached the entire Arab world and there are indications that Nazi agents helped draw it up. Let me quote at least a short passage from it:

"The struggle between the Jews and Islam began when Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina. The Jewish methods were, even in those days, the same as now. As always, their weapon was slander. They said that Muhammad was a swindler, they began to ask Muhammad senseless and insoluble questions, and they endeavoured to destroy the Muslims. If the Jews could betray Muhammad in this way, how will they betray Muslims today? The verses from the Koran and Hadith prove to you that the Jews were the fiercest opponents of Islam and are still trying to destroy it."

What we have here is a new popularized form of Jew-hatred, based on the oriental folk tale tradition, which moves constantly back and forth between the seventh and twentieth centuries. This kind of Jew-hatred is used today by the British group Hizb ut-Tahir. In 2002 this organization reproduced a leaflet in its website saying: "The Jews are a people of slander, a treacherous people; they fabricate lies and twist words from their right context. Kill them wherever you find them." .......

Islamism is not motivated by a concept of reason but by a cult of death. It does not strive for emancipation but for oppression. It uses the flag of anti-colonialism to promote Anti-Semitism. It is true that today there is no other anti-capitalist or anti-Western movement that is able to mobilise and influence so many people. Bin Laden's latest message builds on this reality. But it is for this very reason all the more essential for every responsible person to draw an inseparable line between a concept of change that is rooted in the traditions of the Enlightenment and emancipation, and a concept of change that is aimed in a fascist way at destroying the development of societies and the freedom of the individual. You can be in favor of or against Islamism and Fascism, but you cannot be anti-Fascist and pro-Islamist at the same time....



Former Member of National Abortion Rights Action League Speaks out for Life at Princeton University

Karen Shablin, a former member of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL), told an audience at Princeton University on Tuesday evening, that greater support during pregnancy, not abortion, is what women need and want.

The Daily Princetonian, the prestigious university's campus paper, reports that Shablin, a speaker for Feminists for Life Campus Outreach programme, was invited to speak as part of the campus pro-life group's Respect Life Week.

She said that her own abortion had been a result of fear of joining the ranks of black single mothers that so often remain in poverty. Shablin said she now "oppose[s] abortion with every thread of my being," but decries the lack of resources and support available to women in unexpected pregnancies, saying, "Women deserve better (than abortion). I deserve better. And certainly you, male and female, deserve better."

Shablin, who is described by Feminists for Life as a former "card carrying" member of NARAL and a health policy expert, recounted her conversion to the pro-life cause that occurred when she worked as Medicaid director for the state of New Jersey. At that time, the state held a "family cap" policy refusing assistance to families who had more children while remaining on welfare, but at the same time, the state paid the fees for welfare recipients to have abortions.

She described herself as "heartbroken" when she heard of women having as many as four abortions in a year under the policy. Women, she said, needed access to practical resources and education to avoid the trap.

Most abortion-supporting organizations offer pregnant women only abortion for which they charge fees. Multitudes of pro-life organizations like Toronto's Aid to Women and Birthright, offer practical material and medical assistance free of charge to help women carry their babies to term and support them after the birth.

Shablin said she speaks on campuses about her own experiences because, "every life counts." She says, "I can't undo my mistakes over the years - having an abortion, advocating abortion, but I can help others to learn from my mistakes."

Source



Australia: ETHNIC RIOT COVERUP

Read the three reports of the same event below. I initially read just the first report below on the general News Corp site but immediately smelt a rat because such a thing has never happened in Australia before to my knowledge. Googling turned up the other two reports below -- one of which mentions Muslims and the other of which mentions Africans. Was it Africans versus Muslims or just Africans?

(1). Six people have been arrested while shops and a cinema in Melbourne's west were forced to close during a brawl involving more than 150 people. Police were first called to the Highpoint Shopping Centre in Maribyrnong when a brawl, lasting an hour, erupted inside the cinema at 5pm (AEST) yesterday. Officers helped eject a number of fighting youths then returned to Footscray police station.

But the officers were soon called back, when a second brawl, now involving more than 150 people, broke out. Scores of police cars blocked the shopping centre's entrance as officers from 15 stations attended, and the cinema and shops on level one were shut down as the fighting continued. Six people were arrested, some of whom were dragged away, and capsicum spray was used to subdue the crowd. Those arrested face charges including hindering police and resisting arrest. Police will review video footage of the incident as investigations continue.

Source

(2). Police have denied Highpoint shopping centre is a problem area for ethnic gangs after a wild post-Ramadan brawl at the weekend. It is believed the fight between up to 20 youths erupted about 5pm on Saturday after several members of the group were ejected from the Hoyts cinemas because they were caught without tickets. The group then spilled into the centre's food court where several girls began fighting each other. By the time police arrived to disperse the group, numbers had swelled to more than 100.

Sen-Sgt Dave Byrt, from Footscray police, said the group had gathered to celebrate the end of Ramadan. "Saturday night was just one out of the box in terms of one cultural group coming together in the one place," Sen-Sgt Byrt said. Police arrested six people and were forced to use capsicum spray to subdue sections of the crowd.

Sen-Sgt Byrt denied there was a problem with ethnic gangs at the centre. "In terms of Highpoint we wouldn't have any more trouble there than at any other centre," he said. One trader disagreed, saying some of his staff were too intimidated to work weekend night shifts. "A lot of the girls just won't work nights, we have mostly guys on because they know what can happen," the trader said.

Source

(3). Restaurant patronage next to a cinema complex in Melbourne's west was yesterday said to be down, following a series of violent confrontations between rampaging teenagers and at least one altercation with police on Saturday night. African youths were among the crowd of at least 150 teenagers who confronted police in a series of fights that culminated in two brawls at the Highpoint shopping centre, in Melbourne's west, on Saturday. Teenagers charged at police as they arrived to contain a series of fights at the ground-floor entrance to the Hoyts cinema complex, off the Maribyrnong centre's Warrs Road car park, just after 5pm.

Six people were arrested for hindering police after a series of fights broke out between groups of African youths. Police yesterday said about 10 officers were initially called to the scene. They ejected about 30 people from the Hoyts complex and arrested four others. But after clearing the scene, 20 police in a convoy of more than 15 vehicles returned to the shopping centre less than an hour later to clear a crowd of 150 that had gathered outside. They arrested another two youths and used capsicum spray on a group of 20 who charged at them, then shut the cinema and nearby shops as the brawls continued. No police were injured.

Source

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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