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FTR #416 Fascism, Islamism & Terrorism

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Intro­duc­tion: Fur­ther devel­op­ing the rela­tion­ship between fas­cism and Islamism, the broad­cast access­es infor­ma­tion from Asia Times (a respect­ed Eng­lish-lan­guage dai­ly pub­lished in Hong Kong). In addi­tion to high­light­ing the Mus­lim Brotherhood’s con­nec­tions to the Axis pow­ers of World War II, the pro­gram delin­eates the numer­ous areas of over­lap between the con­tem­po­rary Broth­er­hood and Al Qae­da. (Sol­diers of Hamas, one of the Pales­tin­ian off­shoots of the Broth­er­hood, are pic­tured above, at right. Gun­men from Pales­tin­ian Islam­ic Jihad, anoth­er of the Broth­er­hood’s Pales­tin­ian branch­es, are shown above, at left.)

A major alle­ga­tion set forth here con­cerns Youssef Nada (for­mer head of the Al Taqwa/Nada Man­age­ment com­plex that had strong con­nec­tions to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and Al Qae­da. Nada is pic­tured below, at right.)  Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed in the sec­ond part of the Asia Times series, Nada alleged­ly helped the Grand Mufti escape from Ger­many at the end of World War II. In addi­tion to being a life­long mem­ber of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, Nada was also a Ger­man intel­li­gence agent in World War II. He (Nada) is also a defen­dant in the tril­lion-dol­lar law­suit being pur­sued against mem­bers of the Sau­di elite.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: the polit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and his­tor­i­cal areas of over­lap between the Broth­er­hood and the Axis pow­ers of Europe; the polit­i­cal back­ground and phi­los­o­phy of Sayyid Qutb, one of the sem­i­nal mem­bers of the Broth­er­hood; the Brotherhood’s deci­sive influ­ence on Ayman Al Zawahiri, the num­ber two man in Al Qae­da; the Broth­er­hood back­ground of the pri­ma­ry fig­ure in the assas­si­na­tion of Anwar Al Sadat.

1. After dis­cus­sion of Ahmed Huber, neo-Nazi, Islamist and Al Taqwa direc­tor, the pro­gram quotes Ger­man neo-Nazi and Huber asso­ciate Horst Mahler.

“The USA—or, to be more exact, the World Police has shown itself to be vul­ner­a­ble . . . The fore­see­able reac­tion of the East Coast [=the Jew­ish con­trollers and their gen­tile allies=the US Estab­lish­ment] can be the spark that falls into a pow­der keg. For decades, the jihad—the Holy War—has been the agen­da of the Islam­ic world against the ‘West­ern val­ue sys­tem.’ This time it could break out in earnest . . . It would be world war, that is won with the dag­ger . . . The Anglo-Amer­i­can and Euro­pean employ­ees of the glob­al play­ers.’ Dis­persed through­out the entire world, are—as Osama bin Laden pro­claimed a long while ago—military tar­gets. These would be attacked by dag­ger, where they least expect­ed an attack. Only a few need be liq­ui­dat­ed in this man­ner; the sur­vivors will run off like hares into their respec­tive home coun­tries where they belong.”

(“Islamism, Fas­cism and Ter­ror­ism — Part I” by Marc Erik­son; Asia Times; 11/5/2002; p1.)

2. Inter­est­ing­ly, Mahler’s imagery is sim­i­lar to the iconog­ra­phy of the Bosn­ian Mus­lim suc­ces­sors to the 13th Waf­fen SS.

“ . . .These are the men of the Handzar divi­sion. ‘We do every­thing with the knife, and we always fight on the front­line.’”

(“Alba­ni­ans and Afghans Fight for the Heirs to Bosnia’s SS Past” by Robert Fox; Dai­ly Tele­graph; 12/29/1993.)

3. After dis­cussing the rela­tion­ship between Islamists, Islam­o­fas­cists and neo-Nazis, the pro­gram reviews some of the his­tor­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal con­ver­gence between the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and the Axis.

“Such con­ver­gence of views, meth­ods and goals goes back to the 1920s when both Islamism and fas­cism, ide­o­log­i­cal­ly pre-shaped in the late 19th cen­tu­ry, emerged as orga­nized polit­i­cal move­ments with the ulti­mate aim of seiz­ing state pow­er and impos­ing their ide­o­log­i­cal and social pol­i­cy pre­cepts (in which aims fas­cism, of course, suc­ceed­ed in the ear­ly 20s and 30s in Italy and Ger­many, respec­tive­ly; Islamism only in 1979 in Iran; then in Sudan and Afghanistan). Both move­ments claim to be the true rep­re­sen­ta­tives of some arcane, ide­al­ized reli­gious or eth­ni­cal­ly pure com­mu­ni­ties of days long past—in the case of Islamism, the peri­od of the four right­eous caliphs (632–662), notably the rule of Umar bin al-Khat­tab (634–44) which alleged­ly exem­pli­fies ‘din wa dawla’, the uni­ty of reli­gion and state; in the case of the Nazis, the even more obscure Aryan ‘Volks­ge­mein­schaft’, with no his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence point at all. But both are in reality—as his­to­ri­an Daniel Pipes, direc­tor of the Mid­dle East Forum, puts it—20th cen­tu­ry out­growths, rad­i­cal move­ments, utopi­an and total­i­tar­i­an in their out­look. The Iran­ian schol­ars Ladan and Roya Boroumand have made the same point.”

(“Islamism, Fas­cism and Ter­ror­ism — Part I” by Marc Erik­son; Asia Times; 11/5/2002.)

4.

“But the ‘Supreme Guide [Has­san al-Ban­na] of the brethren knew that faith, good works and num­bers alone do not a polit­i­cal vic­to­ry make. Thus, mod­eled on Mussolini’s black­shirts (al-Ban­na much admired ‘Il Duce’ and soul broth­er ‘Fuehrer’ Adolf Hitler), he set up a para­mil­i­tary wing (slo­gan: ‘action, obe­di­ence, silence’, quite supe­ri­or to the black­shirts’ ‘believe, obey, fight’) and a ‘secret appa­ra­tus’ (al-jihaz al-sir­ri) and intel­li­gence arm of the al-Ikhwan to han­dle the dirt­i­er side—terrorist attacks, assas­si­na­tions, and so on-of the strug­gle for pow­er.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

5. Wide­ly regard­ed as the ide­o­log­i­cal men­tor to Osama bin Laden and the num­ber two man in Al Qae­da, Ayman al-Zawahiri takes his polit­i­cal phils­o­phy from the Broth­er­hood and its pri­ma­ry ide­o­logue, Sayyid Qutb.

“ . . . Such fam­i­ly back­ground notwith­stand­ing, per­haps because of it, al-Zawahiri joined the rad­i­cal Islamist Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (al-Ikhwan al-Mus­limun) as a young boy and was for the first time arrest­ed in 1966 at age 15, when the sec­u­lar gov­ern­ment of Pres­i­dent Gamal Abdel Nass­er round­ed up thou­sands of al-Ikhwan mem­bers and exe­cut­ed its top lead­ers in ret­ri­bu­tion for repeat­ed assas­si­na­tion attempts on the pres­i­dent. One of those exe­cut­ed by hang­ing was chief ide­o­logue Sayyid Qutb. Al-Zawahiri is Qutb’s intel­lec­tu­al heir; he has fur­ther devel­oped his mes­sage, and is putting it into prac­tice.”

(“Islamism, Fas­cism and Ter­ror­ism (Part II)” by Marc Erik­son; Asia Times; 11/5/2002.)

6. Qutb’s role as a pri­ma­ry expo­nent of Islamism is high­light­ed in dis­cus­sion of his work on behalf of the Broth­er­hood.

“But with­out Qutb, present-day Islamism as a nox­ious amal­gam of fas­cist total­i­tar­i­an­ism and extremes of Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism would not exist. His prin­ci­pal ‘accom­plish­ment’ was to artic­u­late the social and polit­i­cal prac­tices of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood from the 1930s through the 1950s—including col­lab­o­ra­tion with fas­cist regimes and orga­ni­za­tions, involve­ment in anti-colo­nial, anti-West­ern and anti-Israeli actions, and the strug­gle for state pow­er in Egypt—in dem­a­gog­i­cal­ly per­sua­sive fash­ion, but­tressed by ten­den­tious ref­er­ences to Islam­ic law and scrip­tures to deceive the faith­ful. Qutb, a one-time lit­er­ary crit­ic, was not a reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ist, but a Goebbels-style pro­pa­gan­dist for a new total­i­tar­i­an­ism to stand side-by-side with fas­cism and com­mu­nism.”

(Idem.)

7. Dis­cussing a major point of alle­giance on behalf of Arabs toward the Third Reich and the Axis, the pro­gram under­scores the anti-colo­nial­ist appeal of the Reich and Mussolini’s Italy. (Recall that the Arab coun­tries were under the stew­ard­ship of Britain and France in the peri­od between the World Wars.)

“Hitler’s ear­ly 1933 acces­sion to pow­er in Ger­many was wide­ly cheered by Arabs of all dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal per­sua­sions. When the ‘Third Reich’ spook and hor­rors were over 12 years lat­er, a favorite excuse among those who felt the need for one was that the Nazis had been allies against the colo­nial oppres­sors and ‘Zion­ist intrud­ers’. Many felt no need for an excuse at all and sim­ply bemoaned the fact that the Nazis’ ‘Final Solu­tion’ to the ‘Jew­ish prob­lem’ had not proved final enough. But affini­ties with fas­cism on the part of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and oth­er seg­ments of Arab and Mus­lim soci­ety went much deep­er than col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ene­my of one’s ene­mies, and col­lab­o­ra­tion itself took some extreme forms.”

(Idem.)

8. The pro­gram high­lights writer Erikson’s hypoth­e­sis con­cern­ing ide­o­log­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ties between Islamism and fas­cism. Mr. Emory notes in this con­text that the “sub­set” of Islam­o­fas­cism is nar­row­er than that of “Islamism.” Past pro­grams have mis­tak­en­ly referred to Wah­habism and Islam­o­fas­cism as rough­ly inter­change­able terms. This is mis­tak­en. Although there are his­tor­i­cal asso­ci­a­tions between Wah­habism and fas­cism, the Wah­habis (like oth­er, non-Sun­ni expo­nents of Islamism) are not all Islam­os­fas­cists. (Some Wah­habis and much of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood would fall in to the cat­e­go­ry of Islam­o­fas­cists.)

“Sub­sti­tute reli­gious for racial puri­ty, the ide­al­ized ummah of the rule of the four right­eous caliphs of the mid-7th cen­tu­ry for the myth­i­cal Aryan ‘Volks­ge­mein­schaft’, and most ide­o­log­i­cal and orga­ni­za­tion­al pre­cepts of Nazism laid out by chief the­o­reti­cian Alfred Rosen­berg in his work The Myth of the 20th Cen­tu­ry and by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, and lat­er put into prac­tice, are in all essen­tial respects iden­ti­cal to the pre­cepts of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood after its ini­tial phase as a group pro­mot­ing spir­i­tu­al and moral reform. This ranges from rad­i­cal rejec­tion of ‘deca­dent’ West­ern polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic lib­er­al­ism (instead embrac­ing the ‘lead­er­ship prin­ci­ple’ and cor­po­ratist orga­ni­za­tion of the econ­o­my) to endorse­ment of the use of ter­ror and assas­si­na­tions to seize and hold state pow­er, and all the way to con­coc­tion of fan­tas­ti­cal anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries link­ing inter­na­tion­al plu­to­crat­ic finance to Freema­son­ry, Zion­ism and all-encom­pass­ing Jew­ish world con­trol.”

(Idem.)

9. One of the high­lights of the pro­gram is the alle­ga­tion that Youssef Nada helped the Grand Mufti escape from Ger­many at the end of World War II.

“Anoth­er val­ued World War II Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor was Youssef Nada, cur­rent board chair­man of al-Taqwa (Nada Man­age­ment), the Lugano, Switzer­land, Liecht­en­stein, and Bahamas-based finan­cial ser­vices out­fit accused by the US Trea­sury Depart­ment of mon­ey laun­der­ing for and financ­ing of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qae­da. As a young man, he had joined the armed branch of the secret appa­ra­tus’ (al-jihaz al-sir­ri) of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and then was recruit­ed by Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence. When Grand Mufti el-Hus­sei­ni had to flee Ger­many in 1945 as the Nazi defeat loomed, Nada report­ed­ly was instru­men­tal in arrang­ing the escape via Switzer­land back to Egypt and even­tu­al­ly Pales­tine, where el-Hus­sei­ni resur­faced in 1946.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

10. In addi­tion to the Grand Mufti, the Broth­er­hood was allied with the fas­cist Green Shirts—the main fas­cist par­ty in Egypt.

“It proved (and improved) its fas­cist core con­vic­tions and prac­tices through col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nazis in the run-up to and dur­ing World War II. It proved it dur­ing the same peri­od through its col­lab­o­ra­tion with the overt­ly fas­cist ‘Young Egypt’ (Misr al-Fatah) move­ment, found­ed by lawyer Ahmed Hus­sein and mod­eled direct­ly on the Hitler par­ty, com­plete with para­mil­i­tary Green Shirts aping the Nazi Brown Shirts, Nazi salute and lit­er­al trans­la­tions of Nazi slo­gans. Among its mem­bers, Young Egypt count­ed two promis­ing young­sters and lat­er pres­i­dents, Gamal Abdel Nass­er and Anwar El-Sadat.”

(“Islamism, Fas­cism and Ter­ror­ism (Part III)” by Marc Erik­son; Asia Times; 11/5/2002.)

11. Indica­tive of the influ­ence of Qutb’s for­mu­la­tions is the fact that his works have had influ­ence in the Shi­ite Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran. (The influ­ence of the Broth­er­hood extends into the Shi­ia, as well as Sun­ni, com­mu­ni­ties.) Qutb’s influ­ence on Bin Laden aid al-Zawahiri is detailed still fur­ther.

“ . . . A lead­ing Broth­er­hood mem­ber arrest­ed in 1954 was Sayyid Qutb. He spent the next 10 years in Jarah prison near Cairo and there wrote the tracts that sub­se­quent­ly became (and till this day remain) must-read­ing and guid­ance for Islamists every­where. (The main trans­la­tions into Far­si were made by the Rah­bar of the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran, Aya­tol­lah Ali Khamanei.) But while broth­er num­ber one went to jail, oth­er lead­ing mem­bers who had escaped were giv­en jobs in Sau­di uni­ver­si­ties and pro­vid­ed with roy­al fund­ing. They includ­ed Sayyid’s broth­er Muham­mad and Abdul­lah al-Azzam, the rad­i­cal Pales­tin­ian preach­er (the ‘Emir of Jihad’) who lat­er in Peshawar, Pak­istan, found­ed the Mak­tab al-Khi­damat, or Office of Ser­vices, which became the core of the al-Qae­da net­work. As a stu­dent at King Abdul Aziz Uni­ver­si­ty in Jed­dah, Osama bin Laden, son of Muham­mad bin Laden, the kingdom’s wealth­i­est con­trac­tor and close friend of King Faisal, became a dis­ci­ple of Muham­mad Qutb and al-Azzam.”

(Ibid.; p. 2.)

12. The dis­cus­sion con­cludes by fur­ther high­light­ing the ide­o­log­i­cal suc­ces­sion from Qutb to Zawahiri, and the latter’s rela­tion­ship to be milieu that assas­si­nat­ed Anwar El Sadat.

“By the late 1970s, he [al-Zawahiri] was back full-time in the Islamist rev­o­lu­tion busi­ness agi­tat­ing against the Egypt-Israel peace treaty (con­clud­ed in 1979). In 1980, on the intro­duc­tion by mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer Abbud al-Zumar, he became a lead­ing mem­ber of the Jama’at al-Jihad of Muham­mad Abd-al-Salam Faraj which on Octo­ber 6, 1981, assas­si­nat­ed Pres­i­dent Anwar El Sadat while he was review­ing a mil­i­tary parade. Faraj, like al-Zawahiri, had been a mem­ber of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, but became dis­en­chant­ed with its pas­siv­i­ty.”

(“Islamism, Fas­cism and Ter­ror­ism (Part IV)” by Marc Erik­son; Asia Times; 11/5/2002.)

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