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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.’”
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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