German court censor of an historic photo for “inciting hatred toward Islam” is just another cover up of the Nazi-Islam ideological connection
The mutual admiration that once existed between the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, and German Nazis is a historical fact that appears to have become too uncomfortable to deal with for some in the West. In Germany, the district court in Munich recently sentenced German journalist Michael Stürzenberger to six months in jail for posting, on his Facebook page, an historical photo of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, shaking the hand of a senior Nazi official in Berlin in 1941. The prosecution accused Stürzenberger of “inciting hatred towards Islam” and “denigrating Islam” by publishing the photo. The court found Stürzenberger guilty of “disseminating the propaganda of anti-constitutional organizations”. The totalitarian impulse, evidently, is still very much alive within parts of the German judiciary. Stürzenberger is appealing the verdict.
While this verdict, on the face of it, appears only to affect the question of freedom of speech in Germany, the ramifications – state suppression of historical facts – have potential implications for Israel, because attempts to revise and control the past affect Israel’s ability to present the historical truth.
In this case, the historical truth consists of the fact that the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini of Jerusalem loved the Nazis and the Nazis rather liked him back. Hitler even speculated that the mufti was a ‘man with more than one Aryan among his ancestors’.
The Left will probably find it interesting that a Nazi helped formulate one of its most repeated falsehoods about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi ideologue, came up with the following screed in 1922 and the Left is still peddling it a hundred years later: “In Palestine the Jews are using the old method of exploiting and driving out by legal means the real population which has lived here for thousands of years,’[1] Rosenberg said.
According to the late historian of antisemitism, Professor Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler ‘regarded Zionism as a mask for the hidden Jewish goal of achieving world power’. The Nazis wanted to reinforce the Arab world as a counterweight to what they saw as ‘the worldwide Jewish peril embodied in Zionism’. Haj Amin, as it turned out, was more than happy to oblige.
According to Wistrich, the mufti’s own wartime objective was a united, independent Arab state encompassing Palestine, Transjordan, Syria and Iraq (so much for being a ‘Palestinian’). Hitler assured the mufti that Germany’s war against the Jews included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine. The mufti on his part said that it was the duty of all Muslims to expel the infidel Jews from the Arab lands, that there could be no toleration of Jews, and that this had been the teaching of Mohammed 1300 years earlier. The mufti, according to Simon Wiesenthal,[2] even enjoyed visits to Auschwitz and Majdanek, where ‘he paid close attention to the efficiency of the crematoria, spoke to the leading personnel and was generous in his praise for those who were reported as particularly conscientious in their work’. Haj Amin, it would appear, was as devoted a Nazi as the Germans he admired.
The admiration of Nazi ideology in the Muslim world, however, is not only a historical curiosity. In 1999, the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) reported that the Arabic translation of ‘Mein Kampf’ had become a bestseller in East Jerusalem and the territories controlled by the PA. When in 2005 ‘Mein Kampf’ was published in Turkey, it was an instant bestseller, selling over 100,000 copies in two months. Kuwaiti scholars, Saudi columnists, Iraqi journalists and Qatari dailies have in all sincerity used ‘Mein Kampf’ as a serious work of reference, generally agreeing that ‘Hitler was right about the Jews’.
It can be argued that Nazism was so well received in the Islamic world, because the fundamental Nazi idea of supremacism appealed to a culture that has been steeped with the underlying and pervasive idea of the Quran – namely that the way of Islam is superior to all other ways of life. Furthermore, the Nazi hatred of Jews resonated with a culture that had nurtured its own Jew hatred since the time of Mohammed.
According to the Quran, people who refuse to acknowledge Allah as the one true god are unbelievers destined for hell: “Verily Allah has cursed the unbelievers and prepared for them a blazing fire” (Quran 33:64). Muslims therefore are superior to all others: “Ye are the best of peoples, evolved for mankind… believing in Allah… If only the People of the Book had faith, it were best for them: among them are some who have faith, but most of them are perverted transgressors.” (Quran 3:110). “Soon shall we cast terror into the hearts of the unbelievers… their abode will be the fire: And evil is the home of the wrong-doers.” (Quran 3:151).
As for specific passages about the Jews, the Quranic passages 5:60 and 7:166 talk of the Jews being cursed and transformed by Allah into apes and pigs: “…those who incurred the curse of Allah and his wrath, those of whom some he transformed into apes and swine, those who worshipped evil…” This is the reason Jews today in large parts of the Muslim world are commonly called apes and pigs. Furthermore, “Jews and pagans [are] among the worst of the enemies of the believers”. (Quran 5:82). These examples constitute only a part of the innumerable examples in the Quran and the hadiths, not to mention the writings of Islamic scholars.
The Left protests the manifestations of relatively small groups of white supremacists in Charlottesville and elsewhere. These represent one form of evil, although a very monitored and marginalized one. The Left though never protest Islamic supremacism.
What makes supremacism ‘bad’ when it comes from Westerners, but ‘good’ when it comes from Muslims? Especially when Islamic supremacism currently manifests itself in almost weekly terrorist attacks against innocent people, whose only crime is that they have not submitted to Islam?
[1] Quoted in Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession, p 663.
[2] Wiesenthal is quoted in Robert S. Wistrich, ’A Lethal Obsession’ p671.
Judith Bergman is a columnist and political analyst.
Excellent article. Merkel is finishing off what Hitler started. She is just using different methods. According to several internet sites (so the data is ballpark) , the number of Jews in Germany is under 100,000 while the population of Muslims is just under 8 million including the million recent invitees. As you pointed out, the Qur’an blatantly denounces and promulgates hatred of Jews throughout so obviously the majority of Muslims in Germany espouse the same belief. What a shame for the German people who have worked so hard to disassociate their country from madman hitler. Essentially a vote for Merkel is a vote for hitler. Wish the German population could understand this.
Postmodern liberals hold that all cultures are equal and that Westerner’s asserted superiority over all the other cultures is the source of all evil in the world. They hold that all knowledge is ethnic, racial and gender based and have at various times asserted that reason is a male tool of oppression or a white tool of oppression, etc.
It all goes back to the left reaction to Western Europe’s Age of Enlightenment with the likes of Rousseau preaching that science is bad, that civilization is corrupt and that innocence is to be found in primitive existence.
With the leftist mentality, our culture represent what Rousseau regards as evil and all other cultures, as in Third World culture, represents the good and innocent. Such cultures include Moslem culture that legitimizes and validates killing unbelievers and oppressing women.
Thus postmodernism has led adherents to reject Enlightenment ideas responsible for the level of civilization Western culture has achieved in favor of the savage and barbaric.