Nazi/Islam Nexus:Inspiration or Conspiracy

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Friday, October 12, 2007

Nazi/Islam Nexus:
Inspiration or Conspiracy

There is a profound debate at the heart of recent revelation's in the evil nexus between Nazism and Islamism.

Melanie Phillips extols the merits of the Nazi roots of Muslim antisemitism in Matthias Kuentzel's forthcoming book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 and arguments put forth in Andrew Bostom's The Legacy of Jihad and his soon to be released The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.

Bostom's "The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism," provides a much more detailed "alignment." Bostom includes a vile, but seminal essay by Nazi propagandist of extermination turned pious Muslim jihadist Johannes Omar Amin von Leers. von Leers writings and career trajectory reveal the true nexus between Islamic Jew hatred, jihad, and Nazism.

In a previous post at Atlas here and in his article at American thinker "Kabaa rage," Bostom writes of

conspiratorial Jew hatred, as part of the warp and woof of Islam's foundational text and history manifested itself repeatedly for more than a millennium prior to the advent of Nazism. Invoking "Nazis" does nothing to explain phenomena such as the 13th century conspiratorial Jew hating accusations, replete with Koranic references, leading to pogroms that accopanied the assassination of Jewish vizier Sa'd ad-Dawla

From the American Thinker:

Might contemporary "Kabaa rage," -- directed, curiously, at a New York structure -- be related to the Muslim world's obsession with Jewish conspiracies against Islam? They date back to Islam's foundational texts, and history.

Koran 5:64, for example ("They [the Jews] hasten about the earth, to do corruption there") reads like an ancient antecedent to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," and was cited in this context during a January 2007 speech by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

After Muhammad's conquest of the Jewish farming oasis at Khaybar, the hadith and sira (early pious Muslim biographies of Muhammad) refer to an event which updates with impeccable logic the Koranic curse upon the Jews (2:61 /3:112) for having wrongfully slain Allah's earlier prophets -- a Khaybar Jewess is accused of serving the Muslim prophet poisoned mutton (or goat), leading ultimately to his protracted and painful death. Ibn Sa‘d's sira (Kitab Al-Tabaqat Al-Kabir) focuses on the Jewish conspiracy behind this alleged poisoning of Islam's prophet.

An additional profoundly anti-Jewish motif occurring after the events recorded in the hadith and sira, put forth in early Muslim historiography (for example, by Tabari), is found in the story of Abd Allah b. Saba. An alleged renegade Yemenite Jew, and founder of the heterodox Shi'ite sect, he is held responsible -- identified as a Jew -- for promoting the Shi'ite heresy and fomenting the rebellion and internal strife associated with this primary breach in Islam's "political innocence," culminating in the assassination of the third Rightly Guided Caliph Uthman, and the bitter, lasting legacy of Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian strife.

Not surprisingly then, conspiratorial accusations against Jews in late 13th century Baghdad included alleged plans to attack Mecca itself and convert the Kabaa to a heathen temple!

The Sad Case of Sa‘d ad-Daula

The brief rise and calamitous fall of Sa‘d ad-Daula, which mirrored the experience of his Jewish co-religionists, took place during this Mongol epoch. Sa‘d ad-Daula was a Jewish physician, who successfully reformed the Mongol revenue and taxation system for Iraq. In recognition of these services, he was appointed by the Mongol emperor Arghun (who reigned from 1284-1291) to the position of administrative Vizier (in 1289) over Arghun's Empire. Despite being a successful and responsible administrator (which even the Muslim sources confirm), the appointment of a Jew as the Vizier of a heathen ruler over a predominantly Muslim region, aroused the wrath, predictably, of the Muslim masses.

According to modern historian Walter Fischel, this reaction was expressed through (and exacerbated by) "...all kinds of [Muslim] diatribes, satirical poems, and libels". Ibn al-Fuwati (d. 1323), a contemporary Muslim historian from Baghdad, recorded this particularly revealing example which emphasized traditional anti-Jewish motifs from the Qur'an:

In the year 689/1291 a document was prepared which contained libels against Sa‘d ad-Daula, together with verses from the Qur'an and the history of the prophets, that stated the Jews to be a people whom Allah hath debased...

Another contemporary 13th century Muslim source, notes Fischel, the chronicler and poet Wassaf,

"...empties the vials of hatred on the Jew Sa‘d ad-Daula and brings the most implausible accusations against him."

These accusations included the claims that Sa‘d had advised Arghun to cut down trees in Baghdad (dating from the days of the conquered Muslim Abbasid dynasty), and build a fleet to attack Mecca and convert the cuboidal Kabaa to a heathen temple. Wassaf's account also quotes satirical verses to demonstrate the extent of public dissatisfaction with what he terms "Jewish Domination."