An Unprecedented Interview Appears in a Leading Egyptian Newspaper
This week, an amazing and unprecedented interview will appear in the Egyptian newspaper, Almasry Alyoum. It is one of the leading Cairo newspapers, and has an average readership of 200,000 people. What the paper features is an interview with Jeffrey Herf, the University of Maryland historian, about his new and important book, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, published by Yale University Press.
The interview has already appeared online in English. Given the almost constant barrage of anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic propaganda throughout the Arab world, the Herf interview comes as a fresh antidote that will undoubtedly shock many Egyptians and cause great consternation. As the interviewer says to Herf, “Most Arab historians agree that the Nazis did not contribute great ideas that grew in the region, but you posit the opposite.” Herf tells him:
The absurd and false notion that an international Jewish conspiracy existed and was a major force in world politics was a key theme of Nazism’s wartime propaganda. Conspiratorial thinking focused on the supposed power of the Jews persisted after the war in the Middle East. The pejorative and hateful depictions of Jews in Nazi propaganda, the belief that they were inherently evil and that they should be punished as a result found echoes in the postwar publications of the Muslim Brotherhood, the writings of Sayyid Qutb, the postwar activities of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Egyptian government’s propaganda under Nasser and in the Hamas Covenant of 1988.
Remember, these words by Herf will hopefully be read throughout the Arab world. Contrast it, for example, with the sermon about Jews broadcast recently on the official Palestinian Authority TV station, approved by Mahmoud Abbas. The speaker said the following: “The Jews, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger, the enemies of Allah and of His Messenger! Enemies of humanity in general, and of Palestinians in particular – they wage war against us using all kinds of crimes.” These words are akin to those regularly broadcast to the Arab world during World War II by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Palestine, from his radio studio in Nazi Berlin. Keep in mind that Husseini was given asylum in Egypt after the war, and for years, the Nasser regime spread similar words of anti-Semitic hate.
Herf also makes the following point, which must come as dynamite to many Arab readers:
Nazi officials dealing with propaganda aimed at Arabs and Muslims concluded that a selective reading of the Quran and the commentaries about it was their most effective means of reaching this audience. In so doing they drew out the already existing anti-Jewish themes. They presented Islam — not radical, fundamentalist, political or jihadist Islam, but Islam in general –as a religion infused with and inseparable from hatred for the Jews. In their view, from the time that the Jews rejected Prophet Mohammed’s demands that they convert to Islam, the Jews became an “enemy” of Islam. In so doing, Nazism’s Arabic-language propaganda placed the events of the mid-20th century into the far longer context of a supposed, but actually false, Jewish antagonism to Islam as a religion.
Hm. Interesting. The Moubarak dynasty must feel itself pretty imperiled. I wonder whether this sort of reconstruction of Islamist discourse will be persuasive? For example, I believe al Banna began to write prior to Nazism in 1928, and Qutb’s entire discourse in the 1950s and 60s uses the same mechanism (emphasizing inherent theological and juridical anti-Semitism) without any credible Nazi connection. But maybe it will work! Out of curiosity, in what regard is the Soviet Union held? And its sponsorship of Nasserism? As I understand it USSR was very capable of creating Islamic dopplegangers of its philosophy – or in any case it was successful in designing apparently Islamic versions of itself, if only to manipulate the public in one way or another. I wonder whether it ever conducted campaigns in that vein while it had so much influence in Egypt between 1954 and 1970? I presume it must have.
See–by all means see-Pam Geller’s recent work of the relationship between Hitler and the Islamists at Atlas Shrugs.
I forget whether Arafat was the Mufti’s son or grandson. Afrafat learned asymetirical warfare from Skorzeni (Hitler’s Commando) post-war, in the period before Skorzeni realized that he was aiding and abetting a Soviet agenda.
I don’t believe in allah the moon god,(one of 360 false gods at the kabba), or that Mohammed was full of peace. That makes me an enemy of Islam too.
Arafat loved little boys. Come to think of it, so did Mohammed. Sick stuff, and hate from the religion of peace.
Ron,
I was with Dr. Herf 100% until I read this:
“In so doing, Nazism’s Arabic-language propaganda placed the events of the mid-20th century into the far longer context of a supposed, but actually false, Jewish antagonism to Islam as a religion.”
To put it bluntly, he’s wrong about the “false antagonism.” A fair reading of the Qur’an, the hadiths, and the earliest biographies of Muhammad (such as ibn Ishaq’s) all make plain that hostility toward the Jews has deep roots in Islam. Just as one example, in the Sahih Muslim (one of the two most revered collections of hadiths), we find written this command from Muhammad himself:
“Ibn ‘Umar reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: You will fight against the Jews and you will kill them until even a stone would say: Come here, Muslim, there is a Jew (hiding himself behind me) ; kill him.”
(Muslim: 41/6981 http://goo.gl/xngH )
Don’t forget something crucial: According to the Qur’an, Allah’s word, Muhammad is a perfect example for all Mankind for all time, down to the present day. All his attitudes and actions are worth emulating, including hostility toward Jews.
Also, Dr. Bostum has documented roughly 1,300 years of mainstream Muslim Jew-hatred, before the Nazis ever arrived, in his “The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism: From Sacred Texts to Solemn History” – http://goo.gl/9Mev .
It wasn’t that the Nazis infected Islam with their Antisemitism, though they gave it more structure and strengthened its genocidal aspects. No, the truth is that Nazi Antisemitism found a sympathetic resonance in Islam, and a symbiosis was created.
I hope you’re prescient, and that Herf’s book does something to break the grip of Antisemitism in Islamic societies. If it means coddling them with the falsehood that their religion isn’t itself really Antisemitic, fine. It’s certainly still a valuable contribution to the 20th century history of Islam. But I doubt that real progress will be made until the cold truth of Islamic ideology is faced by Muslim and “Infidel” alike.
Number 5 your ignorance is scary.
Hopeful, but please let us know the day AFTER it actually appears in print.
This is very interesting news — that the Egyptians would encourage this knowledge of the Nazi connection in their attempt to lessen the power-hold of the Muslim Brotherhood.
But how much effect it will have … ? Since Mein Kampf is the 2nd best selling book in Muslim lands, just how will this news be taken — as a source or shame — or pride?
All of Jeffrey Herf’s work is incredibly good.
What an astounding…and utterly ridiculous article!
The idea that the Nazis had to convince the Muslims to selectively read the Koran–a text virtually brimming with the most virulent and conspiratorial anti-Semitism–in order to teach them that Islam and Nazism have anti-Semitism in common, is so absurd as to be laughable.
A thousand years before Nazism was ever a twinkle in Hitler’s eye the greatest Muslim theologians and leaders had long accepted and built upon a distingished foundation of Islamic anti-Semitism…and the Nazis had to teach the Muslims this??
If anything, Nazism seems to owe Islam a debt of gratitude. In fact, it was Hitler himself who openly regretted that Europe had accepted Christianity (the “weak and flabby” religion) over Islam, with its martial, totalitarian, and unsparing anti-Semitic theology.
(continued)
As I said, although vital, this information might have some effect on some Muslims — but it’s extent …? Alas.
It’s the Europeans (and Americans) who need to learn about this.
However, the Europeans are so far gone in their repeated orgy of Israel/Jew hatred that they won’t care either.
If one were looking down from outer space in a sort of time warp — and could see how European Jew hatred instigated their own devastation in WWII, and how it clearly is going to once again bring their eradication — this time the final one ….
One would be in awe at their investment in evil and fetishist hatred to the point of their self-destruction.
(last)
We Americans can only hope (and do everything we can) that they don’t drag us down with them –
The academic and “intellectual” elite, from their well-shaded Ivory Towers of denial see Europe as the land to be envied — just as they did the Soviet Union in the l920′s, 30′s and beyond. But now their power and influence has become empowered with deceptive and insidious Political Correctness. There has to be a way found to enlighten those unenlightened false enlightened ones.
Books like Herf’s latest are going to be at the forefront of this battle.
“The idea that the Nazis had to convince the Muslims to selectively read the Koran–a text virtually brimming with the most virulent and conspiratorial anti-Semitism–in order to teach them that Islam and Nazism have anti-Semitism in common, is so absurd as to be laughable.”
The Nazis propagandists essentially poured gasoline on a smoldering fire. It may be hard to believe—but Jews had large and respected communities in Egypt and Iraq some sixty years ago. Their relationships with the Arab Muslims were far from perfect. Still, a Jew could often do quite well in these now intensely hostile lands. The Nazi influence in area of Palestine during the late 1940s was touched on in the movie, Exodus. The author Leon Uris definitely thought Hitler’s surviving goons had worsened the relationship between the Israelis and the Arabs.
Related to this topic is a revealing and instructive article written by Joel S. Fishman in 2007 regarding the history and use of Inversion Propaganda, and how this technique was taught to Muslim nations at first by the Nazis, and then expanded on and perfected for them by the Soviets.
“The Big Lie and the Media War Against Israel:
FROM INVERSION of the TRUTH to INVERSION OF REALITY”
http://www.danielpipes.org/rr/4465.php
the grand mufti was kissing and slobbering all over adolf hitler. and vice versa.
where the sewer spilled out with plenty of the nazi rat line, the mufti with the support of these nazi creatures, called the arabs to run out of israel to gather with the rest ofthe arab countries and destroy the jewish state.
arabs were never forced to flee or pushed out, as were jews in arab countries who had lived there a thousand years at least.
israelis are not the jews of the 20′s and 30′s. a good thing to consider before getting too out of control against the jews. unless, of course one doesn’t mind living or dying in a radioactive crater that was once a country.
As I’m reading it, Herf’s thesis simply mirrors the propaganda often used by Western Muslim Jihadis, scholarly obscurantists, and Jihad apologists to pretend that Jew hatred and infidel hatred by Muslims is somehow a “perversion of a great world religion”, this time not by Muslims, but through that old buggaboo, taint by a white European colonial power. It is an absurd and ignorant thesis.
Hatred of infidels, with special venom reserve for Jews is a congenital, eternal, and sacralized feature of Islam, the Koran, and the exemplar of the founder of Islam, the genocidal maniac Muhammad.
Long before Hitler, long before there was a Germany, Muslims waged genocide against Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrans, and Jews. They didn’t need Herr Hitler to inculcate their Jihad or their genocidal hatred of all things “un-Islamic”. And just because Mein Kampf is a longtime bestseller in Muslim redoubts like Egypt, Syria, or “moderate” Turkey doesn’t mean Hitler’s chicken laid the egg of Muslim hostility. Hitler’s hymnal was full of songs whose themes were already a thousand years older and very familiar in the Arab choir.
The Nazis propagandists essentially poured gasoline on a smoldering fire. It may be hard to believe—but Jews had large and respected communities in Egypt and Iraq some sixty years ago.
Respected? You should read Baath Y’Eor about what it was to be a Jew (or a Christian) in Muslim land. Starting with the fact they had no right to strike a Muslim even in legitimate defence or that more often than not their possessions were stolen throght the fact that the word a of a Muslim had more value than theirs. Also for centuries many Jews in Iran had to feign conversion in order to survive. The fact is that the people telling about the wonderful life of Oriental Jews in Muslim countries were not Oriental Jews but Ashkenazes (European Jews in Christian countries).
Their relationships with the Arab Muslims were far from perfect. Still, a Jew could often do quite well in these now intensely hostile lands
I notice that there is no Oriental Rothschild. All the Jewish success stories took place in Christian countries.
arabs were never forced to flee or pushed out, as were jews in arab countries who had lived there a thousand years at least.
In fact many of the Jewish comunities in Middle East countries had existed, well before the Arabs, some before the Roman Empire (they were visited by the Apostles), even before Alexander. In fact they dated from the fall of Jerusalem to babylonian troops.
The Jewish citizens of Iraq were considered full citizens of that country until the early 1930s. It is my understanding the few had any interest in moving to Palestine (now israel). They felt their situation was secure in Iraq. Baath Y’Eor’s writings deal with much earlier times.
19. David Thompson
Just to let you know – Bat Ye’or and her family were expelled from Egypt in the late 1940′s.
I suggest you google her re her writings and You Tube videos under her name and also “Eurabia.”
Here are a few good links for starters.
Bat Yeor in Israel, 6:27 min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De6-jcG4dm0&feature=related
Extended Text of Above Interview
“From Europe to Eurabia”
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/02/text-bat-yeor-from-europe-to-eurabia.html
Amazon Reviews of her book, “Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis”
http://www.amazon.com/Eurabia-Euro-Arab-Axis-Bat-YeOr/dp/083864077X
The Jewish citizens of Iraq were considered full citizens of that country until the early 1930s.
During a couple decades after the fall of the Ottoman Empire there was a modernist, nationalist movement in Egypt and Arab countries who opposed islamic discrimination against dhimis and women. The proponents of this movement were closer to Mustafa Kemal’s ideas who was strongly secular and despised Islam than to the ones of present day Arab rulers. And the fate of minorities had _not_ been the norm in previous centuries and was _not_ conform to islamic order.
1933 marks the first year the religious word Nazi (from Hebrew Nasi meaning “Knight”) was used as the official new name of the NDSAP in government.
It is frequently and incorrectly claimed that the word “Nazi” comes from the haphazard extraction of letters from the first word of the name of the NSDAP – NAtionalsoZIalistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei to produce a simple abbreviation. This explanation is patently false as the NSDAP already has a perfectly good and well known abbreviation- NSDAP!. The word “Nazi” appeared only after Hitler assumed power invited by Franz Von Papen for an entirely different reason.
The word Nazi/Nasi dates back to the time of the Sanhedrin councils of Palestine first formed by the Romans in the 1st Century BCE. To members of modern Judaism, the Nasi were the appointed spiritual leaders of the Sanhedrin as opposed to the temporal leadership of the High Priest of the Main Temple. While there is some uncertainty as to the credibility of all the claimed history of the office of Nasi and the bloodline of Rabbinical Scholars of the House of Hillel, there is no doubt the position existed at some point.
The problem for modern readers concerning the direct relationship with the Hebrew term (Nasi) for knight and Nazi for the NDSAP as the “New Knights of Germany” is that Hitler and the NDSAP were supposed to be racially opposed to all things “Jewish”. Without an understanding of true history concerning Israel being historically a region called Samara/Samaria and Judah being Yahud, without an understanding of the Phoenician/Samaritan/Sephardic priest-king bloodlines as the Khazars, the Venetians, the kings of Septimania as but a few examples, then the use of the word “Nasi” as “Nazi” seems absurd.
The simple fact is that the 16th century word and label “Jew” masked two distinct and wholly separate ancient religious/cultural/racial groups with absolutely nothing in common except a history of antipathy, hatred, war and rebirth. The Sarmatian/Sephardic/Sadducee priest-kings from the North, inventors of Hebrew, descendents of the Phoenicians being the mortal enemies of the southern Sephardic/Aramaic/Sadducee priest kings of Yahud (Judah). The term “Jew” is equivalent to saying all the people in the Middle East are “Easterners”—falsely claiming a homogeny and cultural identifiable unity.
The etymology of the word Nazi is wholly Sarmatian/Sadducee/Sephardic—the founders of Venice and a set of families that had grown very rich and powerful in their connections with the Roman Cult controlling the Catholic Church since the 12th and 13th Centuries. Today, we know them by the deliberately misleading name of the “Globalist Banksters”.
The shocking truth concerning the Nazis is that rather than seeking to destroy any kind of “Globalist Banking Conspiracy” via the Bank of England, they were in fact dedicated to seeing it re-establish pre-eminent control over European Financial System and ultimately to the Roman Cult of the Vatican, Rome to whom they serve.
The Nazi SS -The Knights of the Holy See
There is a parallel and quite extraordinary change within the power structure of the NSDAP as the Nazis- the rise of Fr. Himmler to Reichführer (also Reichführer Nazi SS) – or Superior General of the Knights of the Holy See.
Many historians deliberately mask the first beginnings of the use of the title Reichführer by dropping off the word “Nazi”, or removing “SS” to somehow claim this position was the official title of the commander of the Schutzstaffel as early as 1925. The reason for this forgery is twofold- one to mask the true date of 1933 as the historic shift in the introduction of the initials SS and secondly to mask the true arrival of Himmler in 1929 and the title Reichführer-Nazi SS in 1933.
But what is more incredible is the fabricated history that continues to hid the absolute fact that in 1933 after the Reich Concordat was signed with the Vatican, Fr. Himmler was elevated in power, name and status above Hitler. Fr. Himmler S.J. as the Reichführer has superior title (as opposed to plain old führer for Hitler). Fr Himmler had complete independent control over all police, paramilitary, intelligence, scientific research and weapons development and the dreaded elite units of over 50,000 just in 1933—and Hitler had absolutely no authority over him. In fact the proof of the distaste each man had for one another is demonstrated in countless war archive movies showing in clear detail the body language of both men.
The fact that Hitler could do nothing against Himmler at the end of the war when it is universally recognized that Himmler was seeking to broker some kind of personal peace deal is more than enough evidence to conclude Hitler was part-puppet to larger forces.
Finally, the fact that neither Hitler nor any of his henchmen ever attempted to assassinate Himmler, in spite of his open usurping of Hitler’s authority on many occasions, is indication the title of Reichführer-Nazi SS and the meaning of the SS is extremely significant.
Your thesis being correct, why was the Kriminal Polizei then abbreviated to KriPo? Why was the contraction GeStaPo used? Do you not think Nazi is no more than similar acronymic abbreviation?