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ARAB MUSLIM NAZISM - DOCUMENTATION

Reader comment on item: Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World

Submitted by Al (United States), Nov 29, 2010 at 02:38

ARAB MUSLIM NAZISM - DOCUMENTATION

In General - Some of the groups - Irony of non-Aryan "inferior" Arabs', Bosnians' races - Arab Nazi Parties - Grand Mufti - Rashid Ali - Ummar - Al-Banna / Muslim Brotherhood - Reza Pahlevi - Iran - Ibn Saud / S. Arabia - King Farouk / Egypt - Shakib Arslan - Young Egypt - Baath - al-Miqdadi - SSNP - al-Muthanna Club & al-Futuwwa - Najjada - Handschar - Admiration & worshipping

IN GENERAL

An Urgent Wakeup Call
Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism, and the Roots of 9/11, by Matthias Küntzel, trans. Colin Meade, Telos Press, 2007, 180 pp.
Reviewed by Amnon Lord [2008]

"We were the first to think of translating Mein Kampf," wrote Sami al-Jundi, a leader of the Syrian Ba'ath Party in the 1930s. "Whoever lived during this period in Damascus would appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which could serve as its champion" (26). Al-Jundi also confessed that "we were racist, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the sources of its thought, particularly Nietzsche, Fichte, and H. S. Chamberlain" (25).

How many people know that Arab delegations and senior political figures were invited to the annual Nazi rallies in Nuremberg during the 1930s? Such details are not simply random anecdotes from the remote past. Indeed, in his new book Jihad and Jew-Hatred, German scholar Matthias Küntzel argues that the origins of the Islamist terror of recent years, which culminated in the attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, and of the radical anti-Semitic ideologies of Hamas, Hizballah, Iran, the Palestine Covenant, and al-Qaeda, lie in the lethal link between Islamism and Nazism.
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=3&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=253&PID=0&IID=2330&TTL=Amnon_Lord_on_Jihad_and_Jew-Hatred:__Islamism,_Nazism,_and_the_Roots_of_9/11,_by_Matthias_K%C3%BCntzel

The Nazi-Islamist Connection – Herbert Eiteneier, JCPA

Palestinian maps, including in textbooks, do not show Israel at all; Palestinian sources omit the Mufti's role in Nazism and deny the Holocaust, …
http://www.jcpa.org/phas/phas-eiteneier-s06.htm

Der Spiegel, 05/23/2007

World War II
New Research Taints Image of Desert Fox Rommel
By Jan Friedmann
Arabs Shouted "Heil Rommel"

Hitler was celebrated in large parts of the Arab world, and some newspapers even likened him to the Prophet. The Desert Fox was almost as popular as Hitler. "Heil Rommel" was a common greeting in Arab countries.

Many Arabs thought the Germans would free them from the rule of the old colonial powers France and Britain. Hitler had shown how to burst the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles. After Germany defeated France in 1940, chants against the French and British echoed around the streets of Damascus: "No more Monsieur, no more Mister, Allah's in Heaven and Hitler's on earth."

Adolf Hitler assured the exiled Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Muhammad Amin al-Husseini, at a meeting in Berlin in November 1941 that his goal was the "destruction of Jewry living in Arabia." The Führer had racist objections to Arabs as well, though. He declined to shake the Mufti's hand and refused to drink coffee with him.

Hitler nevertheless provided the Mufti, who later sponsored Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, with a budget of 750,000 Reichsmark per month to foment Jihad in Palestine. In an example of ideological flexibility, the SS even recruited Muslim volunteers and declared that the Muslims living in the Balkans belonged to the "racially valuable" peoples of Europe.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,484510,00.html

Indigenous Indians: Agastya to Ambedkar, by Koenraad Elst, [Voice of India] 1993, 483 pages, Page 353 [8185990042, 9788185990040]

Young Fidel Castro would imitate Mussolini in front of the mirror. The secularist Baath Party in Syria and Iraq was modelled on Mussolini's Fascist Party. The Iranian Shah Reza Pahlevi was an open admirer of Hitler (for which he was forced by the British to abdicate in favour of his son).
nbsp;The Muslims in particular were enthusiastic. ...Muslim nations rallied to ally with Hitler: the Bosnian Muslims, the Kalmuks, the Chechen and Ingosh, the Balkans, the Meshkets, and the Krim Tatars. In West Asia, prominant leaders like the Druze leader Shakib Arslan (Walid Jumblatt's father) and the Mufti of Jerusalem allied themselves with Hitler.
http://books.google.com/books?id=exVuAAAAMAAJ&q=Muslims

The war aims and strategies of Adolf Hitler - Page 161 - Oscar Pinkus - 2005 - 537 pages

The sympathies for Hitler extended all the way from the Islamic Bosnians and Albanians in Europe to the Arab countries in Africa and...
http://books.google.com/books?id=gPnjXC1lEJ8C&pg=PA161

Jihad and Jew-hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the roots of 9/11 - Pages 10-11 - Matthias Küntzel - 2007 - 180 pages

Male supremacy, sexual repression, the celebration of jihad and the glorification of a martyr's death in war with unbelievers (al-Banna celebrated "the art of death") and hatred of the Jews all created points of commonality with fascism and Nazism...
http://books.google.com/books?id=q9Y8E-AYVeoC&pg=PR10

Among the many various Arab pro-Nazi, fascist groups

The Arab war effort: a documented account By American Christian Palestine Committee, 1946, p. 7

IN SYRIA AND THE LEBANON connections between certain groups of Syrian leaders and the Axis States were of long standing.... the Iron Shirts (led by Fakhri al-Barudi of the National Bloc, still a member of the Syrian parliament in 1946); the League for National Action (headed by Abdu al-Huda al-Yab, Dr. Zaki al-Jabi and others); the An-Nadi al-Arabi Club of Damascus (headed by Dr. Said Abd Al-Fattah al-Imam); the Councils for the Defense of Arab Palestine (head by well known pro-Nazi leaders, such as Nabi al-Azmah, Adil Arslan and others); the Syrian People's Party...
http://books.google.com/books?&id=fxzPAAAAMAAJ&dq=well+known+pro-Nazi

page 33

With the stimulus that the ex-Mufti exerted and with the German armies sweeping victoriously over the Continent of Europe, the Muthana Club, Moslem Guidance Society, the Palestine Defense Society, the Tajaddad Club, and the Arab Rover Society, to quote the names of but a few bodies and societies, intensified their pro-Nazi subversive activities in the hopes that by so doing they would eventually, through enemy assistance, realize their Pan-Arab aspirations.
http://books.google.com/books?id=KGMZAAAAIAAJ&dq=defense+of+palestine

Die Welt des Islams, 1985, [Wild, Stefan. "National Socialism in the Arab near East between 1933 and 1939."] p. 127

In the following section I shall describe five parties and movements in the Arab word which to a greater or lesser degree had taken over certain elements of National Socialism or Fascism, namely the Baath (Ba'th)- Party, the Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party, the Kataeb (katd'ib), Young Egypt (Misr al-Fatdh) and the Futuwwa. I shall then concentrate briefly on ideological factors like the influence of Friedrich Nietzsche, the concept of the "strong nation", racialism and European antisemitism.
http://books.google.com/books?&id=bQcsAAAAIAAJ&dq=five+parties
[PDF] http://www.tcd.ie/history//undergraduate/pdf/bwwii/jstorarticles/Stefan%20Wild%20National%20Socialims%20in%20the%20Arab%20Middle%20East%201933%201939.pdf

Letter to an Arab friend By André Chouraqui, Univ of Massachusetts Press, 1972

In 1936... That year an Arab High Committee was formed in the month of April and was presidedover by the mufti, Hadz Amin el Husseini. It included the most reactionary elements of the Arab world and enleashed a revolt which transformed Palestine into a stronghold occupied by more than twenty thousand British soldiers. These Arab elements had been inspired by Fascists and Nazis, a fact since established by the publication of the secret Wilhemstrasse Archives. The Arab High Committee had receieved the financial support of the Nazis and Fascists who financed the revolt, with the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, acting as intermediary. Hitler and his police achieved in Palestine what they had attempted throughout the Arab world (against the Jews)
http://books.google.com/books?id=l6FoAeIPcuEC&pg=PA108

Confronting fascism in Egypt: dictatorship versus democracy in the 1930s - Page 273 - I. Gershoni, James P. Jankowski - 2009 - 344 pages

The activities of the radical youth organization al-Futuwwa are considered a a manifestation of Nazi youth indoctrination practices, and speeches supporting Nazism delivered in Baghdad's Pan-Arab al- Muthanna Club perceived as reflecting popular support for Nazi Germany among the Iraqi effendiyya.
In Syria, studies analyzing the process of radicalization in the 1930s often highlight pro-fascist tendencies among various newly created nationalist [p. 274] organizations. These tendencies are seen as having manifested themselves particularly in the mushrooming of new radical youth organizations such as the League of National Action, the Lion Cubs of Arabism, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party led ny Antun Sa'ada, the Arab Club, the Steel Shirts, the early Ba'ath movement, and various radical Islamic organizations. In Lebanon, the White Shirts, the najjada...
http://books.google.com/books?id=Aukt0sWDJcsC&pg=PA273

Del fuego: Sephardim and the Holocaust - Solomon Gaon, M. Mitchell Serels - 1995 - 258 pages [Page 114] Publisher Sepher-Hermon Press, 1995 [ISBN 0872031438, 9780872031432

...in Syria and Lebanon, we found for example the Iron Shirts, the League of National Action, the Ah-Nadi al-Arabi Club of Damascus, the Councils for the Defense of Arab Palestine, headed at the time by the well known pro-Nazi leaders such as NabichAl-Azma and Adil Arslan. There was the Syrian Popular Party which was led at the time by a well known Fascist, Anton Saade. He escaped during the war to Germany, and from there with the help of ...the principal party is Syria and more particularly the Istiqlal group headed by Shukri al...
http://books.google.com/books?id=3rMWAQAAIAAJ&q=arslan

Cuadernos de historia mundial: : Volume 5, Issue 1 - International Commission for a History of the Scientific and Cultural Development of Mankind, 1959, p. 240

The years of the Second World War saw the struggle of democracy against Nazi-Fascist totalitarianism, with Arab sympathies tipped in favour of the latter, not because of any ...The National Syrian Party in Syria and Lebanon, the Kata'ib al-Lubnaniyyah (The Lebanese Phalanges), and the Najjadah in Lebanon, the Futuwwah in Iraq, and the Blue Shirts and Green Shirts in Egypt, were among the most conspicuous of these organizations--all appeared in the fourth decade of the century. The peninsula continued to be isolated and immune to such currents, though enjoying its own theocratic totalitarianism, Islam.
http://books.google.com/books?&id=BrcfAQAAIAAJ&dq=najjadah

(Cahiers d'histoire mondiale: Journal of world history. Cuadernos de historia mundial. v.1-14; juil. 1953-1972, Volume 5, Author: Unesco Publisher: Éditions de la Baconnière, 1959, p. 240
http://books.google.com/books?&id=VvwIAQAAIAAJ&q=futuwwah

Studies in Asian history: proceedings Author: Indian Council for Cultural Relations Publisher: Asia Pub. House [for] Indian Council for Cultural Relations, 1969, p. 412
http://books.google.com/books?id=2lrRAAAAMAAJ&q=nazi)

A History of Fascism, 1914-1945 - by Stanley G. Payne - 1996, p. 352

The Fascist regime had him proclaimed a "hero of Islam" and "defender of Islam" in Italian Libya, where a parallel Libyan Arab Fascist Party was created. If Mussolini supported Zionists to some extent as a lever against the British Empire, both he and Hitler subsidized Haj Amin el Husseini, the violently anti-Jewish grand mufti of Jerusalem. Anti-Jewish feeling mounted in parts of the Middle East during the 1930s, as the Fascist and Nazi regimes and doctrines made increasing sense to many Arab nationalists. King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia sought German arms and contacts and was favorably received. Various delegations of Syrians and Iraqis attended the Niirnberg party congresses, and there were several different Arabic translations of Mein Kampf. Both the German and Italian regimes were active in propaganda in the Arab world, and there was much pro-German sentiment in Egypt. At least seven different Arab nationalist groups had developed shirt movements by 1939 (white, gray, and iron in Syria; blue and green in Egypt; ... Syrian... Iraqi Futuwa... Young Egypt Movement ... all three were territorially expansionist, with Sami Shawkat, the Futuwa ideologue, envisioning the "Arab nation" as eventually covering half the globe (though by vonversion...
http://books.google.com/books?id=NLiFIEdI1V4C&pg=PA352

Ironically, Arabs, or even Slavic-Muslims were considered "inferior" to Nazi Aryans

The Mufti of Jerusalem: Haj Amin al-Husseini and the Palestinian National Movement, by Philip Mattar, [Columbia University Press] 1992

...Nazis viewed the Arabs with contempt. Arabs in Germany received the discriminatory treatment consistent with Nazi racial theories...
http://books.google.com/books?id=XH8qTS5xNUIC&pg=PA100

War aims in the second world war: the war aims of the major belligerents, 1939-45, by Victor Rothwell, Edinburgh University Press, 2005 [ISBN 0748615032, 9780748615032, 244 pages] p. 41

... However, the Nazis were clear in their minds that the Arabs were racially inferior, and there would, therefore, be no pleasure to be had from helping them in anything except for the extermination of Jews in their region.
http://books.google.com/books?id=XfgLbSc94MEC&pg=PA41

SS: Hell on the Western Front - Page 70 - Chris Bishop, Michael Williams - 2003 - 192 pages

On the face of it, Slavic Muslims from southern Europe did not fit too well into the Nazi racial ideology of the Master Race. However, as so often happened, Himmler came up with his own crackpot theories to make them acceptable. Bosnian ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=iqWZov065T4C&pg=PA70

Arab Nazi Parties

Highlights:

* Palestine, Iraq Arab activists attempt to found 'Arab Nazi Parties' - first rejected by the German Nazis.

* Establishing of the Palestine 'Arab Nazi Party.'

* The Nazi 'Hitler youth' modelled "Futuwwa" in Palestine.

Middle Eastern Myths - "The Myth of Yasser Arafat" by Dr. Richard Booker

During the war, Arab Nazi parties were founded throughout the Middle East.
http://www.rbooker.com/articles/TheMythofYasserArafat.PDF

First things: Issues 154-158, Institute on Religion and Public Life – 2005 – [Page 14]

Several of the Arab political parties founded during the 1930s were modeled after the Nazi party, including the Syrian Popular Party and the Young Egypt Society, which were explicitly anti-Semitic in their ideology and programs. …
http://books.google.com/books?id=4-gnAAAAYAAJ&q=modeled

The third Reich & the Palestine question," Francis R. Nicosia, Transaction Publishers, 2000, pages 90-91

[page 90]
After 1933, there were attempts in the Arab world to establish political parties based on Fascist or Nationa Socialist principles and organization. Both [German representatives: Fritz] Grobba and [Heinrich] Wolf were approached in 1933 by individuals with plans to create National Socialist parties in Iraq and Palestine, respectively. The Palestine correspondent of the news-paper Al-Ahram, Joseph Francis, represented a group of Palestinian Arabs who were interested in establishing such a party. Francis wrote to Wolf in April, 1933, requesting the help of the Consulate-General in thsi endeavor. In Baghdad, a similar overture was made to Fritz Grobba by Abdul Ghaffur el-Bedri, publisher of the newspaper Istiqlal, and a group of his supporters, Wolf's strong opposition to any sort of German encouragement or support for an Arab Nazi party in Palestine was conveyed in a note to the Foreign Office in Berlin in June, 1933,... In Berlin, the Foreign Office concurred with Wolf's opposition to Arab efforts to involve Germany in the creation of an Arab National party in Palestine... provided the rationale behind the instructions issued to Wolf on the matter...
The objections that Herr Wolf has raised against the promotion of an Arab National Socialist movement by official German representatives are fully supported here. Given the notorious political unreliablity of the Arabs"
[page 91]
Wolf was instructed to discourage contact between pro-Nazi Arabs and the various Ortsgruppen [local branches] of the NSDAP in Palestine, to which many Palastinadeutche were beginning to flock...
http://books.google.com/books?id=8X2G1G_jD-4C&pg=PA90&lpg=PA90

Armies of the young: child soldiers in war and terrorism By David M. Rosen, page 106

...The shrill calls to take up extremist politics invoked a symbolism that glorified youth, violence, and death. By 1936 Al Difaa, the paper of the Istiqlal movement and the most widely read paper in the Arab community, proclaimed, in clearly fascist tones, that "youth must go out to the field of battle as soldiers of the Fatherland." Others argued that the "Land is in need of a youth, healthy in body and soul like Nazi youth in Germany and the fascist youth in Italy which stands ready for the orders of its leaders and ready to sacrifice its life for the honor of its people and freedom of its fatherland."

…Nationalist rhetoric accompanied major efforts to build fascist-style youth organizations by recruiting young men to serve as the strike force of the nationalist movement. Throughout the 1930s the children of wealthy Palestinians returned home from European universities having witnessed the emergence of fascist paramilitary forces. Palestinian students educated in Germany returned to Palestine determined to found the Arab Nazi Party. The Husseinis used the Palestinian Arab Party to establish the al-Futuwwa youth corps, which was named after an association of Arab Nazi Scouts. By 1936 the Palestinian Arab Party was sponsoring the developments of storm troops patterned on the German model. These storm troops, all children and youth, were to be outfitted in black trousers and red shirts… The young recruits took the following oath: "Life — my right; independence — my aspiration; Arabism — my country, and there is no room in it for any but Arabs. In this I believe and Allah is my witness."
[...]
The al-Futuwwa youth groups connected Palestinian youth to fascist youth movements elsewhere in the Middle East. While the Mufti was establishing youth groups in Palestine, al-Futuwwa groups were established in Iraq.
http://books.google.com/books?id=zQYQ0tho6mAC&pg=PA106

The birth of the Palestinian refugee problem revisited, Benny Morris, Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 28

More important in 'militarization' of Arab Palestine was the establishment by the Hussenis of the Futuwa (youth companies), in which youngsters were trained in military drill and the use of weapons. The movement, modelled after the Nazi youth organizations...
http://books.google.com/books?id=uM_kFX6edX8C&pg=PA28

A durable peace: Israel and its place among the nations, Binyamin Netanyahu, 2000, p. 209

during this period in Damascus would appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power ...In Palestine the Mufti's clan founded the Palestinian Arab Party, which party leader Jamal Husseini asserted was based on the Nazi model..
http://books.google.com/books?id=sj5DqVLshOUC&pg=PA209

History Upside Down: The Roots of Palestinian Fascism and the Myth of Israeli Aggression, by David Meir-Levi, 2010 [ISBN 1458766667, 9781458766663], p. 8

In the early 1930s, as many Arabs in British Mandatory Palestine looked toward an alliance with Hitler as leverage against Britain, al-Husseini ... The youth organization established by the mufti used Nazi emblems, names, and uniforms. Germany reciprocated by setting up scholarships for Arab students, hiring Arab apprentices at German firms, and inviting Arab political leaders to the Nuremberg party rallies and Arab military leaders to Wehrmacht maneuvers.
http://books.google.com/books?id=nJSd7fZ-GhYC&pg=PA8

The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin Al-Husseini By Chuck Morse – Page 28 – 2003 – 186 pages

Al- Husseini's own Palestine Arab Party stood for the expulsion of all Jewish settlers and an independent Arab … efforts to assist in the development of what would become distinctly Nazi-Arab style organizations and political parties…
http://books.google.com/books?id=HGkthBwbNg8C&pg=PA28

Grand Mufti - Hajj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini

(Hajj Amin al-Husayni)

Highlights:

* Meeting with Hitler (November 1941).

* Main link between Nazis and the Arab world.

* The 'Fuhrer of the Arab world.'

* Pushing for Genocide, even intervened to reroute children heading to Palestine, which were sent to the gas chambers instead.

* Instigating anti-British violence in Palestine and anti-Jewish violence in: Palestine, Iraq.

* His mixed Anti-Semitic Quran speeches made his: most popular radio station in the Arab world.

* Set up the 'Arab Legion.'

* Recruited SS Muslim-Nazi units.

* Nazi aid to his activities in Palestine.

* His holy war, Jihad against: Great Britain, the United States, the Jews, and the West.

* His radical Islamic hatred legacy till today & the foundation of the Middle East conflict.

Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam, David Dalin, John Rothmann, Alan Dershowitz

A chilling, fascinating, and nearly forgotten historical figure is resurrected in this riveting work that links the fascism of the last century with the terrorism of our own. Written with vigor and extraordinary access to primary sources in several languages, Icon of Evil is the definitive account of the man who, during World War II, was called "the fuhrer of the Arab world" and whose ugly legacy lives on today. With new and disturbing details, David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann show how al -Husseini ingratiated himself with his hero, Adolf Hitler, becoming, with his blond hair and blue eyes, an "honorary Aryan" while dreaming of being installed as Nazi leader of the Middle East. Al-Husseini would later recruit more than 100,000 Muslims in Europe to fight in divisions of the Waffen-SS, and obstruct negotiations with the Allies that might have allowed four thousand Jewish children to escape to Palestine. Some believe that al-Husseini even inspired Hitler to implement the Final Solution. At wars end, al-Husseini escaped indictment at Nuremberg and was harbored in France. Icon of Evil chronicles al-Husseinis postwar relationships with such influential Islamic figures as the radical theoretician Sayyid Qutb and Saddam Husseins powerful uncle General Khairallah Talfah and his crucial mentoring of the young Yasser Ararat. Finally, it provides compelling evidence that al-Husseinis actions and writings serve as inspirations today to the leaders of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations pledged to destroy Israel and the United States.
http://books.google.com/books?id=QMts5Z36kjAC

p. 131

During the 1920 and 1930s. Haj Amin al-Husseini was one of the first radical Islamic leaders to issue fatwas, or religious rulings, calling for jihad, or holy war, against Great Britain, the United States, the Jews, and the West. Since Workd War I, during which al-Husseini served as an officer in the Ottoman Turkish army, the fatwa was served as a major instrument by which Islamic religious leaders have impelled their followers to engage in acts of jihad, which invariably involved acts of violence and terrorism.
http://books.google.com/books?id=QMts5Z36kjAC&pg=PA131

"The Mufti of Berlin
Arab-Nazi collaboration is a taboo topic in the West", Daniel Schwammenthal, Wall Street Jounal, September 24, 2009

...the Palestinian wartime leader "was one of the worst and fanatical fascists and anti-Semites," .... He intervened with the Nazis to prevent the escape to Palestine of thousands of European Jews, who were sent instead to the death camps. He also conspired with the Nazis to bring the Holocaust to Palestine. The mufti "invented a new form of Jew-hatred by recasting it in an Islamic mold," according to German scholar Matthias Küntzel. The mufti's fusion of European anti-Semtism—particularly the genocidal variety—with Koranic views of Jewish wickedness has become the hallmark of Islamists world-wide, from al Qaeda to Hamas and Hezbollah. During his time in Berlin, the mufti ran the Nazis' Arab-language propaganda radio program, which incited Muslims in the Mideast to "kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion." Among the many listeners was also the man later known as Ayatollah Khomeini, who used to tune in to Radio Berlin every evening, according to Amir Taheri's biography of the Iranian leader. Khomeini's disciple Mahmoud Ahmadinejad still spews the same venom pioneered by the mufti as do Islamic hate preachers around the world.
Muslim Judeophobia is not—as is commonly claimed—a reaction to the Mideast conflict but one of its main "root causes." It has been fueling Arab rejection of a Jewish state long before Israel's creation.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574400532495168894.html

Global Issues: Selections From CQ Researcher - Page 158 - CQ Researcher - [Pine Forge Press] 2009 [ISBN 1412980372, 9781412980371] - 368 pages

The Mufti fled Palestine in 1938 to avoid arrest by the British for his part in the Arab revolt. He spent most of the war in Berlin, recruiting Bosnian Muslims for the SS, the semi-military Nazi organization that oversaw Hitler's extermination of the Jews. From 1939 to 1945, the Mufti's Arabic radio broadcasts, which mixed anti-Semitic propaganda with quotes from the Koran, made his station the most popular in the Arab world.
[...]
In 1943, as a propaganda stunt, SS leader Heinrich Himmler wanted to permit 5,000 Jewish children to emigrate to Palestine, in exchange for 20,000 German prisoners. The mufti fought against the plan, and the children were sent to the gas chambers. The Nazis funded the burgeoning growth of Muslim fundamentalism, helping the radical Muslim Brotherhood distribute Arabic translations of Mein Kampf, ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=6HPB3DlB-m8C&pg=PA158

A Diary of Four Years of Terrorism and Anti-Semitism [iUniverse
ISBN 0595793002, 9780595793006] - Page 209

One of Mr. Arafat's personal heroes, the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, visited Auschwitz and reproached the Germans for not being more determined in exterminating the Jews. In 1985, Mr. Arafat paid the mufti homage, saying he was 'proud to no end' to be walking in his footsteps.
http://books.google.com/books?id=HSpmk7x0rbMC&pg=PA209

Free Europe: Volume 6 - Free Europe, 1942 [Original from Indiana University] - Page 41

The Grand Mufti... He has met Hitler. Berlin nurses and spends lavishly on every kind of minority movement which can spread confusion and ...the days of the Grand Mufti are not yet ended. he is cast for a leading role in the Nazi plans for the Middle East.... This is where the co-operation of Rashid Ali, ex-King Amanullah and the Mufti of Jerusalem is of vital importance ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=pEHTAAAAMAAJ&q=met+hitler

Antisemitism, a history portrayed, by Janrense Boonstra, Hans Jansen, Joke Kriesmeyer, Anne Frank Stichting [Anne Frank Foundation] 1989 [ISBN 9012062020, 9789012062022] p. 101

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem In 1914, the periodical Falastin - with its extremist Arab nationalist slant - was abolished by the Ottoman authorities because of its racist hate propaganda.
http://books.google.com/books?id=mMEsAQAAIAAJ&q=1914

LIFE - Nov 8, 1937 - Page 104 - Vol. 3, No. 19 - 136 pages - Magazine - Full view

Chief Arab troublemaker (above, left) was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, who played a two faced game with the British.
http://books.google.com/books?id=kD8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA104

Jihad and Jew-hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the roots of 9/11 - Page 11 - Matthias Küntzel - 2007 - 180 pages

and weapons to assist the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin el- Husseini and the "Arab revolt" of 1936-1939 in Palestine ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=q9Y8E-AYVeoC&pg=PR11

The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin Al-Husseini, Chuck Morse iUniverse, 2003 - History - 186 pages

This is the remarkable story of Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was in many ways as big a Nazi villain as Hitler himself, and to understand his influence on the Middle East is to understand the ongoing genocidal program against the Jews of Israel. Al-Husseini was a bridge figure in terms of transporting the Nazi genocide in Europe into the post-war Middle East.
As the leader of Arab Palestine during the British Mandate period, al-Husseini introduced violence against moderate Arabs as well as against Jews. Al-Husseini met with Adolf Eichmann in Palestine in 1937 and subsequently went on the Nazi payroll as a Nazi agent.
Al-Husseini played a pivotal behind-the-scenes role in instigating a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq in 1941, in urging Nazi's and pro-Nazi governments in Europe to transport Jews to death camps, in training pro-Nazi Bosnian brigades, and in funneling Nazi loot into post-war Arab countries.
http://books.google.com/books?id=HGkthBwbNg8C

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In August 1929, leaflets prepared by the mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini instructed Muslims to attack the Jews
http://books.google.com/books?id=Dunx_i1P6fMC&pg=PA42

Al-Husseini also helped incite the series of pogroms which lasted from 1936 to 1939, in which hundreds more Jews were killed
http://tech.mit.edu/V123/N12/kraus12.12c.html

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The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement, Philip Mattar, Columbia University Press, 1992, p. 95

They were to go to Iraq, disguise themselves as Arabs, kidnap or kill the Mufti, and destroy oil installations. ... Amir 'Abdullah's Arab Legion, and the Transjordanian Frontier Force (Arab troops recruited by the Palestine government ). In a desperate attempt, the Mufti issued a fatwa urging Arabs and Muslims to help Iraq free herself from British imperialism. The fatwa was the most anti- British statement he had ever made,
http://books.google.com/books?id=XH8qTS5xNUIC&pg=PA95

The Mufti's Conversation with Hitler [JVL]

The Arab Legion would he quite easy to raise. An appeal by the Mufti to the Arab countries and the prisoners of Arab, Algerian, Tunisian, and Moroccan ...
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/mufti2.html

A durable peace: Israel and its place among the nations - Page 20 - Binyamin Netanyahu - 2000 - 482 pages

Mufti... Husseini expressed his willingness to cooperate with Germany in every way, including the recruitment of an Arab Legion to fight for the Nazis. Hitler told the Mufti that the two of them shared the common goal of the destruction of Palestinian Jewry...
http://books.google.com/books?id=sj5DqVLshOUC&pg=PA209

---

Once the mufti relocated permanently to Berlin, where he established his own Reich-supported "bureau," he was given airtime on Radio Berlin. From [[Berlin]] and other fascist capitals in Europe, the mufti continued to agitate for the destruction of international Jewry, as well as a pan-Arab and pan-Islamic alliance with the Nazi regime, he explained to the German ambassador, Ettel, his plan to bring all Arabs under the banner of Pan-Arabism over to the side of the Axis. (25 June 1942). Here he came out unconditionally for the "final solution" of the Jewish question," calling on the Germans to wipe out all Jews, "not even sparing the children." http://books.google.com/books?id=nvD2rZSVau4C&pg=PA497

Al-Husseini was welcomed into Baghdad with cheering crowds and he was hailed as a pan-Arab hero and as a defender of the faith with the same zeal that Hitler was being hailed at Nazi rallies. Upon his arrival, he immediately launched into political intrigue by organizing and effectively gaining control of the secretive pan-Arab and pro-Nazi Iraqi Arab National Party. The agenda of this party was to link up with likeminded groups in Syria, Transjordan, and cis-Jordan (Palestine) for the purpose of throwing out the colonial powers and forming an independent and United Ummah.
http://books.google.com/books?id=HGkthBwbNg8C&pg=PA49

After instigating a pogrom against Jews in Palestine in 1920, the first such pogrom against Jews in the Arab world in hundreds of years, he went on to inspire the development of pro-Nazi parties throughout the Arab world including Young Egypt, led by [[Gamal Abdul Nasser]], and the Social Nationalist Party of Syria led by Anton Sa'ada.
http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/2/20/145726.shtml

Jihad and Jew-hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the roots of 9/11 - Page 31 - Matthias Küntzel - [Telos Press Publishing] 2007 - 180 pages [ISBN 0914386360, 9780914386360] - Preview

"The Mufti himself," wrote Klaus Gensicke in his seminal study, "acknowledged that at that time it was only due to the German funds he received that it had been possible to carry through the uprising in Palestine..." In addition, German weapons were sent through secret channels... In 1920, soon after his return to the mandate territory, he incited anti-Jewish riots in Jerusalem...
http://books.google.com/books?id=q9Y8E-AYVeoC&pg=PA31

The Gramsci Factor: 59 Socialists in Congress - Page 113 - Chuck Morse - 2002 - 172 pages

The British backed a successful countercoup and the Mufti proceeded on to Berlin where he was appointed by the Nazi's as titular head of a Nazi-pan Arab government in exile.
http://books.google.com/books?id=OvV69F3yLukC&pg=PA113

Hajj Amin al-Husayni: The Mufti of Jerusalem [United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]

Hajj Amin al-Husayni: The Mufti of Jerusalem Apr 1, 2010 ... 1974) was the Mufti (chief Muslim Islamic legal religious authority) of ... in Palestine; 3) promotion of himself as a pan-Arab and Muslim religious leader. ... Hajj Amin al-Husayni: Arab Nationalist and Muslim Leader ...
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007665

Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against the West - Page 80 - Walid Phares - 2006 - 310 pages [isbn=1403975116]

"Jihadists and World War II"... While Nazi infidels were ultimately anathema to jihadists, the alliance answered all their practical needs at the moment.
http://books.google.com/books?id=VlUJdPp76dMC&pg=PA80
[p. 81]
"the Third Reich's leading Muslim ally"
http://books.google.com/books?id=VlUJdPp76dMC&pg=PA81

Jihad and international security - Page 31 - Jalīl Rawshandil, Sharon Chadha - [Publisher Macmillan] 2006 - 235 pages - [ISBN 1403971927]

Jihad against Israel
Perhaps the longest-running jihad in today's world is the struggle to reclaim Israel for the Muslims. During World War II, the highest ranking Islamic cleric of Jerusalem, the Grand Mufti... Hajj Amin el-Husseini.. ...He also helped recruit Bosnian Muslims for the German SS116 and worked to prevent further immigration to Palestine thus ensuring that many Jews would end up in death camps instead. In 1948, a month before the Arab states declared ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=J3jbvGFl39MC&pg=PA31

1948: a history of the first Arab-Israeli war - Benny Morris - 2008 - pAGE 21 - 524 pages

The exiled al-Husseini himself helped raise a brief anti-British revolt in Baghdad in spring 1941 and then fled to Berlin, where he served the Nazi regime for four years by broadcasting anti-British, jihadist propaganda to the Middle East and recruiting Bosnian Muslims for the Wehrmacht.
http://books.google.com/books?id=CC7381HrLqcC&pg=RA21

Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam - Page 51 - David Dalin, John Rothmann, Alan Dershowitz - 2009 - 227 pages

On this visit to Auschwitz, al-Husseini reportedly urged the guards in charge of the chambers to be more diligent and efficient in their efforts...
http://books.google.com/books?id=QMts5Z36kjAC&pg=PA51

The legacy of Islamic antisemitism: from sacred texts to solemn history - Andrew G. Bostom - [Prometheus Books] 2008 - 766 pages - Page 94]

From this sanctuary, he provided active support for the Germans by recruiting Bosnian Muslims, in addition to Muslim minorities from the Caucasus, for dedicated Nazi SS units. The mufti's objectives for these recruits — and Muslims ...
http://books.google.com/books?&id=yIkQAQAAIAAJ&dq=sanctuary

The Gramsci Factor: 59 Socialists in Congress - Page 72 - Chuck Morse - 2002 - 172 pages

Adolf Eichmann actually visited Palestine and met Husseini at that time and subsequently maintained regular ... Husseini recruited Bosnian Muslims in Nazi occupied Yugoslavia in his efforts to ethnically cleanse their country of Jews. ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=OvV69F3yLukC&pg=PA72

Palestine, 1948: war, escape and the emergence of the Palestinian refugee problem - Page 43 - Yoav Gelber - [Sussex Academic Press] 2006 - 436 pages

... who had refused to return to communist Poland; Bosnians who had served in the Nazi Muslim legion; Croat Ustasha and Serb Chetniks who had fled from Yugoslavia to Italy; and British defectors from the army and the Palestine police. ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=UcSUgrDsD_sC&pg=PA43

Institute for Global Jewish Affairs – Global Antisemitism, Anti-Israelism, Jewish Studies

The Mufti of Jerusalem

Haj-Amin el-Husseini and National-Socialism, by Jennie Lebel, translated by Paul Münch from Serbian, Belgrade: Čigoja štampa, 2007, 374 pp.
Reviewed by Wolfgang G. Schwanitz

Amin al-Husaini mixed the old traditional and the new racial hatred of Jews into a new ideology which served the totalitarian cause quite willingly.
For his part, the mufti said in 1961 that the Nazis needed no persuasion in their racism against Jews. But Hitler and the mufti influenced each other for the worse.
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=624&PID=0&IID=2967

---

Genocide, critical issues of the Holocaust: a companion to the film, Genocide - Page 132 [ISBN 0940646048, 9780940646049] - Alex Grobman, Daniel Landes, Sybil Milton - [Behrman House, Inc] 1983 - 501 pages

Only the turning tide on the North African front rescued Tunisian Jews from annihilation. ... From the mufti of Jerusalem to Anwar Sadat (then merely a junior cadet in Egypt), Muslims in the East regarded Germany with approval. ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=8ppCqANI50UC&pg=PA132

The Holocaust conspiracy: an international policy of genocide - Page 235 - William R. Perl - [SP Books] 1989 [ISBN 0944007244, 9780944007242] - 261 pages

With Saudi Arabia in the forefront, the Arabs have repeatedly called for the destruction of the Jewish state. They have proclaimed the Jihad, Holy war, against Israel, the war which according to the Koran must end with the enemy's total annihilation. In this endeavor the Arabs are making use of the methods applied by the Germans during the Holocaust as well as by directions resulting from their employment of former SS officials.
[...]
As we have stated before in this chapter, history must be viewed as a continuum. Such an unfortunate continuum regarding the Holocaust exist in the continuing Nazi-Arab connection. The influence of these two groups upon each other is mutual. Too little attention is being paid to the way in which Arabs contributed to the effectiveness of the Final Solution program. Haj Amin el Husseini, head of the Supreme Muslim Council and Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a venomous Jew-hater, had prior to the war organized Arab terrorism against the Jews in Palestine. From 1941 on, he spent much of his time shuttling between Berlin and Rome. He met in Berlin with Ernst von Weizsaecker, State Secretary in the German Foreign Office, with Himmler, and on November 28, 1941 with Hitler. In his meeting, the Mufti tried to strengthen the Fuehrer's decision to " exterminate" all Jews, and both agreed that the Germans would fight the Jews mercilessly, in all of Europe "and beyond."[...]
The Mufti had also met with Eichmann and visited Auschwitz. In Rome, he was received by the Italian Foreign Minister, Count Ciano, and by Mussolini himself. In his meetings with the German officials, the Mufti stressed the need to wipe out as many Jews as possible and to finally revoke the designation of Palestine as a Jewish National Home. He proposed that after the German victory,an Arab state --under his leadership-- be created that would consist of Syria, Iraq, Transjordan and the Wesrern, Jewish part of Palestine. In return the Mufti promised Arab revolts against the British who were then predominant in these areas. One such serious revolt aganst the British occured in April 1941.
http://books.google.com/books?id=SlSDYmjJNU0C&pg=PA235

LIFE - Oct 27, 1952 - Page 145 - Vol. 33, No. 17 - 156 pages - Magazine - Full view
MYSTERY MAN OF ISLAM SPEAKS In exclusive talk, mufti defends tie to Hitler and record on Jews by JAMES BELL The name of Haj Amin el Husseini, usually called the Mufti of Jerusalem, has been associated with assassination, riot, ...
During the Palestine war the Muft's holy fighters terrorized Jews, blew up houses and killed many people...
http://books.google.com/books?id=2lIEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA145

Rashid Ali al-Gailani
[Rashid Ali el Kailani]
[Rashid 'Ali al-Keilani]
[Sayyad Rashid el Keilani]

Highlights:

* Led pro-Nazi, fascist coup in Baghdad, 1941.

* Met with Hitler in 1942.

* Close ties with the Mufti.

Nazi propaganda for the Arab world - Page 60 - Jeffrey Herf - [Yale University Press] 2009
[ISBN 0300145799, 9780300145793] - 335 pages - Preview

... 1941, Rashid Ali Kilani led a pro-Axis coup that overthrew the Iraqi government of General Taha el-Hashimi. Haj Amin el-Husseini was deeply involved. The coup plotters included Yunis ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=YzQNSTvHv-sC&pg=PA60

The Iraq coup of Raschid Ali in 1941, the Mufti Husseini and the Farhud... The Coup - On April 1, 1941 the "Golden Square" and the chief of staff of the Iraqi army staged the coup, and appointed Rashid 'Ali al-Keilani head of the government. Nuri as Said was forced to flee Iraq along with the regent and young king Faysal II. On April 3, a letter from the German Secretary of State Von Weizacker answered Haddad's letter favorably, but the letter arrived after the coup.

Rashid 'Ali stated on April 10 that he would honor the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty of 1930, apparently fearing British reprisals .On April 16, Rashid responded to a request for landing of British troops at Basra cautiously. He replied that they could land, but must embark immediately for Palestine or Egypt. The British began landing troops on April 16 or 18 at Basra, at first in compliance with Rashid Ali's conditions, and later in violation of the conditions, since the troops did not leave. The British played for time and made pretences of accepting the new situation. However, reinforcements from India kept arriving at Basra.

The Iraqi government was also trying to buy time, and entered into a pretence of Turkish mediation of the crisis. However, the Iraqi representative in Turkey, told the German Ambassador von Papen, that there would be no compromise with the British. Raschid Ali had already asked the Italians for military aid at the end of March, and likewise, Hitler decided on April 10 to send military aid to the Iraqis. However, the shipments took several weeks. The German foreign office got a report from General Keitel of a large shipment, including, for example, some 15,000 rifles and about 800 machine guns. Arms were shipped from Saloniki and through Turkey and Syria. The shipments from Syria were sent as a consequence of the agreement between the Vichy leader Darlan and Hitler as to general collaboration between Vichy and Germany. In the same agreement Vichy also agreed to allow German aircraft to base and stage through Syria on their way to Iraq, though there would be some pretence involved, so that the Vichy government could plausibly deny to Britain that it was assisting the German war effort. The French also rationed German fuel supplies, and as the Luftwaffe was unable to obtain fuel from Persia or elsewhere, this hampered their effectiveness.

A second group of British troops landed at Basra on April 28, and the Iraqis protested. On the evening of April 29, about 9,000 troops of the Iraqi army surrounded the RAF air base at Habaniyeh and the next day the Iraqis ordered that no flights were to take off. However, the Iraqis had insufficient force. The move was instigated by the "Golden Square" officers. Rashid Ali himself apparently wanted to avoid antagonizing the British and wait for supplies from the Germans.

The British strike back - The British struck to lift the siege of Habanniyeh, remove Rashid Ali from power and restore the pro-British government. Though they were initially unable to move from Basra overland, because of the weather and because Iraqis had cut lines of communication, the British were able to use the RAF at Habbaniyeh and Shaiba effectively, and began attacking on May 2. They had about 90 aircraft, mostly antiquated, but these included a number of Wellington bombers[8]. . The RAF struck the Iraqis surrounding Habbaniyeh The Iraqis used their air force [9], very sparingly and not very effectively. At the same time, relatively small numbers of British reinforcements were ferried by air from Basra. Iraqi anti-aircraft fire and artillery proved ineffective. By May 6 the Iraqi force was defeated and the siege of Habbaniyeh was abandoned, though the roads were still blocked. The RAF also destroyed most of the Iraqi air force on the ground by about May 8.

German Aid - During this time, several German officers and diplomats were seconded to Iraq to oversee Luftwaffe operations and the arms supply. Dr Fritz Grobba, the former consul, now returned to oversee the arms shipments and a Major Hansen was sent to oversee the transfer of aircraft. Grobba allegedly distributed sums of money to both Rashid Ali and the Mufti. Raschid Ali got about 90,000 pounds, and the Mufti reportedly got about $10,000.
http://www.mideastweb.org/iraqaxiscoup.htm

Reference Guide to the Nazis and Arabs During the Holocaust: A Concise Guide to the Relationship and Conspiracy of the Nazis and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in North Africa and the Middle East During the Era of the Holocaust - Pages 32-3 - Shelomo Alfassa - [Lulu.com] 2006 [ISBN 0976322633, 9780976322634] - 70 pages

Working with an old ally, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, who became prime minister of Iraq in March 1940, the Mufti "obtained promises of Axis support, and in April 1941 carried out an anti-British and pro-Nazi coup" in Baghdad.
http://books.google.com/books?id=T2g2XA53UOEC&pg=PA32
[p. 33]
From Syria they extended their activities to Iraq, where they helped to establish a pro-Nazi regime headed by Rashid Ali al-Gailani. This was overthrown by the British, and Rashid Ali went to join his friend the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem
http://books.google.com/books?id=T2g2XA53UOEC&pg=PA33

The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin Al-Husseini - Page 50 - Chuck Morse - 2003 - 186 pages

In June of 1941, the Nazis would launch Operation Barbarossa which involved a full frontal assault on their erstwhile ally the ... On April 1, 1941, the well planned pro-Nazi coup d'etat was launched and it brought General Rashid Ali ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=HGkthBwbNg8C&pg=PA50

Ummar

Prevent World War III., Issues 53-57
Author Society for the Prevention of World War III (New York, N.Y.)
Publisher Society for Prevention of World War III, 1959

Page 40
Mr. Ummar was also a member of the Rashid Ali conspiracy. As early as 1936 he went to Germany and studied at the Nazi dominated universities in Berlin and Jena. Ummar too had to flee after the failure of the 1941 revolt and he wound up in Nazi Germany. As an avid admirer of Hitler's "New Order" and
http://books.google.com/books?id=ckHTAAAAMAAJ&q=pro+nazi

British documents on foreign affairs: reports and papers from the foreign office confidential print. From 1940 through 1945. Near and the Middle-East. Eastern Affairs, january 1942-june 1942 - Malcolm Yapp, Paul Preston, Michael Patridge - 1997 - 357 pages - p. 308

Rashid Ali, however, flouted constitutional precedent by refusing to resign and coerced the Regent into signing decrees ... In forming his Cabinet General Taha retained two members of Rashid Ali's team, Umar Nadhmi, who took over the ...
http://books.google.com/books?&id=4jWQAAAAMAAJ&dq=Umar+Nadhmi

Records of Iraq, 1914-1966: 1941-1945: Volume 9 - Alan de Lacy Rush, Jane Priestland - 2001 - 857 pages [Page 398]

Rashid Ali, however, flouted constitutional precedent by refusing to resign and coerced the Regent into signing ... Tahu retained two members of Rashid Ali's team, Umar Nadhmi, who took over the Ministries of Interior and Justice,
http://books.google.com/books?id=sWZtAAAAMAAJ&q=Umar+Nadhmi+rashid+ali

Darwish al-Miqdadi

Highlights:

* Arab writer, educator from Palestine.

* Moved to Iraq and 'educated' there with his pro-Nazi line.

* Associated with the 1941 Farhud pogrom.

Iraq between the two world wars: the militarist origins of tyranny - Page 91
Reeva S. Simon - 2004 - History - 235 pages

Al-Miqdadi accompanied Iraqi student missions to Germany in the 1930s. While there, the British report, he organized an Arab youth movement along Nazi lines ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=GgYyxWqtO3IC&pg=PA91&lpg=PA91

Military preparations of the Arab community in Palestine, 1945-1948 - Page 149 - Haim Levenberg - [Psychology Press - ISBN 0714634395, 9780714634395] 1993 - 281 pages

The other candidate was Darwish Miqdadi, born in Tul-Karem. In 1929 he was expelled to Iraq after taking part in the disturbances of that year. After a spell he returned to Palestine and was re-arrested during the Arab Rebellion. When released, he fled once more to Iraq. In Iraq he did not abandon his nationalist activity; while working as a teacher and education inspector, he published his ideas. He participated in a delegation to Nazi Germany and collaborated with Rashid Ali. He was allowed to return to Palestine in October 1945, and in the summer of 1946 he succeeded Ahmad Shuaqyri as the Director of the Arab Office in Jerusalem.
http://books.google.com/books?id=sxvHK-Cq2RwC&pg=PA149

The Middle East: Abstracts and index: Volume 4 - Library Information and Research Service - 2000 - Snippet view [page 123]

Arab Nationalist Party and the Young Egypt, whose mission became to ideologize this rejection. In 1931, Darwish al-Miqdadi, a Palestinian graduate of the AUB, a teacher in Iraq and an ardent associate to most, if not all pan-Arabist networking of the 1930's, published his "History of the Arab Nation" which was subsequently adopted as a textbook for the Arab history curriculum in Iraqi intermediate schools. In this book, the Arab ideology and the pan-Arabist view of imperialism were so intractably intertwined that Arab nationalism seemed unimaginable without its opposition to the west. For al-Miqdadi, it was the Arabs' destiny to occupy the most strategic crossroads of world trade
http://books.google.com/books?id=m6JtAAAAMAAJ&q=Darwish+al-Miqdadi

Kamil Wafa al-Dajani... Mu'in al-Madi, and Darwish al-Miqdadi. Dajani, Madi, and Miqdadi were Mufti associates
http://books.google.com/books?id=9pRvIDxE5jAC&pg=PA141

The Farhud, the Mufti inspired Krystallnacht in Iraq, 1941

The entire Jewish world has heard of Krystallnacht. Yet very few have even heard of the Farhud, where Nazi sympathizers in Baghdad, killed... The Palestinians Fawzi Al-Qauqji Darwish Al Miqdadi, Mufti Haj Amin Al Husseini ...
http://www.eretzyisroel.org/~jkatz/farhud.html

The Teaching of History in Iraq before the Rashid Ali Coup of 1941 by RS Simon - 1986

Husri had hired Darwish al-Miqdadi, a Palestinian graduate of the. American University in Beirut, in 1924-25 along with Anis al-Nasuli, whose ...
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4283095

Political trends in the Arab world: the role of ideas and ideals in politics - Majid Khadduri - [Johns Hopkins Press] 1970 - 298 pages - Page 183

The third wrote the history of Islam as the "History of the Arab Nation," Darwish al-Miqdadi, Ta'rikh al-Umma al-'Arabiya... Darwish al-Miqdadi, a Palestinian teacher who lived in "Iraq-
http://books.google.com/books?&id=qvqBAAAAMAAJ&dq=al-Umma
http://books.google.com/books?id=qvqBAAAAMAAJ&q=Darwish

Palestinian Arab Nationalist and Historian Darwish al-Miqdadi (1898-1961)
http://www.zmo.de/veranstaltungen/2010/Out_of_place_Programme_2010.pdf

European Totalitarianism in the Mirrors of Contemporary Arab ... From Ruz al-Yusuf after the so-called Hitler-Stalin pact was signed: "The Animals' ... of Palestinian Pan-Arab Historian Darwish al-Miqdadi (1897-1961). ... Arabs and Nazism - Testing Paradigms of a Historical Encounter: Between Local ...
http://www.orient-institut.org/English/EventsDetails.aspx?pageid=1694

Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Oct., 1966), pp. 2-17, by H.J. Cohen

The Anti - Jewish Farhud in baghdad, 1941... On June 1-2, 1941, thousands of Baghdad Moslems attacked the Jews of the town, murdering men and women, children and aged people, raping women and girls and plundering property...

Al-Miqdadi was also active in another organisation. In 1931, he set up a scout group called 'al-Jawwal ....
http://www.jstor.org/stable/4282184

Lebanon and Arabism: national identity and state formation - Raghīd Sulh - 2004 - Political Science - 382 pages [Page 121] (ISBN 1860640516)

Sami Shawkat... radical Arab nationalists... The ANP consolidadted its influence further by infiltrating and virtually controlling a number of youth organizations, literary clubs and various political groupings. For example, Darwish al-Miqdadi (who was of Palestinian origin) was appointed head of the prestigous Teachers' Training College (Baghdad) in 1939, a post thgrough which he was able to recruit new members to the party ... al-Jawal, a youth organization established in 1934, came under ANP influence when two party members, Matta 'Aqrawi and Darwish Miqdadi, assumed its chairmanship successively. Nadi al-Muthanna, similar to the Arab Club of Damascus, became 'one of the many fronts or the cornerstone of this secret organization
http://books.google.com/books?id=49z7AFqIE2IC&pg=PA121

Al-Banna - Muslim Brotherhood

Highlights:

* Muslim Brotherhood's founder al-Banna's devout admiration for Hitler & Nazi regime.

* His push to distribute the Arabic translation of Mein Kampf.

The Muslim Brotherhood [...]
Al-Banna was a devout admirer of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. During the 1930s, the Brotherhood became more political in nature and an officially political group in 1939.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/muslimbrotherhood.html

Al-Banna was a devout admirer of a young Austrian writer named Adolf Hitler. His letters to Hitler were so supportive that when Hitler came to power in the 1930s he had Nazi intelligence make contact with Al-Banna to see if they could work together. Hitler had Al-banna establish a spy network for Nazi Germany throughout Arabia. Al-Banna promised Hitler that when General Rommel's Nazi tank division arrived in Cairo and Alexandria, the Muslim Brotherhood would ensure all of the British troops would be killed.
http://www.shoaheducation.com/muslimnazi.html

Jihad and Jew-hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the roots of 9/11 - Pages 10 - Matthias Küntzel - 2007 - 180 pages

Muslim Brotherhood's decision to distribute the Arabic translation of Hitler's Mein Kampf and the flow of German money...
http://books.google.com/books?id=q9Y8E-AYVeoC&pg=PR10

Reza Pahlevi

Of Iran

Highlights:

* Great admirer of Hitler.

* The 'Mussolini of Islam.'

* Introduced racist laws.

* Refused to allow the allies operating against the Nazis.

World fascism: a historical encyclopedia: Volume 1 - Page 342 - Cyprian Blamires, Paul Jackson - 2006 - 750 pages

Reza Shah Pahlavi, interwar ruler of Iran, sometimes referred to as 'the Mussolini of Islam'. He was an admirer of Hitler and an anti-semite who strove to cleanse the language and culture of his 'Aryan' land from anything alien. ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=nvD2rZSVau4C&pg=PA342

Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran - James D. Cockcroft - 1988 - 111 pages - Page 36

Mohammed Resa's father became a great admirer of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi leader who rose to power as Germany's dictator in 1933...
http://books.google.com/books?&id=JiIEFLxZaJwC&dq=Hitler

Genocide, critical issues of the Holocaust: a companion to the film, Genocide - Page 348 - Alex Grobman, Daniel Landes, Sybil Milton - [Behrman House, Inc] 1983 - 501 pages - [ISBN 0940646048, 9780940646049]

In Iran, the nationalistic and pro-Nazi regime of Reza Shah introduced a host of anti-Jewish laws after 1936. So great was the attraction of nazism on the Iranian Shah that Arthur S. Millspaugh, the adminstrator general of Iran's finances from 1922 to 1927 and from 1943 to 1945, testified "to all intents and purposes, Reza Shah handed over Persia to Hitler."
http://books.google.com/books?id=DcdiVs9lwvcC&pg=PA348

World and Its Peoples: The Middle East, Western Asia, and Northern Africa By Marshall Cavendish - Page 494 - Marshall Cavendish - [Marshall Cavendish] 2006

However. Iran's declared neutrality in the war was complicated by Reza Shah's pro-German sympathies. When he refused to allow the Soviets and British to use the Trans-Iranian railroad, under the pretext of Iran's neutrality, the Allies ignored the declaration and invaded Iran in August 1941..
http://books.google.com/books?id=j894miuOqc4C&pg=PA494

Ibn Saud

Of Saudi Arabia

Highlights:

* Close [secret] ties with the Nazis.

* Highly racist against Jews, through his 'Koranic' view.

The secret war against the Jews: how western espionage betrayed ... - Page 68 - John Loftus, Mark Aarons - 1997 - 658 pages - Preview

Unlike his other activities, he tried to keep the Saudi-Nazi connection a deep secret. According to sources on both sides of the Atlantic, it was Philby who advised Ibn Saud energetically to court Nazi Germany in the months before the war. The relationship was mutually beneficial. As one US intelligence study found, the Nazis "recognized that King Ibn Saud's help was essential for renewing the fight against the British and the Jews in Palestine." The Germans proposed that a new government should be formed in Palestine, under the control of Jack's old friend, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Further, "Jews who had settled in Palestine after the First World War would not be allowed to remain."

In January 1939 Saudi Arabia established diplomatic relations with the Third Reich, and Ibn Saud confided to the Germans that at heart he "hated the English. " In the following months he concluded arms deals with Germany and signed a friendship and trade treaty with Japan. Philby was pleased, especially as Ibn Saud concealed his secret dealings with the Axis from both the British and Americans. The Nazis also were pleased with the progress they had made with the king. They sent their best Middle East agent, Fritz Grobba, to meet with Ibn Saud, and even promised to obtain for him the most prestigious position in the Moslem world, the caliphate. The Saudi-Third Reich connection flourished, with their main link being their mutual hatred for the Jews.
The Nazis even promised to supply Ibn Saud with weapons, ammunition, and an armaments factory, and, according to some accounts, gave him bribes during most of World War II.

The king had many reasons for his secret arms deals with Berlin. The primary purpose "was to increase the flow of weapons which [Ibn Saud] had secretly been sending to the Arabs fighting in Palestine," in order to "check the Zionist influx that had followed the Balfour Declaration." Although he later claimed to be genuinely horrified by the Nazis' Final Solution , Ibn Saud's attitude toward the Jews was extreme, even by Arab standards. They were "a race accursed by God
http://books.google.com/books?id=trU7nY-T-4EC&pg=PA68

The Nazi Hydra in America: Suppressed History of a Century - Page 368 - Glen Yeadon, John Hawkins - 2008 - 700 pages

Ibn Saud was pro-Nazi. To stay out of British prison as a Nazi sympathizer, Philby added another angle to the 1940 deal by keeping Saudi Arabia neutral during the war for a bribe. In effect, the Saudis were paid to not pump ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=vh7sx2xtjGEC&pg=PA368

Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East - Geoffrey Wawro - 2010 - 704 pages - Page 71

Saudi Arabia, the king protested, was in the same predicament as Nazi Germany: " encircled" by hostile powers. ... In 1941, Ibn Saud sent a royal envoy to Vichy to negotiate for the eventual cession—by the victorious Germans, ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=OiS9UVotQfUC&pg=PT71

F.D.R. meets Ibn Saud - William Alfred Eddy - 1954 - 45 pages - Page 34

... who had suffered indescribable horrors at the hands of the Nazis: eviction, destruction of their homes, torture and mass-murder. ... He, Ibn Saud, could not conceive of leaving an enemy in a position to strike back after defeat. ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=jVUxAAAAIAAJ&q=nazis

Nazi propaganda for the Arab world - Page 34 - Jeffrey Herf - 2009 - 335 pages - Preview

  • The Iron Shirts (led by Fakhri al-Barudi of the National Bloc). The League for National Action (headed by Abdu al-Huda al-Yab, Dr. Zaki al-Jabi and others). The An-Nadi al-Arabi Club of Damascus (headed by Dr. Said Abd Al-Fattah al-Imam). The Councils for the Defense of Arab Palestine (head by well known pro-Nazi leaders, such as Nabi al-Azmah, Adil Arslan and others) The Syrian People's Party. The Istiqlal. The Muthana Club. Moslem Guidance Society. The Palestine Defense Society. The Tajaddad Club. The Arab Rover Society. Arab High Committee (Haj Amin el Husseini's). Najjada [Najjadah] in Lebanon (pan-Islamic, pan-Arab). The Futuwwah in Iraq (Hitler-youth type). The Blue Shirts and Green Shirts in Egypt. League of National Action. The Lion Cubs of Arabism. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party (led by Antun Sa'ada with Nazi imitated symbols and hymm of 'Syria, Syria Uber alles). The Arab Club. The Steel Shirts. The early Ba'ath movement. The Kalmuks. The Chechens. The Ingosh. Balkans. The Meshkets. The Krim Tatars The White Shirts (in Lebanon).

Following a series of visits in 1938 to Germany by representatives of Saudi King Ibn Saud concerning arms purchases, the Nazi regime established diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in January 1939. In return for German political and ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=YzQNSTvHv-sC&pg=PA34

Shakib Arslan

* pan-Arabist, pan-Islamist, Muslim cleric.

* Pro Nazi.

* In service of the Nazis - translated 'Mein Kampf' into Arabic (though that one -at the end- wasn't published).

Highlights:

Arabism, Islamism and the Palestine question, 1908-1941: a political history - Page 357 - Basheer M. Nafi - [ISBN 0863722350, 9780863722356] (Garnet & Ithaca Press) 1998 - 459 pages

Amongst those who came to be known for their pro-German views were Shakib Arslan , who returned to exile in ... it was the efficiency of the Nazi state, its ability to liberate Germany from the constraints of the Versailles Peace Treaty
http://books.google.com/books?id=WhCjkcZZK1AC&pg=PA357

Nazi propaganda for the Arab world - Pages 25-26, 273 - Jeffrey Herf - 2009 - 335 pages

[p. 25]
Hentig... He thought that "a truly good Arabic translation of the Fuhrer's work would have great propagandistic value."
[p. 26] and "would meet with extensive sympathy in the whole Arabicspeaking world from Morocco to India... in Arabic that had "the tone of the book that every Muslim understands: the Koran..
Hentig called on Shakib Arslan, a Geneva-based advocate of Muslim activism and Arab nationalism, confidant of Haj Amin el-Husseini, and editor of La Nation arabe, an influencial journal of Arab nationalist opinion, to do the translation. Hentig insisted that the completed text be read by a "scholar of the Koran who will give it the sacred tone which will be understood and valued in the whole Islamic world, a world that reads the Koran." By November 1938, Arslan's translation of Mein Kampf was almost done. Its 960 pages were to be published in an edition... On December 21, 1938, the project of an Arabic-language edition of Mein Kampf published by the Nazi regime ended.
http://books.google.com/books?id=YzQNSTvHv-sC&pg=PA25
On Arslan, see William C. Cleveland, Islam against the West: Shakib Arslan and the Campaign for Islamic Nationalism (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985); and review essay by Martin Kramer, "The Natuon of Shakib Arslan," Middle Eastern Studies, no. 24 (October 1987) 529-33.
http://books.google.com/books?id=YzQNSTvHv-sC&pg=PA273

International politics and the Middle East: old rules, dangerous game By Leon Carl Brown - I. B. Tauris, 1984 - Page 154

...partitioning Palestine into seperate Jewish and Arab states, a large pan-Arab congress was held in Blutan, Syria... other notables included... and the well-known advocate of Arabism, Shakib Arslan, a Druze from Lebanon.
http://books.google.com/books?id=opRRT_kW7hIC&pg=PA154

King Farouk

Of Egypt

Highlights:

* Colaboration with the Nazis.

* Espionage.

The record of collaboration of King Farouk of Egypt with the Nazis and their ally, the Mufti: the official Nazi records of the King's alliance and of the Mufti's plans for bombing Jerusalem and Tel Aviv ; memorandum submitted to the United Nations, June 1948.
Authors: Nation Associates (New York, N.Y.), United Nations
Publisher: The Nation Associates, 1948
http://books.google.com/books?id=tdhmAAAAMAAJ

The beast reawakens - Martin A. Lee [Taylor & Francis] 1999 [ISBN 0415925460, 9780415925464] Page 122

King Farouk, who ruled Egypt during the Hitler era, was also a Nazi sympathizer. The king's palace became a rendezvous point for Axis spies and couriers. Members of the royal family were involved in espionage for Fascist Italy, and many of the king's mistresses did double duty as Nazi agents.
http://books.google.com/books?id=SX4B7pNG3W8C&pg=PA122

Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam - Page 41
David Dalin, John Rothmann, Alan Dershowitz - 2009 - 227 pages - Preview

In a letter to Farouk, the mufti assured the king "that he would be received with all honors due a friendly reigning sovereign" and that he would be given every possible means by the Nazis for continuing the activities of his Egyptian ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=QMts5Z36kjAC&pg=PA41

SSNP

Highlights:

* Inspired by Hitler, Nazis.

* Imitation of Nazi hymm, symbols, etc.

* Supremacy.

Lebanon: current issues and background - Page 192 - John C. Rolland - 2003 - 235 pages - Preview

The Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) The SSNP was established in Lebanon in the 1930s by Antun Saadah who hoped ... symbol was modeled after the Nazi swastika. The SSNP has a long history of terrorism and subversion in Lebanon. ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=-JVOKeNkllgC&pg=PA192

Colonial citizens: republican rights, paternal privilege, and gender in French Syria and Lebanon, by Elizabeth Thompson, 2000, p. 192

At about the same time, the first Lebanese proto-fascist group emerged in public. The Syrian National Party (Hizb al-qawmi al-suri) was founded in secret in 1932 by a Lebanese emigrant returned from Brazil... Sa'ada used the title fuhrer and a swastika-style cross as an emblem, and adopted a party anthem entitled "Syria, Syria Above All," set to the tune of "Deutchland Uber Alles."
http://books.google.com/books?id=B9fruGejwmUC&pg=PA192

All honorable men: the social origins of war in Lebanon - Page 150 - Michael Johnson - 2001 - 298 pages - Preview

Saadeh, the party's 'leader for life', was an admirer of Adolph Hitler and influenced by Nazi and fascist ideology. ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=Zydtz0dDntQC&pg=PA150

Encyclopedia of the modern Middle East [Volume 4
Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East, ISBN 0028960114, 9780028960111, Macmillan Reference USA] - Reeva S. Simon, Philip Mattar, Richard W. Bulliet - 1996 - 2182 pages [Page 1717]

The Syrian Social Nationalist party (SSNP) was the brainchild of Antun SA'ADA, a Greek Orthodox Lebanese who was inspired by Nazi and fascist ideologies. Originally known as the PARTI POPULAIRE SYRIEN, the party operated in secret until...
http://books.google.com/books?id=ZXltAAAAMAAJ&q=sa'ada

Young Egypt

(Misr al-Fatdh)

Highlights:

* Founded and was on Nazi, fascist elemnts, imitating Hitler Youth ("Egypt, Egypt, above all").

* Nazi - ideologically, very racist, even after "break up" with the Nazis.

Egypt's young rebels: "Young Egypt," 1933-1952 - James P. Jankowski - 1975 - 176 pages

Young Egypt became willing to admit influence and/or borrowings from European fascism, Husayn stating that Young ... brothers cooperating together" ; and his final article from Germany, in the form of an open letter to Hitler, ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=8dFmAAAAMAAJ&q=young+egypt

Semites and anti-Semites: an inquiry into conflict and prejudice - Page 148 - Bernard Lewis - [W. W. Norton & Company] 1999 - 295 pages [ISBN 0393318397, 9780393318395] - [pp. 148-9]

Several of the political parties founded at this time reveal the influence of the Nazi model. In 1934, when the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws were promulgated, telegrams of congratulation were sent to the Fuhrer from all over the Arab and Islamic worlds, especially from Morocco and Palestine, where German propaganda had been most active. By September 1937, when a major pan-Arab congress was held at Blutan, with the struggle against Zionism as its main theme, the only European present was a German.
Before long, political parties of the Nazi and fascist type began to appear, complete with paramilitary youth organizations, colored shirts, strict discipline, and more or less charismatic leaders. Even some of the older parties were affected by these trends.
More obviously Nazi in form was the Young Egypt Society, formally established in October 1933. Popularly known as "the Green Shirts," it consisted of a paramilitary hierarchy of sections ...
[p. 149]
...Their ideology and form of organization and activity remained, however, thoroughly Nazi, including such devices as fascist salutes, torchlight parades, leader worship [ther slogan was "One party, one state, one leadership"] and, most characteristically, their use of gangs of toughs to terrorize and silence their political opponents.
Not least among the borrowings of Young Egypt from Young Germany was its racism and anti-Semitism. This included support for Nazi philosophy, viciously anti-Jewish propaganda in the party press, and the organization of boycotts and harassment directed against the Jewish community in Egypt.
Despite the public breach with the Germans after the invasion of Czechoslovakia, the inner circle of pro-Axis politicians congregated around the king, and led ... espionage...
http://books.google.com/books?id=GteStbiDEjAC&pg=PA148

Jihad and Jew-hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the roots of 9/11 - Page 27 - Matthias Küntzel - 2007 - 180 pages

Minister, was to educate "Iraqi youth in the military spirit in the German fashion" and sent a delegation to march with the Hitler Youth at the 1938 Nuremberg Nazi party rally. Finally in 1933, in Egypt Ahmad Husayn created the "Young Egypt"...
http://books.google.com/books?id=q9Y8E-AYVeoC&pg=PA27

Teaching about the Middle East - Page 137
Social Studies School Service - [Social Studies] 2002 - 330 pages - Preview [ISBN 1560041005, 9781560041009]

The Young Egyptians movement, popular in the 1930s, looked to the Hitler Youth as its model. At the same time, Egyptians recognized the importance of their own Muslim heritage. Perhaps Islam would provide the best ideological structure ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=bhPkkMIDdl8C&pg=PA137

Die Welt des Islams, 1985, p. 134

From its beginnings in the early Thirties the party shared many outward appearances with the European fascists: a uniform (green shirts), a salute (outstretched right arm, palm open and finger pointing to the sky), a flag, a paramilitary organization which demanded absolute obedience to a leader. Like the PPS in Syria, Young Egypt used ultra-nationalist slogans, based on "Deutschland, Deutschland iiber alles": In the case of Young Egypt "Egypt, Egypt, above all...".
http://books.google.com/books?&id=bQcsAAAAIAAJ&dq=young+egypt
[PDF] http://www.tcd.ie/history//undergraduate/pdf/bwwii/jstorarticles/Stefan%20Wild%20National%20Socialims%20in%20the%20Arab%20Middle%20East%201933%201939.pdf

FrontPage Magazine - Nazi Influence on the Middle East During WWII
Jan 5, 2005 ... In October 1933, pro-Axis Young Egypt Party was founded. ... translator of Hitler's Mein Kampf into Arabic, describing the Fascist despot in ...
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=16533

The Baa'th

(B'ath, Baath)

Highlights:

* Baath founders: S. al-Husri [the 'Arab Fichte'] and M. Aflaq, both influnced by German Fascist, nazi writing.

* Husri's support for the pro-Nazi coup of Rachid 'Ali.

* Aflaq though Christian, admired Islam. (Some even say he converted).

* Ideologically - Racist against: Persians, Jews, Kurds & other.

* 'Master Arab race' of Baathism.

Semites and anti-Semites: an inquiry into conflict and prejudice - Page 148 - Bernard Lewis - [W. W. Norton & Company] 1999 - 295 pages [ISBN 0393318397, 9780393318395] - [pp. 147-8]

The mood of the 1930s was vividly described by Syrian Sami al-Jundi, an early leader of the Ba'th party, in an autobiographical memoir:

We were racists, admiting Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought, particulary Nietzche. . . . Fichte, and H. S. Chamberlain's Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, which revolves on race. We were the first to think of translating Mein Kampf.
Whoever lived during this period in Damascus would appreciate the incliniation of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which serve as its chapion, and he who is defeated will by nature love the victor."

Later al-Jundi describes how in 1940 he was looking for a copy of Rosenberg's Myth of the Twentieth Century in Damascus, and finally found a French abridgment of it belonging to Michel Aflaq, one of the two founders of the Ba'th.
http://books.google.com/books?id=GteStbiDEjAC&pg=PA147

The United States and the Middle East: a search for new perspectives - Page 266 - Hooshang Amirahmadi - [SUNY Press] 1993 [ISBN 0791412253, 9780791412251] - 491 pages

Founded in the Levant during the 1940s, the Baath party advocates Pan-Arabism ( ie, unity of the entire Arab world... the founders of the Baath party, Michel 'Aflaq and Salah al-Din al-Bitar, were influenced by fascist thought during their education in France during the 1930s... Itaqi Baathis ideology contains racist elements, especially against Persians, Jews, Kurds, and other minorities...
http://books.google.com/books?id=AmSIOJ5ekIoC&pg=PA266

Encyclopedia of the Developing World: Index - Thomas M. Leonard - 2006 - Social Science - 1759 pages - Page 71

... Pan-Arabism with an emphasis on socialism incorporating ideas from Italian fascism. Ba'ath ideology...
http://books.google.com/books?id=3mE04D9PMpAC&pg=PA71

Fascism: Past, Present, Future, by Walter Laqueur, [Oxford University Press US] 1997 [ISBN 019511793X, 9780195117936] - Page 162

At that time, fascism outside Europe has become a possiblity and, in some cases, a reality. The Iraqi & Syrian regimes have pronounced fascist features... both, the Iraqi & Syrian leadership belongs to the Ba'th Party, an elitist, pan-Arabist group that arose in the 1930s partly as a result of the rise of fascism in Europe.
http://books.google.com/books?id=fWggQTqioXcC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162

America at war since 1945: politics and diplomacy in Korea, Vietnam, and the Gulf War, by Gary Donaldson [Greenwood Publishing Group] 1996 - Page 144

The Baath party had its origins in European fascism and Arab nationalism...
http://books.google.com/books?id=1wOv3enW1ccC&pg=PA144

The politics of intelligence and American wars with Iraq - Page 21 - Ofira Seliktar - 2008 - 214 pages

Drawing on a large volume of newly available research on "generic fascism," a number of experts pointed out ... Ba'ath Party of Syria and Iraq as conceived by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Bitar combined both Nazi and communist elements. ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=vd54vdSGMMgC&pg=PA21

A Middle East reader, compiled by Irene L. Gendzier, Pegasus, 1969, page 161

Aflaq spent his holidays in France, with Salah al Bitar. He came back to Syria full of admiration for the works of Alfred Rosenberg, the theorist of Nazi racism, and in particular for "The Myth of the Twentieth Century, which he had read in Grosclaud's translation. He thought at the time that Hitler's Germany, by contrast with the communist countries, had succeeded in achieving the perfect synthesis of nationalism and socialism."
http://books.google.com/books?id=QsNAAAAAIAAJ&dq=rosenberg
Eric Rouleau... Futhermore, when power in Iraq was seized by pro-German nationalists in the coup of Rashid 'Ali al-Gilani, 'Aflaq formed s committee which assured the new regime of its full support
http://books.google.com/books?id=LzfSAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA166

The Ba'th and the creation of modern Syria‎ - Page 15 David Roberts - Political Science - [Croom Helm] 1987 - 182 pages

The Birth of Ba'thist Ideology... The theory of 'Greater Syria'... Sa'adeh visited Germany and certainly had contact with the National Socialist and Fascist regimes. The Ba'th, or at least 'Aflaq, shared these ideas to some extent. It is not too long a step from 'Gross-Deutchland' to 'Greater Syria.'
Since then, of course, the Ba'th has parted with the PPS and indeed banned it, but it has quietly absorbed its message...
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ix2NAAAAMAAJ&dq=germany http://books.google.com/books?id=Ix2NAAAAMAAJ&dq=fascist

CNN, March 21, 2003

Baath Party is a mishmash of socialism and Arabism.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0303/21/se.13.html

The politics of intelligence and American wars with Iraq - Page 21 - Ofira Seliktar - 2008 - 214 pages

Drawing on a large volume of newly available research on "generic fascism," a number of experts pointed out ... Ba'ath Party of Syria and Iraq as conceived by Michel Aflaq and Salah al-Bitar combined both Nazi and communist elements. ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=vd54vdSGMMgC&pg=PA21

Syria: Ballots Or Bullets?: Democracy, Islamism, and Secularism in the Levant, Carsten Wieland, 2006, pp. 102-3

Sati al-Husri (1882-1968), the most infuelncial pan-Arab ideologue... He admired Fichte, Hegel, and Herder, and his key ideological role in the Arab world earned him the nickname of "the Arab Fichte." [p. 103] The strongest influence of pan-Arabists was first witnessed in Iraq in the 1920 and 1930 when Hitler rose to power in Germany. In 1941, Husri supported a fascist coup in Baghdad...
The main ideologue of the subsequent Baath Party in Syria was himself a Christian (however, he reportedly converted to Islam shortly before his death...
Michel Aflaq was born in 1910 in Damascus and went to Paris to study philosophy at the Sorbonne University. There he found the idea of Arabness in Western literature, as had many others before him. He viewed Islam as an essential part of the Arab socio-cultural heritage...
http://books.google.com/books?id=uOMp58pfdkoC&pg=PA102

"Saddam's Brain," The Weekly Standard Nov 1, 2002, Vol. 8, No. 09 by David Brooks

From the November 11, 2002 issue: The ideology behind the thuggery.

MICHEL AFLAQ was born in Damascus in 1910, a Greek Orthodox Christian. He won a scholarship to study philosophy at the Sorbonne sometime between 1928 and 1930 (biographies differ), and there he studied Marx, Nietzsche, Lenin, Mazzini, and a range of German nationalists and proto-Nazis. Aflaq became active in Arab student politics with his countryman Salah Bitar, a Sunni Muslim. Together, they were thrilled by the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party, but they also came to admire the organizational structure Lenin had created within the Russian Communist party.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/001/837uvzrs.asp

American Government and Politics Today 2008: The Essentials, by Barbara A. Bardes, Mack C. Shelley, Steffen W. Schmidt, [Cengage Learning] 2008, [ISBN 0495503258, 9780495503255], p. 18

Although Baathists are often referred to as Arab nationalists, Baath ideology goes beyond pan-Arab nationalism and Baath ideology actually views the Arabs as a kind of master race. Baathism glorifies constant struggle, the ideological similarity between Baathism and fascism is quite striking.
http://books.google.com/books?id=NIrspBw3lNMC&pg=PA1

al-Muthanna Club & al-Futuwwa (in Iraq)

(Saib [Sami] Shawkat)

Highlights:

* Importance of education in the fascist interwar era.

* 'Hitler Youth' type.

* Participated in Nurmberg's Nazi Youth march.

* Relations with leadership of Hitler Youth.

* al-Muthanna Club's Sami Shawkat's hateful [xenophobia and] Nazism.

* S. Shawkat's indoctrination of youth into 'dying for Arabism.'

* (Sami's brother) Naji Shawkat's Nazism.

* Participation in the Farhud pogrom (massacre) in 1941, Baghdad.

Encyclopedia of the modern Middle East: Volume 2 - Reeva S. Simon, Philip Mattar, Richard W. Bulliet - 1996 - 2182 pages

... to paramilitary youth groups strongly reminiscent of the Hitler Youth of Nazi Germany. In Ba'thist Iraq, the futuwwa is one of three paramilitary youth organizations that belong to the state-run General Federation of Iraqi Youth.
http://books.google.com/books?id=KE8YAAAAIAAJ&q=futuwwa+hitler

Independent Iraq, 1932-1958: a study in Iraqi politics, Majid Khadduri, [Oxford University Press] 1960, p. 173

He also invited the King to send a Futuwwa delegation to Nuremberg to attend the parade of the Nazi Party convention in September 1938. A delegation of thirty members of the Futuwwa was subsequently sent, received by the ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=uh4xAAAAIAAJ&q=futuwwa
Moreover, when Baldur von Schirach, the Reich Youth Leader, stopped in Baghdad on his return flight from Tehran in the autumn of 1937, he had an audience with King Ghazi and suggested that he should pay attention to the Futuwwa movement ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=uh4xAAAAIAAJ&q=A+delegation

Simon, Reeva. "The Teaching of History in Iraq Before the Rashid Ali Coup of 1941." Middle Eastern Studies 22, no.1 (January 1986); 37-51

The Iraqis, like the French, the Germans, and the Japanese during the interwar period, used their schools to inculcate nationalism. The curriculum was published and instituted... emphasized Arab nationalism and Iraq's important role in a pan-Arab union.... accelerated recruitment by the Iraqi ministry of Education of Syrian and Palestinian teachers...
From 1920 until 1941, the three men instrumental in foreign educational policy and in impanting a nationalist ideology in the schools were Muhammad Fadhi al-Jamali, Sami Shawkat and, most important, Sati al-Husri.
[...]
Sami Shawkat, a physician not a pedagogue, with little interest in Iraqi education beyond instilling the militarist sprit in the schools, is most noted for his lectures to students on the 'Profession of Death', telling them that the most important thing for them to learn was how to kill and how to die. He helped to institute military instruction in the schools and promoted an Iraqi Hitler Youth-type paramilitary youth organization, the Futuwwah, included German as the third language in the secondary schools, and sent student...
http://www.jstor.org/pss/4283095

Sovereign creations: pan-Arabism and political order in Syria and Iraq, Malik Mufti, 1996 [286 pages], pp. 28-29

The architect of Iraq's education policy was Sati' al-Husri... "German nationalism, with its emphasis upon language and history as unifying factors, was the perfect model for Arab nationalism...
In accordance with this nationalist agenda, Husri's educational policy sought to instill a sense of common identity in the Iraqi people by stressing Arab history and culture, promoting standard Arabic over regional dialects, and trying to suppress particularistic identities such as those of the Shi'is, Kurds, Christians, and Jews. After 1923... Husri, along with his successors Fadhil Jamail and Sami Shawkat pressed ahead with their militaristic brand of national education, importing in the process large numebers of foreigners (particularly Palestinians) to teach Arab history and culture.
[...] Despite some trepidation at the xenophobic extremes to which Husri and Sami Shawkat often went, Faisal and his advisers appreciated their efforts at laying the ideological foundations for Hashemite pan-Arabism.
http://books.google.com/books?id=px20DEwGH6cC&pg=PA28

Pan-Arabism's Legacy of Confrontation with Iran By: Dr. Kaveh Farrokh

...Arab racism against Iranians...
Satia Al-Husri spawned a whole generation of men who advocated violence. One example is Sami Shawkat who is famous for his 1933 speech "Sina'at al-Mawt" (manufacture of death) in which he rationalizes mass violence and war as the way to achieve Arab aspirations. Tragically, this speech was widely distributed in Arab schools and in Iraq in particular. It is interesting that Shawkat teaches that "force is the soil which sprouts the seeds of truth". Although not widely known, Shawkat was a main force in the organization of the Futuwwa Youth Organization - a movement modeled directly after the Nazi Hitler Youth Movement. The Futuwwa set the pace for future Arab chauvinist movements, such as the B'aath party of Iraq and today's followers of Bin Laden. It is interesting to note that Shawkat's ideas became somewhat too hot to handle, even for the pan-Arabists - Satia Al-Husri later disowned Sami Shawkat.
It is worth noting that Sami Shawkat's brother, Naji, who by 1941 was a member of the Arab committee in Iraq (which had absorbed the Futuwwa), gave Franz von Papen (a high ranking German official of Nazi Germany in 1941) a letter which actually congratulated Hitler for the brutality that he inflicted upon the Jews.
http://www.iran-heritage.org/interestgroups/history-article2.htm

Encyclopedia of the Holocaust: Volume 2 - Israel Gutman - 1990 - 1905 pages - Page 716

In 1938 the Al-Futuwwa youth organization sent a delegate to the Nuremberg Nazi party rally, and in turn hosted the Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach in Baghdad. In 1939 all students attending secondary schools, as well as their ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=1SoYAAAAIAAJ&q=futuwwa

History Matters: Past as Prologue in Building Democracy in Iraq by E Davis - 2005

During the 1930s, Pan-Arabists developed proto-fascist organizations such as the al-Muthanna Club and its al-Futuwwa movement, and in June 1941 they participated in an attack on Baghdad's Jewish community.
http://www.fpri.org/orbis/4902/davis.historymattersiraq.pdf

The Farhud [United States Holocaust Museum]
[...]
The outbreak of mob violence against Baghdad Jewry known as the Farhud (Farhud is an Arabic term best translated as "pogrom" or "violent dispossession") erupted on June 1, 1941. It was a turning point in the history of the Jews in Iraq.
In Baghdad the results of this policy were much more severe. On the afternoon of June 1, 1941, when the Regent and his entourage returned to Baghdad and British troops surrounded the city, the Jews believed that the danger from the pro-Nazi regime had passed. They ventured out to celebrate the traditional Jewish harvest festival holiday of Shavuot. Riots broke out, targeting the Jews of Baghdad. These riots, known as the Farhud, lasted for two days, ending on June 2, 1941.
Iraqi soldiers and policemen who had supported Rashid Ali al-Gailani's coup d'etat in April and Futtuwa youths who were sympathetic to the Axis incited and led the riots. Unlike in previous incidents, rioters focused on killing. Many civilians in Baghdad and Bedouins from the city's outskirts joined the rioters, taking part in the violence and helping themselves to a share in the booty. During the two days of violence, rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes. The community leaders estimated that about 2,500 families -- 15 percent of the Jewish community in Baghdad -- suffered directly from the pogrom. According to the official report of the commission investigating the incident, 128 Jews were killed, 210 were injured, and over 1,500 businesses and homes were damaged. Rioting ended at midday on Monday, June 2, 1941, when Iraqi troops entered Baghdad, killed some hundreds of the mob in the streets and reestablished order in Baghdad.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007277

Iraq [Jewish Virtual Library

Fascism and Antisemitism (1933–1941)
[...]
Iraqi Jews did not know the kind of *antisemitism that prevailed in some Christian states of Europe. The first attempt to copy modern European antisemitic libels was made in 1924 by Sādiq Rasūl al-Qādirī, a former officer in the White Russian Army. He published his views, particularly that of worldwide conspiracy, in a Baghdadi newspaper. The Jewish response in its own weekly newspaper, al-Misbah, compelled al-Qādirī to apologize, although he later published his antisemitic memoirs.

At that time the press drew a clear dividing line between Judaism and Zionism. This line became blurred in the 1930s, along with the demand to remove Jews from the genealogical tree of the Semitic peoples. This anti-Jewish trend coincided with Faysal's death in 1933, which brought about a noticeable change for the Jewish community. His death also came at the same time as the Assyrian massacre, which created a climate of insecurity among the minorities. Iraqi Jewry at that time had been subject to threats and invectives emanating not only from extremist elements, but also from official state institutions as well. Dr. Sāmī Shawkat, a high official in the Ministry of Education in the pre-war years and for a while its director general, was the head of "al-Futuwwa," an imitation of Hitler's Youth. In one of his addresses, "The Profession of Death," he called on Iraqi youth to adopt the way of life of Nazi Fascists. In another speech he branded the Jews as the enemy from within, who should be treated accordingly. In another, he praised Hitler and Mussolini for eradicating their internal enemies (the Jews). Syrian and Palestinian teachers often supported Shawkat in his preaching.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0010_0_09571.html

Armies of the young: child soldiers in war and terrorism - Page 107 - David M. Rosen - 2005 - 199 pages

for boys between the ages of fifteen and twenty, they were also modeled on Hitler Youth. ... Iraq he helped set up an Arab Committee to promote collaboration between Iraq and the Nazis and brought the Iraqi al-Futuwwa under its control.

http://books.google.com/books?id=zQYQ0tho6mAC&pg=PA107

Republic of fear: the politics of modern Iraq By Kanan Makiya, university of California press [page 178]

The pan-Arab government also sponsored the Futuwwa Youth organization, modelled after the Hitler Youth movement.
http://books.google.com/books?id=MBSNs4sIYn0C&pg=PA178

Learning Not to Love Saddam by Paul Berman, New York Times, March 31, 2003

Modern totalitarianism arose in Europe in the years after World War I. It took different forms -- Fascist, Communist and Nazi. But the movements shared a number of traits: apocalyptic and paranoid ideologies, a total police state, a taste for murder. Other versions of that same totalitarianism arose in Arab and Muslim countries in precisely those years.

One of the Muslim variations eventually emerged as the Islamist radicalism of Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and other movements. A second version evolved into Saddam Hussein's Baath dictatorship. The European inspiration for those movements is not too hard to detect, especially in the case of the Baath, which got started in 1943 in an atmosphere of ardent sympathy for the fascist Axis.

Kanan Makiya, an expatriate Iraqi intellectual and a main author of the transition report, described in his book "Republic of Fear" how these European movements influenced Islamic radicalism philosophically and organizationally. There was, for instance, the model of the Hitler Youth for the pan-Arabist Futuwwa Youth of the 1930's, which, Mr. Makiya pointed out, pioneered a paramilitary culture "as if presaging the Baath militas" in later years.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/31/opinion/31BERM.html?pagewanted=all

Die Welt des Islams‎ - Page 136 - Religion - 1985

The Futuwwa-movement in Iraq was a youth-organization, not a political party. The Futuwwah was an official youth movement which comprised all students of the higher class of high school.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bQcsAAAAIAAJ&dq=Futuwwah
A delegation of the Futuwwah participated in the march of the Hitler-Jugend at the Parteitag in Nuremberg in September 1938.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bQcsAAAAIAAJ&q=hitler-jugend

Armies of the young: child soldiers in war and terrorism, by David M. Rosen, 2005, p. 106
The al-Futuwwa youth groups connected Palestinian youth to fascist youth movements elsewhere in the Middle East.
http://books.google.com/books?id=zQYQ0tho6mAC&pg=PA106

Rethinking nationalism in the Arab Middle East by James P. Jankowski, I. Gershoni - 1997 - History - 372 pages, P. 18

Pan-Arab radicalism was expressed in diverse forms in 1930s Iraq. In 1935 the "Muthana Club" was established in Baghdad and rapidly became a forum for the educated from all parts of the Arab world and a center for the dissemination of Arab nationalist propaganda. Nationalist radicalization was also evident in the formation, in the late 1930s, of s paramilitary youth movement [al-futuwwa] modeled on fascist and Nazi youth organizations, sponsored by the government and officially instituted in Iraqi schools
http://books.google.com/books?id=_a1NNyZUXAgC&pg=PA18

Encyclopedia of the modern Middle East, Volume 2, Reeva S. Simon, Philip Mattar, Richard W. Bulliet, Macmillan Reference USA, 1996, pp. 686-882

[p. 686]
In another context, the term has been used in Iraq, first in the 1930s and again since the Ba th party takeover in 1968, to refer to paramilitary youth groups strongly reminiscent of the Hitler Youth of Nazi Germany. In Ba'thist Iraq, ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=KE8YAAAAIAAJ&dq=hitler+youth
[p. 882]
the schools by Sayi al-Husri, Muhammad... al-JAMAIL, and Sami SHAWKAT throught the 1920 and 1930s, was supported by Faisal's heir, GHAZI IBN FAISAL, who ruled from 1933 until 1939. The creation of pan-Arab clubs, such as al-Muthanna and the FUTUWWA youth movement, made Baghdad a center for pan-Arabism and a haven for exiled Palestinians, led by Jerusalem mufti (Muslim religious..
http://books.google.com/books?id=KE8YAAAAIAAJ&dq=futuwwa

Najjada [Najjada, Najjadeh]

(Nasuli)

Highlights:

* Inspired by Nazism/fascism.

Nazism in Syria and Lebanon By Nordbruch Goetz, p. 54

Muslim schools that were directed by the Maqasid Islamic Charitable Association provided Najada a pool of potential members. As a Muslim 'twin' to the Phalangists, as the organization was often described, Najjada adopted a pan-Arab nationalist vision, calling for a suppression of all foreign influences. The ambivalent relation of such pan- Arab concepts to ethnocentric and racial nationalism became visible in its slogan 'Arabism above all' (al-'uruba fawqa al-jami').
http://books.google.com/books?id=iAWBkDAv4TkC&pg=PA54

Colonial citizens: republican rights, paternal privilege, and gender in French Syria and Lebanon, by Elizabeth Thompson, [Columbia University Press] 2000 [ISBN 0231106610, 97802311066103]

...admired the youth groups and physical discipline at the Berlin Olympics, and their Muslim counterparts, the Najjada (Helpers), promoted by Muhi al-Din Nasuli, a leader of the Muslim scouting movement and newspaper publisher... the pan-Arabism of the Najjada... of... Lebanese groups... Since at least 1933, newspapers had been printing Hitler's speeches and excerpts from Mem Kampf. Hitler and Mussolini were viewed in both Syria and Lebanon as models of strong statebuilders... criticized "moral chaos" in public life and adopted the motto "Arabism Above All" on his newspaper's masthead, which also printed glowing accounts of German youth's support of Hitler...
http://books.google.com/books?id=B9fruGejwmUC&pg=PA193
http://www.ciaonet.org/book/the01/the01_11.pdf

[CIA document THE CURRENT SITUATION IN PALESTINE, ORE 49, 20 October 1947]

There are two para-military Arab organizations, the Futuwwa and the Najjada, both of which are more or less controlled by the Arab higher Committe under the leadership of the Grand Mufti.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/browse_docs_full.asp

Handcshar SS Muslim Nazi units [Bosnians, Albanians]

(Nasuli)

Highlights:

* Three divisions of Nazi Muslim socldiers:
1) The Waffen SS 13th Handschar ("Knife").
2.) The 23rd Kama ("Dagger").
3.) The 21st Skenderbeg.

* Grand Mufti inspired the "holy warriors" [Jihad for Nazi victory].

* Some of these ex-Nazi soldiers came to fight with Arab Muslim "brethren" against Israel in 1948.

Cairo to Damascus - Pages 419-420 - John Roy Carlson - [READ BOOK] 2007 - 520 pages

The Mufti also organized an Arab Brigade and a Moslem Legion to fight side by side with the Nazis. An Arab leader accepted a commission as colonel in the Wehrmacht. Turning ing to large Moslem populations in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Albania, the Mufti with the help of Pavelich, the Croatian quisling, recruited substantial numbers of Moslem Holy Warriors who fought as the Waffen SS, and the "Free Arabia" movement. the Mufti visited these troops frequently praying with them, exhorting them to fight for Allah.
http://books.google.com/books?id=I-nzRJpb5CIC&pg=PA419

"FASCIST MUSLIM GROUP EXPECTED TO LOOT TEL AVIV IN 1948," by Seth J. Frantzman [San Francisco Sentinal, 10 May, 2008]

On a pleasant Thursday in December 1948, Emilio Traubner, a correspondent for The Palestine Post, found himself near Abu Kabir, not far from Jaffa. Trenches and expended cartridges were strewn about, reminders of the fighting between units of the Irgun and local Arab forces that had taken place there seven months previously. There was a large Arab villa from where Traubner recovered a diary. It turned out to be the daily record of Yusuf Begovic of Pale, a town near Sarajevo in modern-day Bosnia-Herzegovina. In it Begovic had described his activities as a cook for the "Arab Army of Liberation."

Traubner described who Begovic had been serving: "35 Yugoslav Muslims who had a good reason to expect to be among the first to occupy and loot Tel Aviv, were part of a group of some thousands who came to the Middle East to join the jihad against Israel."

What were Yugoslav Muslims doing in Jaffa in 1948? How had they managed to get themselves all the way to the Holy Land? What had motivated them? Who had recruited them? What was the Bosnian or Albanian connection to the Palestinians, if there was one?

There was a Bosnian connection: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, had been in Bosnia in the 1940s. Had he recruited these men? What had become of them?

It turned out that in 2005 a Bosnian had given an interview in Lebanon to a Croatian newspaper and claimed to have fought in the 1948 war. The story began to crystallize.

The Long Shadow of Haj Amin

In October 1937, Haj Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Arab Higher Committee, was hiding from the British authorities in the Haram al-Sharif, the holy sanctuary atop the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. On October 13, disguised as a Beduin, he fled to Lebanon via Jaffa. In Lebanon he received sanctuary from the French mandatory authorities but he fled again with the outbreak of war in 1939. This time he made his way to Baghdad disguised as a woman. In Baghdad in 1940 and 1941 he increased his contacts with Germany, offering to aid the Nazis in return for their help in gaining independence for the Arab states. The Italians helped him enter Turkey, and then he made his way to Rome on October 11. He met with Mussolini and then with Hitler on November 28. After the failure of various schemes to create an Arab military unit he eventually settled for recruiting Muslim volunteers to aid the Nazis from the Balkans, Bosnia and eventually Kosovo.

In speaking to potential recruits, Husseini stressed the connections they had to the Muslim nation fighting the British throughout the world: "The hearts of all Muslims must today go out to our Islamic brothers in Bosnia, who are forced to endure a tragic fate. They are being persecuted by the Serbian and communist bandits, who receive support from England and the Soviet Union… They are being murdered, their possessions are robbed and their villages are burned. England and its allies bear a great accountability before history for mishandling and murdering Europe's Muslims, just as they have done in the Arabic lands and in India."

Three divisions of Muslim soldiers were recruited: The Waffen SS 13th Handschar ("Knife") and the 23rd Kama ("Dagger") and the 21st Skenderbeg. The Skenderbeg was an Albanian unit of around 4,000 men, and the Kama was composed of Muslims from Bosnia, containing 3,793 men at its peak. The Handschar was the largest unit, around 20,000 Bosnian Muslim volunteers. According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, "These Muslim volunteer units, called Handschar, were put in Waffen SS units, fought Yugoslav partisans in Bosnia and carried out police and security duties in Hungary. They participated in the massacre of civilians in Bosnia and volunteered to join in the hunt for Jews in Croatia." Part of the division also escorted Hungarian Jews from the forced labor in mine in Bor on their way back to Hungary. The division was also employed against Serbs, who as Orthodox Christians were seen by the Bosnian Muslims as enemies.

The Handschar division surrendered to the British army on May 8, 1945. As many as 70,000 Bosnian Muslim POWs and their families were moved by the British army to Taranto in Italy. The creation of Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia at the end of the war meant that former Bosnian Muslim volunteers in the German SS units could not return home for fear of prosecution or internment. George Lepre, a scholar on the history of the Handschar and author of Himmler's Bosnian Division: The Waffen-SS Handschar Division 1943-1945 describes their fate: "Those Bosnians who elected to remain in the camps eventually found asylum in countries throughout the Western and Arab worlds. Many of those who settled in the Middle East later fought in Palestine against the new Israeli state."

But first they had to get to the Middle East.

The formation of the Bosnian unit in 1947

The Bosnian Muslims, usually referred to as "Yugoslavs" in period newspaper accounts as well as in intelligence reports, remained in DP camps in Italy until 1947, when it was reported in The Palestine Post on April 18 that there was a "request from the Syrian government for the transfer of 8,000 Bosnian Moslem refugees at present in Italy. Yugoslav quarters here say that the Arab League has written to all Arab states, urging them to assist these Moslem DPs, and that some financial help has already been received. Yugoslav officials say that they too want these 8,000 Moslems back, as they are the Handschar Division of the German Wehrmacht which surrendered to the British… The Yugoslavs state that they view with the gravest concern the possibility of the transfer of this group to the Middle East."

By December 1947 a nucleus of former Handschar officers had made their way to Syria and were beginning to reconstitute their unit in Damascus. A report by Israel Baer in the Post noted that "the latest recruits to the Syrian army are members of the Bosnian Waffen SS… It is reported that they are directing a school for commando tactics for the Syrian Army."

No doubt the fledgling Syrian army which had been born in 1946 was in need of officers and trainers with experience. Emilio Traubner, writing on December 3, 1947, noted that the International Refugee Organization (IRO) was even convinced to fund the travel of Bosnian Muslims from Italy to the Middle East so that they could find homes since they refused to be repatriated to Yugoslavia.

In January 1948 Arab agents were working to recruit Bosnians for the fight in Palestine. On February 2, it was reported that 25 Bosnian Muslims had arrived in Beirut and were moving to Damascus to join 40 other Bosnians already there. A report by Jon Kimche on February 4 further noted that up to 3,500 were being transferred to Syria to fight alongside Fawzi Kaukji's Arab Liberation Army (ALA) in its invasion of Palestine. On March 14 a party of 67 Albanians, 20 Yugoslavs and 21 Croats led by an Albanian named Derwish Bashaco arrived by boat in Beirut from Italy. They were hosted by the Palestine Arab Bureau and made their way to Damascus to join the ALA. In the first week of April another 200 Bosnians arrived in Beirut.

A lengthy report by Claire Neikind on March 2 described the procedure by which Arab agents were recruiting volunteers among the DPs in Italy. Men between 22 and 32 were sought and in return they would receive free passage to Beirut and their families would receive maintenance. According to Neikind, 300 men had already arrived and 90 Croatian Ustashi were also making there way. Fifty-seven were sent to Amman. Between December 1 and February 20 a total of 106 were sent to Syria. Neikind noted that "as soon as their families are settled, they enter Arab military service."

If one accepts merely the low totals from newspaper accounts it appears that there were at least 520 Bosnians, 67 Albanians and 111 Croatians in Syria or Beirut, as well as 135 Bosnians on their way to Egypt and 57 Bosnians in Jordan. Thus 890 volunteers from Yugoslavia and Albania were in the Middle East by April 1948, before Israel's declaration of independence on May 15, 1948.

Upon arrival the volunteers found their way to a camp at Katana, a military base west of Damascus that the Syrian army had provided for use by the Arab Liberation Army being assembled to invade Palestine. Here they met their commander, Fawzi Kaukji for the first time. Kaukji, 58, was a former Ottoman soldier who had fought in the Arab Revolt. Hagana intelligence estimated as many as 4,000 volunteers had joined his army.

In December of 2005, Hassan Haidar Diab, a journalist in Bosnia, was able to locate Kemal Rustomovic, a Bosnian who had served with the Yugoslav volunteers. He claimed to have been a member of the Arab Salvation Army where 150 of his fellow Bosnians served under a Bosnian officer named Fuad Sefkobegovic.

The Role of the Bosnians in the War of Independence

Since the fall of 1947 Arab forces under Abdel Khader Husseini and other locals had harassed Jewish traffic and supplies moving from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. A mixed Bosnian-Arab unit of the ALA had been dispatched to aid in the siege of Jerusalem and this unit found itself embroiled in the battle for Castel between April 3 and 8, 1948. This battle was part of the Hagana's Operation Nahshon which was intended to relieve the siege of Jerusalem. It is not clear what became of the Bosnians who fought at Castel. Some may have retired to Ramallah, where it was reported on April 16 that Muslim foreigners including Yugoslavs had taken over the best hotels and "molested" the local population.

The next battle that the Bosnian units participated in was at Jaffa between April 25 and May 5. Jaffa had been allotted to the Arab state in the UN partition plan, but it was surrounded by territory allotted to the Jewish state. The battle began when the Irgun launched an attack on the city. According to the Hagana, there were 400 "Yugoslavs" and 200 Iraqis defending Jaffa. On April 28, Michel Issa, the Christian Arab commander of the Ajnadin Battalion, received orders from Kaukji to move from the Jerusalem foothills to relieve the siege of Jaffa. On the same day, Hagana intelligence noted that there were 60 "Yugoslavs" among the defenders of Jaffa. Issa arrived in Jaffa on April 29 ; the commander of Jaffa, Maj. Adil Najmuddin, deserted the city on May 1, leaving Issa and his Yugoslavs. According to Issa's telegram to Kaukji, "Adil left [the] city by sea with all [the] Iraqis and Yugoslavs." Prior to their departure the Yugoslavs had been billeted at local homes and their unit even included a cook.

Kemal Rustomovic recalled in his interview that he had first been at Nablus, then Jaffa and finally at Jenin. Between the evacuation of the Yugoslavs by sea from Jaffa and their reunion with the ALA, the State of Israel was born on May 15, 1948. On the same day five Arab armies invaded Israel and the war became much wider.

The ALA became a disorganized and largely spent force by the time it saw fighting again around Nazareth again in July. During the fighting in the North, Kaukji's army of 2,500 men was reduced to only 800 and it was driven from Nazareth into northern Galilee. Rustomovic was one of these men according to his interview. The Post reported that the ALA still included "Yugoslavs." On July 18 the Post reported that the British government's intelligence had acted to "systematically sabotage [the] Palestine partition scheme" and provided as evidence the fact that England was aware of the presence of Bosnian volunteers in Syria.

During the fighting in October the IDF conquered the entire Galilee and parts of Southern Lebanon. A report on November 1, detailing the capture of the Galilee, noted that some "Yugoslavs" had been captured during the fighting that had driven the ALA and the Lebanese army from Palestine and actually found the IDF in Lebanon.

The Bosnians and the 1948 war, strange bedfellows?

It is not known what became of the Bosnians who served with the Arab forces in the 1948 war. Rustomovic, who was born in the village of Kuti in central Bosnia in 1928, joined the Lebanese army in 1950. He served his adopted country for 30 years, married a local woman and had seven daughters and five sons with her. He was granted Lebanese citizenship, unlike the Palestine refugees who fled to Lebanon, and retired from the army in 1980. According to him, none of the Bosnians who had served in the SS ever returned to Yugoslavia. Some ended up in the US, Australia and Canada. It is assumed that some also settled in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East. Today many would be in their 80s and 90s and it is doubtful that many of them survive.

In the 1990s during the Balkan wars, Arabs would journey to the Balkans to participate in war between Bosnians and Serbs. In a strange twist they would be repaying the debt incurred when 900 or more Bosnian Muslims gave up their homes and past to come to the Middle East to serve the Muslim Arab cause. The involvement of these Bosnians may be seen as an early version of the linkage of Muslim conflicts throughout the world. This has gained increased exposure lately due to the involvement of foreign Muslim volunteers in the Algerian, Lebanese, Kashmiri, Sudanese and Afghani conflicts among others.

The writer is in a doctoral program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and his MA thesis was on the Christian Arabs in the 1948 war.
http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=12613

Admiration & worshipping

Nazism in Syria and Lebanon. The Ambivalence of the German Option, 1933-1945 by Götz Nordbruch, Routledge, 2009, 209 pp. Reviewed by Wolfgang G. Schwanitz

Hitler in the Levant: How Arabs Reacted to the Third Reich in Syria and Lebanon

The whole Arab youth is enthused by Adolf Hitler, wrote Kamil Muruwwa, the young editor of the Beirut paper An-Nida', to the German Foreign Minister in Berlin. The year after Hitler came to power, Muruwwa translated Mein Kampf from English into Arabic and published it in daily installments in An-Nida'. Now he wants to edit the series as a book. But for this, he explains in his letter, he needs an additional 600 Marks. Therefore he is asking the German government for financial support in this endeavor.
http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DBID=1&TMID=111&LNGID=1&FID=388&PID=0&IID=3235

The beast reawakens - Page 122 - Martin A. Lee - Routledge, 1999 [ISBN:0-415-92546-0] - 560 pages

Even though he loathed Arabs (he once described them as "lacquered half-apes who ought to be whipped"), Hitler was nonetheless the idol of the paramilitary Green Shirts, Egypt's indigenous proto-fascist moevemnt, which referred to him as Abu Ali, the "good fighter."
http://books.google.com/books?id=SX4B7pNG3W8C&pg=PA122

The dream palace of the Arabs: a generation's odyssey Fouad Ajami - [Random House, Inc.] 1999 - 344 pages p. 78

...a popular couplet at the time taunted the French about Hitler's victory:
Ya France, hiddi W'irhali Ijaki Hitler, Abu Ali,
Oh France, dismantle and be gone
After you is Hitler, Abu Ali
"Abu Ali" was the popular name given to neighborhood toughs, an endearing nickname. The German wreaking havoc on Europe was doing to the colonial masters ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=z1Yf1rEwq28C&pg=PT78

Prevent World War III. Society for the Prevention of World War III (New York, N.Y.) - 1959 - Page 41

Abu Ali, the affectionate name given to Adolf Hitler by his admirers in Iraq, has also returned to popularity. Incidentally, the name Abu Ali means "father of Ali," ie, father of Rashid Ali. Photographs of Hitler are appearing again.
http://books.google.com/books?&id=ckHTAAAAMAAJ&dq=father+of+ali

Waiting for the dawn: an autobiography - Atallah Mansour - 1975 - 155 pages - Page 15

... and from time to time we began hearing unfavourable , comments on the British, predicting their defeat at the phands of 'Abu Ali' — Hitler. (The name Abu Ali normally I indicates admiration for a powerful leader. ...
http://books.google.com/books?&id=6IFtAAAAMAAJ&dq=Abu+Ali

The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin Al-Husseini, by Chuck Morse - 2003 - Page 31 - 186 pages

In Heaven Allah, on Earth Hitler." Many Arab intellectuals and revisionists now explain this affinity the Arabs had for Hitler and Nazism with the ... The Arabs would go so far as to Islamicize Hitler's name rendering it as Abu Ali,...
http://books.google.com/books?id=HGkthBwbNg8C&pg=PA31

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'The warm ties between the swastika and the crescent' [Holocaust perversion and Palestinian Nazi links] [836 words]Miriam SMar 13, 2022 06:58279323
PR, Feb 2021: A "Palestine" flag with a swastika inside. Two thirds of PR's Muslims are "Palestinian" [101 words]GilMar 11, 2022 12:36279308
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Great historical information, Al [47 words]GrueneFeb 14, 2012 17:53180551
3Muslims stole the idea of 9-11 [99 words]stanleyFeb 16, 2012 07:42180551
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Fact check 2 (easier) [141 words]
w/response from Daniel Pipes
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response [55 words]Adam McNov 5, 2010 11:56178867
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