A Tale of Two Cultures

Submitted by Fred Baehr (United States), Mar 14, 2011 at 21:04

Nazism is a kind of socialism. Nazis were National Socialists, as opposed to the international socialism of Russian communism. Islam is inherently collectivist, so naturally socialism fits with their view of the world. Islam preaches that the only true freedom lies in submission to God (and by quick extension to the rulings of the Ulema). Nazism preached a similar doctrine of freedom through devotion to the state (another parallel with communism, which far from being opposite to Nazism is its close cousin). There is also a 200 year relationship with Germany and the Ottomans to consider. From the 18th cen. the Ottomans and Germany and Austria wanted to check the expanding influence of the Russians in the Balkans and the Black Sea, and the Ottomans employed Germans and Austrians to modernize their military. It is also plain in the Quran that Jews are marked out as eternal enemies of Allah and the Muslims. Mohammed's personal hatred of Jews gives the example for modern Muslims who revere Mohammed's life, sayings and actions as representing the highest morality, thus beatifying Jew hatred.

Of course Hitler was only using Arabs for his own purposes. Had he been successful, he would certainly have eventually began an extermination project against Arabs like the one he pursued against Jews. Darker skinned non Germanics were not his kind of people, any link with Aryan blood aside. It is difficult to understand how studious people like Al Banna could miss this central fact about the Nazi movement.

Yet today among the intelligentsia if one attempts to point out any similarities between Islam and Nazism, one is immediately castigated as an Islamophobe. The laudable desire to create amity among all has trumped the value of real understanding. Add to that the popular theories of Michel Foucault that historical facts are not facts at all but rather are mere narratives meant to advance the imperialist determination of "the west" and there is little chance for unsettling information to be considered. It is next to impossible to get anyone to consider the leftist-socialist basis for Nazism. It is even harder to get anyone to listen to anything critical about any religion except Christianity and Judaism.

I recently asked an Imam in Honolulu if he thought it was better for interfaith amity and understanding to come to understanding of the beliefs that in fact divide us, or better to ignore them? His answer was we should seek the things upon which we can agree and avoid the other things. I think he spoke for the modern post-modern mindset. Since relativism states that there is no single objective reality, and it is now dogma among intellectuals that there are no "facts" as such, all that is left is to construct an edifice of mutual acceptance. Yet it is inescapable that Islam teaches one objective reality, as do Christianity and Judaism, and that these three "realities" differ in ways that are meaningful to each faith's adherents. Therefore to construct some "understanding" or "acceptance" without understanding these differences is fallacious and illusory. In fact there are true facts that can in fact be established, and the three Abrahamic faiths cannot exist without their own set of "factual" beliefs. Relativism and faith in the God of Abraham are mutually exclusive concepts. But to say so makes you a "racist".

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