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David Myatt- Apostate from Islam and Ex-Fanatic.

Reader comment on item: The Far Right & Jihadis in Alliance

Submitted by Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi (United Kingdom), Nov 28, 2012 at 22:11

Dr. Pipes:

You refer to the interesting case of David Myatt, the neo-Nazi who subsequently became a radical Muslim. However, you might be interested to know that Myatt no longer identifies as a Muslim at all. Indeed, on his blog, he speaks of:

***My move away from Islam toward developing my own philosophy of The Numinous Way...***

Further, in his autobiography 'Myngath', he writes:

***This change of my perspective - this personal change in me - arose, or derived, from several things: from involvement with and belief in, during the past decade, a certain Way of Life (Al-Islam), considered by many to be a religion....and it is only in the last few months that I have finally and to my own satisfaction resolved, in an ethical way, the dilemma of such a duty, thus ending my association with a particular Way of Life, which Way [i.e. Islam] many consider a religion.***

Today, Myatt simply espouses a philosophy derived from what he calls 'Pathei Mathos' ('learning by experience'):

***For what I painfully, slowly, came to understand, via pathei-mathos, was the importance - the human necessity, the virtue - of love, and how love expresses or can express the numinous in the most sublime, the most human, way. Of how extremism (of whatever political or religious or ideological kind) places some abstraction, some ideation, some notion of duty to some ideation, before a personal love, before a knowing and an appreciation of the numinous. Thus does extremism - usurping such humanizing personal love - replace human love with an extreme, an unbalanced, an intemperate, passion for something abstract: some ideation, some ideal, some dogma, some 'victory', some-thing always supra-personal and always destructive of personal happiness, personal dreams, personal hopes; and always manifesting an impersonal harshness: the harshness of hatred, intolerance, certitude-of-knowing, unfairness, violence, prejudice.***

He even disowns Nazi ideology completely:

***There is thus, based on applying the moral criteria of The Numinous Way, a complete rejection by me of National-Socialism – of whatever kind – and an understanding of Hitler as a flawed individual who caused great suffering and whose actions and policies where dishonourable and immoral.***

In a similar vein:

***I regard National-Socialism – of whatever variety – as an immoral set of beliefs, an example par excellence of hubris, with the Allied victory over NS Germany being a moral necessity, worthy of remembrance and celebration.***

He also rejects Holocaust denial:

***For decades – both as a neo-nazi and as a Muslim – I believed, I asserted, that the Shoah was a myth, a product of Allied post-war propaganda subsequently maintained and propagated by 'Zionists' (a modern NS code-word for Jews, designed to try and circumvent racial hatred legislation) in order to both establish the State of Israel and to enhance 'Jewish power over Aryans.

[...]

With the expiration, in 2009, of the extremist I was, there was an openness toward this evidence, an empathy with the people subsequently met who had suffered because of the policies and the people of NS Germany and an empathy with those who had first-hand or familial experience of the horrors of the camps.Thus there is no longer any denial by me of the truth of those horrors, of the evil that was NS Germany. As someone once wrote: "Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen."***

Finally, he writes on the West itself:

***The simple truth of the present and so evident to me now – in respect of the societies of the West, and especially of societies such as those currently existing in America and Britain – is that for all their problems and all their flaws they seem to be much better than those elsewhere, and certainly better than what existed in the past. That is, that there is, within them, a certain tolerance; a certain respect for the individual; a certain duty of care; and certainly still a freedom of life, of expression, as well as a standard of living which, for perhaps the majority, is better than elsewhere in the world and most certainly better than existed there and elsewhere in the past.***

Surely these points should be added as an update?

Submitting....

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Reader comments (22) on this item

Title Commenter Date Thread
Sorry I missed this [196 words]GertrudeDec 11, 2012 18:02201351
4David Myatt- Apostate from Islam and Ex-Fanatic. [700 words]Aymenn Jawad Al-TamimiNov 28, 2012 22:11201031
LATEST UPDATE [27 words]orange yonasonJul 10, 2009 13:09158720
Orange Yonason [138 words]Aymenn JawadJul 16, 2009 06:27158720
Supplementary Material [10 words]orange yonasonJun 7, 2009 12:23156952
Re: Failure to Reply to my Responses [12 words]Aymenn JawadJun 13, 2009 06:17156952
The Failure Of Aymenn Jawad [198 words]orange yonasonJun 14, 2009 18:30156952
The Failure Of Orange Yonason [359 words]Aymenn JawadJun 16, 2009 12:10156952
The Failure Is Still Aymenn Jawad's [179 words]orange yonasonJul 3, 2009 16:17156952
Re: The Failure is Still Orange Yonason's [322 words]Aymenn JawadJul 4, 2009 04:02156952
It Was Right Under My Nose The Whole Time [132 words]orange yonasonMay 11, 2009 00:37155219
1(neo) - Nazi is NOT Extreme Right [112 words]TopnifeMay 7, 2009 00:47155054
The Problem With Calling Any Form Of Nazism "Right Wing" [214 words]orange yonasonMay 3, 2009 01:53154844
Re: The Problem with Calling Any Form of Nazism "Right Wing" [158 words]Aymenn JawadMay 4, 2009 07:10154844
RE - Making Generalizations, And False Accusations [289 words]orange yonasonMay 6, 2009 12:05154844
Re: Making generalisations and false accusations [376 words]Aymenn JawadMay 8, 2009 18:50154844
No Smoke And Mirrrors - Just The Facts [264 words]orange yonasonMay 10, 2009 01:52154844
OK, I Have A Few More Minutes After All [261 words]orange yonasonMay 10, 2009 02:56154844
Re: No Smoke And Mirrors- Just The Facts [322 words]Aymenn JawadMay 12, 2009 03:44154844
Re: OK, I Have A Few More Minutes After All [224 words]Aymenn JawadMay 12, 2009 05:22154844
Re: The Far Right and Islamists [205 words]Aymenn JawadMay 2, 2009 16:15154829
This is a long-standing alliance [48 words]Kepha HorApr 18, 2011 20:54154829

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