The Abraham Complex

View from the booth:

It's a good sign that the Saudis are sponsoring this event. It's just a pity that it cannot take place IN Saudi Arabia. Because to do so would involve the arrest and possible death or imprisonment of all non-Muslim attendees. The Saudi government is single-handedly responsible for the spread of Wahabbism in the Islamic world and for funneling its oil money (of which there is now more, thanks very much)into 20,000 madrassas worldwide which spread this kind of radical thought. It's difficult for me to believe that when one compares the Saudi purchase of influence and the aura of legitemacy bestowed on it by its generous sponsorship of various Middle Eastern and Islamic studies programs in universities throughout the United States with its insistence on an extreme form of Wahabbism which it likewise generously sponsors, that this conference is nothing more than a publicity stunt.

However, if there is one thing that is redeeming about this talk it is that even the Saudi royal family sees that there is some benefit to talking about differences. This in and of itself indicates some level, however minimal, of willingness to listen to other points of view. And that, in and of itself, is a positive development regardless of the short-term public relations benefits that it might see as the result of this conference. With the rise of radical Shi'ia majorities in, for example, Iran, the Saudis clearly have an understanding that a lack of rapprochement with the West (e.g., Christians and Jews) will lead to revolution - buckets of blood - all over the Sunni world and the concomitant loss of power and money to which they are ultimately and really betrothed to.

Money don't care who owns it.

Randy Shiner

The Abraham Complex

The grave implications of how Islam and Christianity have dealt differently with their Jewish roots.
Avi Beker, The New Republic Published: Thursday, July 10, 2008

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

"Abrahamic religions" has become a widely used term, particularly among interfaith groups, to designate the three major monotheistic religions. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia has called for an interfaith meeting to be attended by representatives of the "Abrahamic religions," beginning with a Saudi-sponsored conference in Madrid next week. This phrase, focusing on the character of Abraham, seeks to emphasize the shared characteristics of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. As the first person to establish a covenantal relationship with God based on His role as the sole deity and supreme authority, Abraham is accepted as a prophet by all three monotheistic faiths.

On a theological level, both Christianity and Islam have had to reconcile their belief that Abraham is a true prophet, but that his religion--Judaism--is not the true religion. This inherent need to invalidate Jews as the "chosen people" has had concrete manifestations throughout history--and is at the root of much of medieval and contemporary anti-Semitism. Resolving this seeming paradox has been the first step in healing Christian-Jewish relations, and is a necessary process for Muslim leaders as well before any serious interfaith work can be successful.
Jews themselves have historically recognized the difficult situation imposed on them by their "chosen" status. Sigmund Freud, using his theory of the subconscious, blamed this special categorization (in his words, "the first-born, the favorite child of God") for the world's obsession with and hatred of Jews. In turn, Jews throughout history have looked upon the "chosen" concept as controversial and arrogant, and many have tried to reject or deny it. In 1885, the Jewish Reform movement in America adopted the Pittsburgh Platform, declaring that they didn't wish to be a nation at all and thus reinterpreting the concept of chosenness as part of a moral mission to help the world. About 50 years later, Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist Movement, proposed a Judaism that rejected, in his words, the "anachronistic" and "arrogant" concept of the chosen people that perpetrated "race or national superiority." Early Zionists also tried to escape the fate of "the chosen" in order to be a "normal" nation. Yosef Haim Brenner, an influential writer for the socialist Zionism and the Kibbutz movement, wrote at the beginning of the twentieth century: "I would blot out from the prayer book of the Jews of our day the [words] 'Thou hast chosen us' in every shape and form."

Nevertheless, the concept of the Jews as "The Chosen People" had become a central tenet of both Christianity and Islam. Christianity's relationship with Judaism has long been governed by the "supersessionist theory," established by Paul at the end of the first century, which claims that the followers of Jesus replaced the Jews as the "true Israel." It's a theme that is found in Christian literature as early as the second century, with Christians envisioning themselves as "Israel after the flesh" in order to justify why Jews had fallen out of favor with God. One of the earliest Christian saints, Justin Martyr, refers in 160 A.D. to the Christian Church as "the true spiritual Israel." This urge to discredit the merit of Judaism also explains the Christian obsession with Jews as the killers of Christ--an element in the religion's early attempt to vilify Jews. As characterized by scholar David Flusser, "Christian anti-Judaism was not a coincidental lapse" but a tool serving as "godfather to the formation of Christianity."

Christian vilification of "the Chosen Jews" inspired several waves of violence, such as the attacks on the Jewish communities in Europe that followed Pope Urban II declaration's in 1095 of a "Holy War" led by the "race beloved and chosen by God." During the Second Crusade half a century later, Peter the Venerable incited his troops to liberate the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem as a way to confirm the rejection of the Jews and the election of the believers in Christ. The supersessionist theory also motivated the expulsion of the Jews in 1492 from Spain, as the Jewish refusal to convert clashed with the Spanish claim to be replacing the Hebrews as the new "Chosen People" who would transform Spain into "God's Land," and the royal family into the new "House of David." Even Hitler used Christian theology to justify his slaughter of Jews, writing in Mein Kampf, "By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord's work." For him, the choice was unequivocal: "There cannot be two Chosen People," he once said. "We are God's People."

It took Christianity 2,000 years of policies that persecuted and demoralized Jews to arrive at Vatican II, the hugely significant gathering in 1965 that confronted the charge against the Jews as the killers of Christ. By removing the collective blood guilt from "the Jews of today" and in ancient times, the gathering's pronouncement allowed the recognition by the Catholic Church of the Jews as "Thy Chosen People" and led later to Pope John Paul II's declaration, during his historic 1986 visit to the Synagogue of Rome, that the Jews are "our elder brother." Some elements of the supersessionist theory still sporadically appear in Christian theology--such as in the Dominus Iesus document, written in 2000 by the current Pope, Benedict XVI, who has stressed a desire "for the instant in which Israel will say yes to Christ." But the 1965 modifications in the doctrine and the reconfirmation of the strong Jewish roots of Christianity have contributed mightily to a more harmonious relationship between the two religions.

Islam faces a similar theological need to explain away Jewish "chosenness." But unlike Christianity, the Muslim displacement theory does not base itself on being the "New Israel;" instead, it recasts the Jewish prophets as Muslims by creating a direct link with Ishmael, the son of Abraham, the "first Muslim" according to the Koran. As philosopher Abraham Geiger (later the founder of Reform Judaism) wrote in his 1833 doctoral thesis, Did Muhammad Borrow from Judaism?, the need to distance Islam from its Jewish roots explains much of the anti-Jewish sentiment in its theology. Sheikh Abd Al Rahman Al Sudayyis, the imam of the most important mosque in Mecca, said as much in February 2004: he described the existence of Jews as a major challenge to "our religious principles, historical rights, and past glories"--a conflict "of creed, identity, and existence." The denial of the role Judaism played in the foundation of Islam is a significant part of Islamic theology.

Vilifying or killing Jews is a recurring motif in Muslim holy texts. An oral tradition from the Prophet Mohammed, for example, contends that the rivalry with the Jews will continue until the end of the days: "The Last Hour will not come until the Muslims fight against the Jews," it reads, "and the Muslims will kill them until the Jews will hide themselves behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say: 'O Muslim, the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him.'" The Koran accuses the Jews, repeatedly, of falsehood, distortion, and of being "corrupters of the scriptures." It argues that the Jews did not deserve to be the chosen people, and because of their sins they are condemned to "degradation in this world." Islam's obsession with Judaism is no less serious than the Catholic Church's before Vatican II--and, unfortunately, it has become even more severe in the past few decades.

So, much of the Muslim world's current hatred of Israel has theological roots. The return of the Jews to their homeland, and even worse, their victories over Arab armies, is seen as a contradiction of the fact that Jews are supposed to be relegated to a life of dispersal and humiliation. In 1968, for example, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar University referred to the Arab defeat by Israel in 1967 as an "unexpected event [that] occurred before a roguish Zionism whose adherents had been destined to dispersion by the Deity," and quoted the Koran (2:61): "And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon [the Jews] and they were visited with wrath from God."

Many contemporary Muslim adversaries of Israel draw from the most derogatory and bellicose anti-Jewish expressions in the Koran to justify current attitudes. In a recent sermon, Al Sudayyis called Allah to annihilate the Jews, "the scum of the human race, rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs [quoting from the Koran]." The Saudi government has put their own theological spin on the Russian-produced anti-Jewish tract The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, adding references to the "Jewish sense of superiority in the world" and blaming the Jews for deceiving the world into thinking that "they are the chosen people and that God wants them to once more take possession of Palestine, the promised land."

There's an irony, then, in King Abdullah's call for a dialogue of "Abrahamic religions." Saudi Wahhabism is responsible more than any other segment in Islam for the most extreme interpretation of their religion's superiority--and the resulting pathologies that have come from the need to deny Islam's historical entwinement with Judaism. As religious leaders from around the world gather in Madrid next week under the auspices of the Saudi government, history teaches us that only by finding a way to reconcile the existence of Judaism with the existence of Islam--a difficult but fruitful process undertaken by Christians in recent decades--can a productive dialogue actually begin.

Avi Beker is the Goldman Visiting Professor at Georgetown University at the Department of Government and the former Secretary General of the World Jewish Congress. He is the author of The Chosen: The History of an Idea and the Anatomy of an Obsession.

The Moslem Claim to Jerusalem is False

Does this matter any more? Is perception stronger than reality?

RS



The Moslem Claim to Jerusalem is False
[Dr. Manfred R. Lehmann, journalist for the Algemeiner Journal. Originally published in the Algemeiner Journal, August 19, 1994.]

"... any foundation to the Moslem argument that this "furthest mosque" (Al-Masujidi al-Aqtza) refers to what is today called the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem? The answer is, none whatsoever."



The Moslem "claim" to Jerusalem is based on what is written in the Koran, which although Jerusalem is not mentioned even once, nevertheless talks (in Sura 17:1) of the "Furthest Mosque": "Glory be unto Allah who did take his servant for a journey at night from the Sacred Mosque to the Furthest Mosque." But is there any foundation to the Moslem argument that this "Furthest Mosque" (Al-Masujidi al-Aqtza) refers to what is today called the Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem? The answer is, none whatsoever.

In the days of Mohammed, who died in 632 of the Common Era, Jerusalem was a Christian city within the Byzantine Empire. Jerusalem was captured by Khalif Omar only in 638, six years after Mohammed's death. Throughout all this time there were only churches in Jerusalem, and a church stood on the Temple Mount, called the Church of Saint Mary of Justinian, built in the Byzantine architectural style.

The Aksa Mosque was built 20 years after the Dome of the Rock, which was built in 691-692 by Khalif Abd El Malik. The name "Omar Mosque" is therefore false. In or around 711, or about 80 years after Mohammed died, Malik's son, Abd El-Wahd — who ruled from 705-715 — reconstructed the Christian- Byzantine Church of St. Mary and converted it into a mosque. He left the structure as it was, a typical Byzantine "basilica" structure with a row of pillars on either side of the rectangular "ship" in the center. All he added was an onion-like dome on top of the building to make it look like a mosque. He then named it El-Aksa, so it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran.

Therefore it is crystal clear that Mohammed could never have had this mosque in mind when he compiled the Koran, since it did not exist for another three generations after his death. Rather, as many scholars long ago established, it is logical that Mohammed intended the mosque in Mecca as the "Sacred Mosque," and the mosque in Medina as the "Furthest Mosque." So much for the Moslem claim based on the Aksa Mosque.

With this understood, it is no wonder that Mohammed issued a strict prohibition against facing Jerusalem in prayer, a practice that had been tolerated only for some months in order to lure Jews to convert to Islam. When that effort failed, Mohammed put an abrupt stop to it on February 12, 624. Jerusalem simply never held any sanctity for the Moslems themselves, but only for the Jews in their domain.

[ Published: May 11, 2004 ]

Muslim Martin Luthers: The Theologians Working Towards a Euro-Islam

04/22/2008 05:33 MUSLIM MARTIN LUTHERS
The Theologians Working Towards a Euro-Islam
By Dieter Bednarz and Daniel Steinvorth

Leading Muslim scholars are laying the theological foundations for a "Euro-Islam" which would reconcile their religion with the challenges of modernity. But just how compatible is Islam with secular Western values?

The air in the conference room is stale, and the dour mood among those present is not much better. The room smells of sweat, cigarette smoke, cold coffee -- and plenty of problems. That comes with the territory at a meeting of some 100 social workers who work in flashpoints like the London boroughs of Hounslow, Eastleigh and Ealing.

In their districts they often have to deal with angry youth gangs, unemployment and failed integration policies. Today, on this particular Thursday, they have gathered here in the large hall of the Holborn Bars conference center to learn that multiculturalism also has positive aspects and, most importantly, that no one needs to be afraid of Muslims.

Up on the stage, Lucy de Groot, the organizer of the one-day seminar "Cultural Diversity and Social Cohesion," presents “with great pleasure” a speaker whose appearance alone is enough to add a touch of brilliance to this gloomy conference room. Smiling here and nodding there, the “esteemed guest” strides up to the podium with the confidence of an entertainer who has grown accustomed to success. Tariq Ramadan knows how to win people over.

Many of the veteran social workers have an almost enraptured expression on their faces as they look up at the tall, thin man. With his striking features and dark well-trimmed beard, his sand-colored suit with its elegant casualness, the unbuttoned collar of his bright yellow shirt and his slightly dark complexion, Ramadan resembles a Latino singer. “It’s wonderful to be in London,” he says warmly into the microphone. “Thank you very much for inviting me.” Ramadan places the fingertips of his well-manicured hands together and gazes confidently at the audience. His fan club is guaranteed to be even bigger after this afternoon.

Officially, Ramadan, 45, is a professor of Islamic studies in Geneva. But now he has just come from Oxford, where he teaches at St. Antony’s College as a visiting fellow. In effect, Ramadan is something of a modern-day itinerant preacher. His mission is to boost the self-confidence of Europe’s Muslims and to explain his vision of a “European Islam” to Europe’s Christian elite. The new brand of faith which, according to Ramadan, “is currently taking shape among European Muslims with Islamic-European culture” aims to reconcile Western values with the teachings of Islam. This “Euro-Islam” has allowed Ramadan to win friends among immigrant children and proponents of interreligious dialogue -- and make enemies among right-wing nationalists and hardline Islamists.

Ramadan has given thousands of presentations over the past few years, speaking to a wide range of audiences, including Muslims and Christians, atheists and Jews, church representatives and politicians, industrialists, students and anti-globalization activists. Over the weekend, he made four appearances in France where he spoke to over 2,500 people, mostly young Muslims. Tonight he will speak in Birmingham at a police convention, tomorrow morning his schedule takes him to Blackpool; he can't remember off the top of his head who he's talking to there.

The highly popular speaker can devote little more than half an hour to Lucy de Groot’s seminar. But that’s enough time for a brilliant presenter like Ramadan to talk about his religion, Muslim minorities, integration and exclusion -- and to alleviate the fears of his audience of an impending “clash of civilizations,” as prophesized by Harvard University political scientist Samuel Huntington.

“We start to run into problems when we construct new dividing lines, when we cease to see society as a whole,” says Ramadan to the worn-out-looking men and women sitting at large round tables. “Instead of perceiving Muslims as ‘the other’ or foreigners, try to see them as fellow Englishmen and women.”

All the listeners can do is nod in approval. After all, this man is one of the most prominent Muslims in Europe -- even if he is also one of the most controversial.

A scholar and a blusterer, a reformer and an Islamist, a rationalist and a demagogue -- surely no other Muslim has been given such varied labels as Ramadan.

Some, like the British government, see him as a Muslim visionary who provides a modern interpretation of the Koran and breaks with outmoded traditions. “We need trust and dialogue and a more flexible faith,” says Ramadan. This kind of language prompted former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to appoint him to what was essentially a Muslim task force to combat extremism. On the other side of the Atlantic, Time magazine placed him on its list of the 100 people who comprise "tomorrow's most influential individuals."

Others see him as an Islamist in disguise, a “wolf in sheep's clothing,” a master of deception. And, as a matter of fact, Ramadan has made a number of statements that don’t sound remotely liberal or tolerant.


An Islamic Superstar


For instance, when he appeared on a French talk show, Ramadan justified the sharia, the Islamic body of social and religious law, which, when strictly interpreted, calls for draconian punishments that constitute a violation of human rights. And he refused to issue a blanket condemnation of the particularly cruel practice of stoning to death. Instead he proposed a moratorium on this form of capital punishment. His opponents warn that when he appears before young Muslims and no cameras are present, it's possible that Ramadan strikes a very different tone.

US authorities have even officially classified him as a terrorist sympathizer. After Ramadan donated money to dubious Palestinian groups, the Americans decided to revoke his visa.

Ramadan’s family does indeed have a reputation for radicalism. His Egyptian grandfather was Hassan al-Banna, who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood, an influential Islamic fundamentalist organization that is active throughout the Middle East and even in Europe. His father Said, also a religious zealot, fled to Europe to escape his persecutors in the Egyptian regime. Tariq was born in Geneva.

Radical offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood produced the men who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Farag Foda, a reformist intellectual who said “We need a Martin Luther” -- and was shot down in the streets of Cairo in 1992.

Although many people view Ramadan with suspicion, there are in fact a number of parallels between him and the German reformer. Like Luther, who challenged the Catholic clergy, Ramadan campaigns against the “traditionalists who advocate a literal interpretation of the Koran.” Like the monk from Wittenberg, the professor from Switzerland seeks to break up the monopoly held by religious scholars on interpreting the holy book.

Instead of slavishly adhering to ancient revelations, Ramadan says it is necessary to examine the “historical context” in which God’s revelations were received by the Prophet Muhammad. “Islam,” says Ramadan, “cannot place itself outside of history.”

What he means by that is reflected in the ongoing debate between radicals and reformers over the issue of apostasy -- the renunciation or abandonment of one’s religious faith. Sura 16:106 says: “He who, after accepting faith in Allah, freely opens his heart to unbelief, shall feel the wrath of Allah and shall receive a dreadful punishment.” Over the centuries, conservatives have interpreted this to mean that heretics should receive the death penalty.

Ramadan, however, does not see apostasy as a crime. He points out that circumstances have “totally changed.” At the time of the Prophet, he says, the Muslims were at war with neighboring tribes. Changing faith was tantamount to treason or desertion -- and was punishable by death. That was then. Today, according to Ramadan, faith “is a personal matter for each individual.”

“Renew your understanding of the text, even though the text itself does not change. Read it in a new way,” says Ramadan, as he calls on his Muslim brothers to reinterpret the Koran.

This places him in good company with other authorities on the Koran like the Egyptian Nasr Hamid Abu Zeid and the Iranian Abdolkarim Sorush, who have written a number of books on the topic and are highly regarded among theologians. They are also proponents of using hermeneutics -- the science of interpreting texts -- to understand the Koran.

However, it is Ramadan’s grass-roots popularity that allows him to reach a much wider audience.

“Yesterday, we relied on the solutions that came from our countries of origin, because we only knew one way to remain a Muslim: to remain the Muslims that we were,” he preaches. “But then children were born, new generations, and they are German and British and French. This is our community now; we cannot rely on solutions that come from our countries of origin. We need local solutions.”

His solution is a form of faith in which Western norms and Islam are not mutually exclusive. Democracy, freedom of speech, human rights and religious freedom -- these are all things that the faithful can embrace as long as they respect the “inalienable core” of Islam: profession of faith, prayer, almsgiving, fasting. “Practically everything else,” says Ramadan, “can be interpreted and adjusted in space and time.”

Nevertheless, Ramadan's vision of Euro-Islam does not entail the secularism, in the sense of a separation of religion and state, that many Westerners would like him to advocate. Ramadan’s faith makes no distinction between political and private realms, between religious and worldly matters. He does not question the holistic nature of Islam. Thus this widely celebrated visionary -- who always carries a small copy of the Koran, drinks no alcohol, and advocates separating the sexes in swimming pools -- is not a genuine reformer, say his critics.

However, with his interpretation of Islam, Ramadan builds bridges that allow apprehensive Muslims to open up to their new homelands. He doesn’t alarm them with heretical slogans, yet tries to pull them out of the so-called "ghetto Islam" of the fundamentalists. A strategy paper written by the British government therefore clearly sees him as the spearhead of an “Islamic Reformation” on the old continent.

Among second and third-generation Muslims in particular, Ramadan enjoys the “aura of an Islamic superstar,” as the New York Times Magazine recently wrote. The young faithful see him as the ultimate über-Muslim: a professor in Oxford and the offspring of a family that is renowned for its religious fervor -- extremely devout, yet socially acceptable. Piousness and urbanity, Islam and the modern age -- Ramadan is a living example for his supporters that all these things are compatible.

Ramadan gives young Muslims what they yearn for: pride and dignity -- and the reassuring feeling that they can hit the discos at night and still remain faithful servants of God. A Euro-Islam like this, says Freiburg-based Islamic scholar Ludwig Ammann, “reaches out to the majority of Muslims right where they are” -- in the conservative camp with its blind faith in authority.

By contrast, Bassam Tibi, a leading German Islamic reformer who teaches at Göttingen University, sees Ramadan’s vision of Islam as “an attempt to give Islam a European face-lift instead of harmonizing the religion with Europe’s cultural, social and political identity.”


Secular Islam, Turkish Style


But is such a Europeanization even possible? Could it be that the notion of a pluralistic democracy based on a secular constitution and the all-embracing nature of Islam -- which makes no distinction between religious and secular matters -- are mutually exclusive? Are Islam and Europe -- sharia and human rights -- like fire and water?

“No,” says Tibi, who was born in Syria, and coined the term “Euro-Islam” in the early 1990s as a counterpoint to the “ghetto Islam” of many immigrants who cut themselves off from their European surroundings and seek their salvation in religious fervor. He says that the Koran can be interpreted in many different ways, giving it the “advantage of adaptability.” To back up his assertion, Tibi points to the forms of “Islam in West Africa and in Indonesia, which are very different from the Arab or Persian versions, although all Muslims believe in the one God and his Prophet Muhammad.”

The extent of the compatibility of Islam and secularism has in fact been demonstrated by Turkey, the largest and certainly most conclusive experiment conducted to date on the flexibility of the faith -- and one which is located directly on Europe’s doorstep. Over the years, this EU candidate and NATO member has served as one of the best examples in the world of the stark contrasts that exist between East and West -- the faith of the Prophet and the values of the West. No other Islamic country has forced Islam to accept as much secularity as the Republic of Turkey, founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal, known as Atatürk (“father of the Turks”).

Building on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, this staunch European imposed a revolution from above that aimed to transform Anatolia into a modern, democratic nation-state, including forced secularization to free it from the shackles of religion. Atatürk abolished the Caliphate, in which the sultan had authority over the realm and its religious affairs. To symbolize the country’s new orientation toward the West, Atatürk prohibited men from wearing the fez, a red woolen hat with a tassel, and women were not allowed to wear headscarves. He ordered the abolition of the sharia courts and banished religion to the private sphere.

To keep the mosques free of regressive ideology, Atatürk established the Presidency of Religious Affairs (DIB). This state agency, which now has over 100,000 employees, supervises the training of imams and muezzins -- the criers who lead the call to prayer from a minaret of a mosque -- and it also decides what will be preached. The president of this organization is the highest ranking representative of Islam in Turkey -- an office currently held by Ali Bardakoglu, an avowed reform theologian. The head of the DIB calls on “the Islamic world to further develop objective thinking and reason.”

Bardakoglu was appointed five years ago by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an Islamist who many once feared would shake the foundations of the Kemalist establishment. Today, however, this deeply religious government leader is widely acclaimed as a modernizer who is whipping the country into shape for entry into the EU and whose Justice and Development Party (AKP) serves as an Islamic counterpart to Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Any fears that Turkey would reinstate the Caliphate and return to sharia have vanished, also thanks to Bardakoglu.

In contrast to his predecessors, who saw their position as a Kemalist bulwark, the current head of the DIB aims to promote religious discourse, push for reforms and give Islam a new look -- in a very literal sense. He demonstratively refused to wear the heavy black robe worn by his predecessors. It was too authoritarian for Bardakoglu’s taste. Now the country’s top Muslim wears spiritual white, like the pope.

The man from Ankara maintains a dialogue with the head of the Catholic Church, despite heated disputes over the pope's now infamous Regensburg speech. In the papal address held last September at the University of Regensburg in Germany, Benedict XVI quoted the little known Byzantine emperor Manuel II: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

An angry Bardakoglu described the pope's statement as reflecting a “crusader mentality.” He only assumed a more conciliatory tone following a personal meeting with Benedict XVI during his visit to Turkey. Now historians and theologians are working on a paper that will allow the DIB to refute the emperor’s statement.

In his reform campaigns, Bardakoglu has pushed primarily for a reinterpretation of Islamic scripture. “Every age,” he preaches to his imams, “must rely on its own spirit, its strengths, its intellectual experience to understand the Koran.” The ammunition for debates with the fundamentalists comes from a nearby institution in the capital -- the University of Ankara.

Founded in 1948, the university’s department of theology has a reputation as the nucleus of all religious reform initiatives in Turkey. Today, there are an additional 23 theological departments throughout the country, and their deans are almost all graduates of the original department in the capital.


'We Muslims Have Been Left Behind'


Yasar Nuri Öztürk, who lives in Istanbul, is the most well known and certainly the most influential representative of Turkish reformist theology. Whether he’s walking along the banks of the Bosporus or through the bazaar, many Turks immediately recognize this small, rather unassuming, nearly bald man from his numerous TV appearances, from his columns in the daily newspaper Hürriyet and from his over 30 books, which have sold more than a million copies in Turkey alone. Many of them have been translated into Arabic, Farsi, English and German. Given Öztürk's high profile, people tend to overlook the fact that he also happens to be the dean of the theological department of the University of Istanbul.


Öztürk’s thinking is mainly aimed at the fundamentalist elite in regimes of the Islamic world that oppress their people in the name of God. He says, however, that the Muslims only have themselves to blame for this state of affairs because they understand “almost nothing” about the “real Islam” as it stands in the Koran. Did not Allah himself declare that the system of monarchist rule was unacceptable? This, at least, is how Öztürk interprets verse 34 of the 27th Sura: “Surely the kings, when they enter a town or a country, lay it to waste and make the noblest of its people into the lowest. That is their way.”

And Öztürk, with reference to the holy book, clearly rejects the position of bigoted mullahs and zealots who still dream of reinstating the Caliphate. “The Koran proclaims that the prophethood is over,” he says. “And one of the fundamental demands that arises from that, is that the age is over when people are led by individuals claiming to derive their authority from God.”

While the Bible and the Torah promise the rule of God on Earth, Öztürk sees the Koran as “the only book that proclaims that theocracy should have no role in the lives of people.” This “key truth” of the Koran is, however, “kept secret and concealed in Islamic societies.”

Öztürk preaches this vision of Islam and politics with his own mixture of theological authority and populism. His understanding of a secular state, however, is not the traditional division of religion and worldly matters. Öztürk's version of secularism is based more on a kind of "democracy imperative" which is based on the Koran and which should force rulers to base their authority “not on God or divine right, but on the will of the people.”

The so-called Ankara School of reform-minded theologians has even spread beyond Turkey’s borders to Germany. Ömer Özsoy, 44, one of the reform movement’s most renowned scholars, has become the first Muslim professor of theology at a German university. At his inaugural lecture, held last November at Frankfurt University, he addressed “modern interpretations of the Koran.”

What this graceful man with fine features and a high forehead says tends to strike many Muslims -- who see the Koran as the eternal word of God -- as simply unbelievable. Özsoy asserts that the holy book of the Muslims is not a timeless message.

The professor of theology sees the Koran as a “speech by God” directed toward a specific group of people at a specific time and under specific circumstances. According to Özsoy, this is shown by the fact that the revelations to the Prophet occurred over a period of approximately 23 years, first in Mecca, then in Medina. Every statement by God relates to a special situation that Muhammad and his followers faced, as fighters, believers, refugees or conquerors. He says that we can only understand the message behind God’s word if we know the circumstances under which the Prophet received the revelation.

Özsoy is convinced that only a fraction of what the revelation intends to convey to mankind is actually contained in the Koran. The majority of the actual messages can only be elucidated by studying historical events as they transpired 1,400 years ago -- and then reinterpreting them for the present. Since this “transfer” -- this adapting of the Koran to the current situation -- was held in disdain for so long, Muslims now lack “the answers to the questions posed by modernity.” This has had disastrous consequences, he feels: “We Muslims have been left behind.”

In order to make the jump to the present, at least on a theoretical level, the Turkish religious agency is funding the professorial chair for Muslim theology in Frankfurt, which is part of the university's Department of Protestant Theology. In addition to the Germans who attend his lectures, Özsoy’s students reflect the entire multicultural spectrum of the city, from Muslim Macedonians and Christian Egyptians to Turkish-German women in traditional headscarves.

Up until now, only a minority of Muslims in Germany have embraced such reformist approaches. The Islamic researcher Bassam Tibi estimates that perhaps two-thirds of the over 3 million Muslims in Germany would claim to profess a Euro-Islam version of their faith, but he thinks that no more than 10 percent of the Muslim population “genuinely follows” this liberal form of Islam. “Sipping a glass of wine does not necessarily constitute acceptance of European values,” says Tibi.

Tibi attributes little practical importance to the initiatives launched by Ankara, at least for the time being. He says that while the critical thinking of Özsoy and his colleagues is commendable, the vast majority of Turkish Muslims are not open to this line of thinking. In his opinion, “the organized religion is Islamist or orthodox.”

Although Tibi promotes Euro-Islam in his lectures and among his academic colleagues, he has his own doubts over whether the concepts embodied by Euro-Islam hold the key to the future of over a billion Muslims around the world or whether the traditionalists will maintain the upper hand.

However, Tibi is certain that there is no alternative to an Islam that recognizes the “cultural, social and political realities” of modernity. Based on that conviction, the professor from Göttingen will continue to fight for the vision of an Islam without sharia -- and not just in Europe.



URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,548970,00.html

The Mufti and the Holocaust

BOOKS:
The Mufti and the Holocaust
By John Rosenthal
John Rosenthal on Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten by Klaus Gensicke


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KLAUS GENSICKE. Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten. WISSENSCHAFTLICHE BUCHGESELLSCHAFT. 247 PAGES. €49.90

Germany stands for an uncompromising struggle against the Jews. It is self-evident that the struggle against the Jewish national homeland in Palestine forms part of this struggle, since such a national homeland would be nothing other than a political base for the destructive influence of Jewish interests. Germany also knows that the claim that Jewry plays the role of an economic pioneer in Palestine is a lie. Only the Arabs work there, not the Jews. Germany is determined to call on the European nations one by one to solve the Jewish problem and, at the proper moment, to address the same appeal to non-European peoples.

—Adolf Hitler to Haj Amin Al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem, November 28, 1941 1

THE PERSISTENCE OF widespread Judeophobia in the Muslim world is hardly a matter of dispute, even if many commentators are inclined to dismiss it as merely an “understandable” reaction to Israeli “oppression.” Among those who take the phenomenon seriously, however, a debate has been taking place of late about its origins. The debate has been spurred on, notably, by the publication in English translation of the German political scientist Matthias Küntzel’s book Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11. The central thesis of Küntzel’s book is that anti-Semitism — or, more precisely, modern anti-Semitism as crystallized in the “Jewish world conspiracy” theory — was largely imported into the Muslim world from Nazi Germany.

Now, one might have expected that opponents of Islamism would welcome a book showing the direct influence of the Third Reich upon the development of the Islamist movement and, most notably, on the Muslim Brotherhood, the pivotal organization in its history. In normal political discourse, after all, pointing out the links of an organization or movement to National Socialism does not exactly constitute an endorsement. Ironically, however, Küntzel’s book has been most roundly criticized — indeed outright denounced — by precisely the most adamant foes of Islamic extremism.

For the most part self-styled experts in Islam, the latter have insisted, as against Küntzel’s thesis, that Muslim anti-Semitism is, in effect, a strictly Muslim affair.
The Gensicke volume provides considerable support for the thesis that “native” Islamic sources of anti-Semitism are primordial in Muslim or Arab anti-Semitism.

Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem and the “father” of Palestinian radicalism, is obviously a key figure for such debates. As is well known, from 1941 to 1945 Husseini lived in Berlin as the honored guest of Nazi Germany. During this time, he notably collaborated with the Nazis in assembling the Muslim SS division “Handzar” in Bosnia, as well as in numerous propaganda activities aimed at Arab speakers. Whereas the facts of Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis are widely known, what is less know, however, is the degree to which the mufti was influenced by or indeed himself influenced his hosts on an ideological and programmatic level. But a new book by German historian Klaus Gensicke titled Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten — “The Mufti of Jerusalem and the National Socialists” — sheds light on precisely this question. Based largely on primary source materials from the German archives, Gensicke’s volume provides unparalleled insight into the details of the mufti’s relationship to his Nazi hosts: at least as seen from the German side.

Gensicke’s 1988 doctoral dissertation is one of the principal sources for Küntzel’s discussion of the mufti in Jihad and Jew-Hatred and Küntzel himself wrote the preface for Gensicke’s new book: an updated version of the dissertation.

Nonetheless, the Gensicke volume also provides considerable support for the thesis that, so to say, “native” Islamic sources of anti-Semitism are primordial in Muslim or Arab anti-Semitism. At the very least, Gensicke’s account shows the relation between the mufti and the Nazis to have been very much a two-way street: even — or indeed especially — as concerns the notorious “Jewish Question.”

THUS, IN MARCH 1933, only two months after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, it was in fact the mufti who sought contact to the new German authorities and not vice-versa. In a March 31 telegram to Berlin, the German general consul in Jerusalem, Heinrich Wolff, reported on his meeting with Husseini:

The Mufti explained to me today at length that Muslims both within Palestine and without welcome the new regime in Germany and hope for the spread of fascist, anti-democratic forms of government to other countries. Current Jewish economic and political influence is harmful everywhere and has to be combated. In order to be able to hit the standard of living of Jews, Muslims are hoping for Germany to declare a boycott [of “Jewish” goods], which they would then enthusiastically join throughout the Muslim world.

As Gensicke explains, however, the initial German response to the mufti’s advances was cool. Indeed, the German attitude toward the mufti would remain reserved throughout the first years of Nazi rule. At the time, the Nazi leadership still hoped to come to an understanding with Great Britain that would allow it to pursue unhindered its expansionist goals in Eastern Europe. In return for British acquiescence, it was prepared to treat the Middle East as part of the British sphere of influence.

Moreover, for at least part of the Nazi leadership — Gensicke points in particular to Deputy Foreign Minister Ernst von Weizsäcker — the immigration of German Jews to Palestine represented a tolerable solution to Germany’s supposed “Jewish problem.”

This attitude was obviously inimical to the plans of the mufti, who pleaded with German authorities to restrict Jewish immigration. Starting in August 1933, however, they did the opposite: in effect, facilitating Jewish immigration under the complex terms of the so-called Haavara or “Transfer” Agreement. The Haavara Agreement simultaneously permitted German Jews to transfer part of their wealth to Palestine and favored German exports to the region — the latter aspect earning it the support also of the Economics Ministry. “It cannot be denied that the Haavara Transfer made a considerable contribution to the development of Jewish settlement in Palestine,” Gensicke writes.

The immigration of Jews to Palestine represented a tolerable solution to some in the Nazi leadership, but it was inimical to the mufti’s plans.

By August 1940, however, the situation had radically changed. The outbreak of the war had brought the Haavara Agreement to an end. Even while it was still at least formally in effect, moreover, the Germans had already been quietly providing financial and material support to the mufti-led “Arab Revolt” in Palestine from 1936 to 1939. The aim of the revolt was precisely to stop Jewish immigration. After guiding the Arab Revolt from exile in Beirut, the mufti had in the meanwhile taken refuge in Iraq. There he allied himself with the pro-Axis circle around new Prime Minister Rashid Ali al-Gailani, who had recently replaced the pro-British Nuri as-Said. On August 26, an emissary of the mufti by the name of Osman Kemal Haddad met with Fritz Grobba of the German Foreign Office in Berlin. According to Grobba’s notes, Haddad asked for a declaration from Germany and Italy recognizing the right of the Arab countries to independence and “self-determination” and that they might resolve the “question of the Jewish element” just as Germany and Italy had done. In return, Haddad promised that Iraq would accord Germany and Italy “a privileged place” in its foreign relations: notably as concerns the “exploitation of Iraq’s mineral resources and in particular its oil reserves.”

Only the defeat of Rommel at the second Battle of El Alamein prevented German forces from entering Palestine and carrying out operations against the Jewish population.
Gailani would resign his post in January 1941 and then be returned to power by a coup d’état four months later. The British military intervention that followed would bring a provisional end to the mufti’s plans of transforming Iraq into a pro-Axis beachhead in the Middle East. “Sonderkommando Junck,” a somewhat perfunctory German Luftwaffe mission dispatched by the Reich to support its allies in Iraq, could not reverse the trend. Both the mufti and Gailani fled to Tehran toward the end of May.

Even after their departure, Gensicke writes, “a wave of acts of intimidation and terror on the part of the pro-Axis forces continued.” These included a major anti-Jewish pogrom, known as the “Farhud,” in which some 179 Iraqi Jews were killed.

As Gensicke’s account makes clear, moreover, the Nazi leadership would continue to accord central importance to the Iraqi “liberation struggle.” The deposed Iraqi Prime Minister Gailani followed the mufti to Berlin, where he, too, would take up residence starting in November 1941. For the remainder of the war years, the two Arab leaders would compete jealously for the Nazis’ favor. In light of the obvious parallels between the anti-British Iraqi “liberation struggle” of the early 1940s and the anti-American Iraqi “liberation struggle” of today, it is curious that Nazi Germany’s involvement in the former has not received greater public attention. A separate study of Gailani’s collaboration with the Nazis would undoubtedly be rich in historical lessons.

Hitler appears to have made German plans for a more muscular intervention to “liberate” Iraq merely contingent upon the successful conclusion of Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Once the Wehrmacht had taken control of the southern Caucasus region, German troops were to sweep down into Iraq. The German defeat at Stalingrad in early 1943 definitively put an end to such plans.

ON NOVEMBER 28, 1941, three weeks after his arrival in Berlin, the mufti was received by Hitler. As recorded in the minutes of the meeting, Hitler urged his guest to remain patient:

At some not yet precisely known, but in any case not very distant point in time, the German armies will reach the southern edge of the Caucasus. As soon as this is the case, the Führer will himself give the Arab world his assurance that the hour of liberation has arrived. At this point, the sole German aim will be the destruction of the Jews living in the Arab space under the protection of British power.

In the same meeting, Hitler likewise assured the mufti of his opposition to the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine, which, he said, “would be nothing other than a political base for the destructive influence of Jewish interests.” More than 15 years earlier, Hitler had expressed the same thought in more colorful terms in Mein Kampf: “They are not at all thinking of building a Jewish state in Palestine in order, for instance, to live there; but rather they only hope to have a headquarters for their international swindling operations that is furnished with sovereign powers and removed from the influence of other states.”2

When the right time had come, Hitler told the mufti, the Arabs and other “non-European peoples” would be called on to “solve the Jewish problem” just as the “European nations” had done. The chilling remark suggests plans to exterminate even those Jews that the Nazi leadership had earlier permitted to immigrate to Palestine. As so happens, historians Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers have recently uncovered evidence that such plans did indeed exist. A special SS commando unit was formed in 1942 and attached to Rommel’s African Panzer Army. Its writ was in large part identical to that of the infamous Einsatzgruppen that accompanied the Wehrmacht during the invasion of the Soviet Union and that were responsible for the murder of upwards of one million Soviet Jews. On Mallmann and Cüppers’s account, only the defeat of Rommel at the second Battle of El Alamein prevented German forces from entering Palestine and carrying out similar operations against the Jewish population there.3

Among his other activities in Berlin, the mufti served as honorary chair of a newly founded “Islamic Central Institute” The institute was officially opened on December 18, 1942: during Eid al-Adha, the Islamic “Festival of Sacrifice.” In a letter to Hitler on the occasion, the mufti expressed the hope that “thousands of Muslims around the world” would cooperate with Germany in the fight against “the common enemies”: “Jews, Bolsheviks and Anglo-Saxons.” The speech given by the mufti at the opening ceremony provides perhaps the clearest evidence that he required no lessons from the Nazis in anti-Semitism — or, at any rate, that if he did, he had by this time successfully assimilated those lessons into a remarkable synthesis of “traditional” Quranic and “modern” European Judeophobia:

The Jews and their accomplices are to be counted among the bitterest enemies of the Muslims, who made known . . . their hostility since ancient times and have everywhere and always . . . treated them [Muslims] with guile. Every Muslim knows all too well how the Jews afflicted him and his faith in the first days of Islam and what hatefulness they displayed toward the great Prophet — what hardship and trouble they caused him, how many intrigues they launched, how many conspiracies against him they brought about — such that the Quran judged them to be the most irreconcilable enemies of the Muslims. . . . They will always remain a divisive element in the world: an element that is committed to devising schemes, provoking wars and playing peoples off against one another. . . . In England as in America, it is the Jewish influence alone that rules; and it is the same Jewish influence that is behind godless Communism. . . . And it is also this Jewish influence that has incited the nations into this grueling war. It is only the Jews who benefit from the tragic fate that they [the nations] suffer. . . .

In a subsequent talk at the Islamic Central Institute on November 2, 1943, the mufti called on Muslims to follow the example of National Socialist Germany, since the latter “knew how to save itself from the evil [Unheil] done by the Jews. . . . It had precisely identified the Jews and decided to find a definitive solution to the Jewish menace, in order to eliminate their evildoing [Unheil] from the world.” Gensicke points to the latter remark as evidence that the mufti was “well informed” about the extermination program that was by this time long underway in the Nazi death camps in occupied Poland.4

INDEED, PERHAPS THE most shocking finding of Gensicke’s research concerns the repeated efforts of the mufti after 1943 to ensure that no European Jews should elude the camps: this during a period when it was becoming increasingly obvious even to the Nazi leadership that Germany would lose the war. Thus, for example, Bulgarian plans to permit some 4,000 Jewish children and 500 adult companions to immigrate to Palestine provoked a letter from the mufti to the Bulgarian foreign minister, pleading for the operation to be stopped. In the letter, dated May 6, 1943, Husseini invoked a “Jewish danger for the whole world and especially for the countries where Jews live.” “If I may be permitted,” the mufti continued,

I would like to call your attention to the fact that it would be very appropriate and more advantageous to prevent the Jews from emigrating from your country and instead to send them where they will be placed under strict control: e.g. to Poland. Thus one can avoid the danger they represent and do a good deed vis-à-vis the Arab peoples that will be appreciated.

One week later, the mufti sent additional “protest letters” to both the Italian and German Foreign Ministries, appealing for them to intervene in the matter. The German Foreign Ministry promptly sent off a cable to the German ambassador in Sofia stressing “the common German-Arab interest in preventing the rescue operation.” Indeed, according to the post-War recollections of a Foreign Ministry official, “The Mufti turned up all over the place making protests: in the Minister’s office, in the waiting room of the Deputy Minister and in other sections: for example, Interior, the Press Office, the Broadcast service, and also the SS.” “The Mufti was a sworn enemy of the Jews,” the official concluded, “and he made no secret of the fact that he would have preferred to see them all killed.”

As Gensicke points out, the mufti’s hyperactivity is particularly notable in light of the fact that the Foreign Ministry — and even indeed Heinrich Himmler’s Reich Security Central Office (RSHA), which was directly responsible for implementing the Final Solution — had shown signs of being willing to tolerate the Bulgarian rescue action: at any rate, for a price. The RSHA demanded the release of some 20,000 Germans interred by the Allies in exchange for the Jewish children.

In the nearly 800 pages of the two volumes of Hitler’s would-be magnum opus, Arabs are not mentioned at all as such and Islam is mentioned just once.

In late June, both the Romanian and Hungarian Foreign Ministers would be recipients of similar appeals from the mufti. The Romanian government had been planning to allow some 75,000 to 80,000 Jews to immigrate to the Middle East, and Hungary — which had become a refuge for Jews escaping persecution elsewhere in Europe — was reportedly preparing to allow some 900 Jewish children and their parents to immigrate as well. The mufti repeated his counsel that the Jews should be sent rather to Poland, where they could be kept under “active surveillance.” “It is especially monstrous,” Gensicke concludes, “that el-Husseini objected to even those few cases in which the National Socialists were prepared, for whatever reasons, to permit Jews to emigrate. . . . For him, only deportation to Poland was acceptable, since he knew fully well that there would be no escape for the Jews from there.”

SELF-PROFESSED Islamophobes — whose insistence that Islamism has something to do with Islam is, of course, not unreasonable in itself — will undoubtedly be tempted to see in Gensicke’s research support also for far more extravagant propositions.

Pointing to the alleged admiration for Islam of this or that Nazi luminary or of the Führer himself, the most hysterical reactions to Matthias Küntzel’s Jihad and Jew-Hatred seem even to want to suggest that it is not, after all, National Socialism that is the source of rampant anti-Semitism in the Muslim World, but rather Islam that was perhaps the source or inspiration of the anti-Semitism of the National Socialists! Thus, for example, in a review of Küntzel’s volume on the Frontpage website,5 Andrew Bostom accuses Küntzel of “selective citation” and triumphantly adduces a passage from Albert Speer’s memoirs in which Speer describes Hitler expressing his regrets that Arabs had failed to conquer Europe in the early Middle Ages, since their warlike Muslim religion was “perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament.”

Let it be noted in passing that it is at least odd for Bostom to accuse Küntzel of having, in his words, “omitted” this passage, given that Küntzel’s own citation of Speer concerns a different topic (Hitler’s alleged fantasies about the destruction of New York) and is drawn indeed from an entirely different book. The eccentricity of such a procedure, moreover, appears less innocent when one considers that Bostom himself — in a 10,000-word screed replete with lengthy citations — has taken the trouble to suppress the following words from the very middle of his own Speer passage: “Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives. . . . ”6

Gensicke, citing a similarly anecdotal source, suggests that it was precisely Hitler’s belief in the racial inferiority of Arabs that prevented him from fully utilizing the support that the mufti and his Arab nationalist allies could have provided the Nazi cause. More generally, Gensicke notes that “on account of their racial ideology, it was impossible for the National Socialists to advocate the idea of Arab independence.” For the Nazis, he concludes, “the Semitic Arabs were as incapable of successfully running a state as were the Jews.” Even leaving aside the biographies of Nazis who would convert to Islam after the War or Himmler’s well-documented (though seemingly rather superficial) enthusiasm for Islam, this well-meaning caveat is contradicted by archival evidence adduced by Gensicke elsewhere in his volume.7

If, however, instead of turning to more or less reliable recollections of third parties,8 one returns to the source — namely, the undisputed bible of the National Socialist movement, Hitler’s Mein Kampf — one discovers that Hitler’s own views on Islam and Arabs were almost nonexistent. In the nearly 800 pages of the two volumes of his would-be magnum opus, Arabs are not mentioned a single time as such and Islam is mentioned just once, in a neutral remark on the relative appeal of Islam and Christianity in Africa. The fevered mental universe of the discharged corporal and aspiring “race theorist” was amply populated by different varieties of Slavs, the occasional “Negro” [Neger], and, of course, always and everywhere the conniving and threatening Jew: the racial antipode of the honest “Aryan.” But Arabs and the “Muslim world” seem barely to have crossed his radar. Only once does Hitler implicitly offer his “racial” assessment of the latter: this in considering the prospect of German National Socialists forming an alliance with Egyptian insurgents fighting against British colonial rule. Hitler even alludes tantalizingly to the insurgents’ “Holy War” — in scare quotes, suggesting his clear disdain for the idea. “As [someone] who assesses the value of humanity according to racial criteria,” Hitler writes, “the knowledge of the racial inferiority of these so-called ‘oppressed nations’ forbids me from linking the fate of my own people with theirs.”9

It was only during the war that Hitler would, in effect, be confronted in a far more practical and urgent form by the very same question of “linking” the Nazi cause to religiously-tinged Arab nationalism. And when he was, as Gensicke’s volume shows, he would find not only a willing ally, but also a kindred spirit, in Haj Amin Al-Husseini.
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John Rosenthal writes on European politics, with a special focus on Germany and France. His work has appeared in the Claremont Review of Books, the Opinion Journal, Les Temps Modernes, and Merkur. He is a contributing editor for World Politics Review.
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1 Klaus Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007), 60-61. Author’s translation.

2 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Munich: Verlag Franz Eher Nachfolger, 1943), 356. Author’s translation.

3 See Klaus-Michael Mallman and Martin Cüppers, “‘Elimination of the Jewish National Home in Palestine’: The Einsatzkommando of the Panzer Army Africa, 1942” in Yad Vashem Studies XXV (available online at http://www1.yadvashem.org/about_holocaust/studies/vol35/Mallmann-Cuppers2.pdf, accessed February 29, 2008). Mallmann and Cüppers have published the results of their research in book-length form in Halbmond und Hakenkreuz. Das Dritte Reich, die Araber und Palästina (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006).

4 Citing documents from the Nuremberg Trials, Gensicke also notes that in mid-1942 members of Husseini’s and Gailani’s respective entourages visited the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg near Berlin. It is perhaps exaggerated to conclude from this fact that the mufti was aware of what was transpiring in the camps further to the East. According to the commonly accepted classification, Sachsenhausen was not a “death camp,” but merely a “normal” concentration camp. This is not to say that tens of thousands were not executed there: above all, Soviet prisoners. In any case, the Jewish inmates at Sachsenhausen were supposed to have “particularly interested” the visitors, who came away from their visit with “a very positive impression.” Gensicke, 206, note >55.

5 http: //www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=E352185E-D91E-4773-B4AE-9A5C3EA4949B (accessed February 29, 2008).

6 Lest I myself be accused of “selective citation,” I should mention that in a more recent blog post — discovered thanks to a fortuitous Google search rather than comprehensive familiarity with the author’s output — Bostom cites the full Speer passage and now allows that Hitler’s views of Arabs and Islam were “ambivalent.” See http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2008/01/25/verboten-discussion—hitler-muhammad-and-islam/ (accessed February 29, 2008).

7 Thus in a letter of March 11, 1941, Deputy Foreign Minister Ernst von Weizsäcker assured the mufti that Germany was “of the opinion that the Arabs are an ancient cultured nation [ein altes Kulturvolk] that has proven its aptitude for administration and its military virtues and that is fully capable of governing itself.”

8 Speer in particular was a notorious fabulist and his often farfetched inventions have been the subject of several books: such as Matthias Schmidt’s Albert Speer: the End of a Myth and Dan van der Vat’s The Good Nazi: the Life and Lies of Albert Speer. In a particularly craven and macabre instance, at one point during questioning at the main Nuremberg trial, Speer claimed to have been planning to assassinate Hitler by dropping poison gas through a ventilation pipe at the Reich Chancellery, a plan that only failed to come to fruition, he said, because the opening of the pipe was too high for him to reach.

9 Hitler, Mein Kampf, 747. Author’s translation.

Iraqi Author 'Aref 'Alwan: The Jews Have an Historic Right to Palestine

It is refreshing and gladdening to see this exists in the Muslim world. It is a reminder that Islam is not, like Judaism, monolithic in its thinking. There are moderate elements in the Muslim world, though all we hear or seemingly care about are the 1/10 of 1% who organize and carry out terrorism. These voices do not make the front page of MSM, though MEMRI, from whence this came via ZNN, is the place where everyone turns to for absolute clarity on what the Arab media and the rest of that world, so distrustful of Westerners and the West for so long, is doing. The West, after Bush leaves, must, must, must, take measures to coax these elements out from hiding. This is the single most important foriegn policy objective and challenge for our next President, aside from saving our own country from ruin.

Randy Shiner



Iraqi Author 'Aref 'Alwan: The Jews Have an Historic Right to Palestine

In an article posted December 7, 2007, on the leftist website www.ahewar.org, [1] 'Aref 'Alwan, an Iraqi author and playwright who resides in London and is the author of 12 novels, [2] states that the Jews have an historic right to Palestine because their presence there preceded the Arab conquest and has continued to this day.

In the article, titled "Do the Jews Have Any Less Right to Palestine than the Arabs?" 'Alwan called on the Arab world to acknowledge the Jews' right to Palestine, because justice demanded it and also because doing so would end the violence and the killing of Arabs, as well as intra-Arab strife. He added that such a move would also open up new avenues for the Arab world that would be more consistent with the values and needs of modern society.

'Alwan writes that the Arab League is to blame for the refusal to recognize the 1947 U.N. partition plan, for starting a war to prevent its implementation, and for the results of that war, which the Arabs call the Nakba (disaster). He points an accusing finger at the Arab regimes, the Arab League, and the educated circles in the Arab world, saying that they had all used the term "nakba" to direct popular consciousness toward a cultural tradition that neither accepts the other side nor recognizes its rights - thereby promoting bigotry, violence and extremism. He also claims that there have been attempts to rewrite Palestinian history, in order to deny any connection between it and the Jewish people.

'Alwan contends that the "Nakba mentality" among Arabs has boomeranged, giving rise to tyrannical rulers, extremist clerics, and religious zealots of every description. In his view, the Arab world will never shed the stigma of terrorism in the West unless it abandons this concept and all that it entails.

To boost his claim that the Jews have an historic right to Palestine, 'Alwan provides an overview of Jewish history in the land of Israel. He questions the validity of the Islamic traditions underpinning the Arab claim to Palestine, Jerusalem, and the TempleMount, and presents evidence that religions that preceded Islam had conducted rituals on the TempleMount.

As an example of the traditional Arab mentality that does not accept the other or recognize his rights, 'Alwan discusses the Arabs' abuse of the Kurds in Iraq and of the Christians in Egypt and Lebanon.

The following are excerpts from the article:

The Nakba: A Great Lie

"When the Salafi mob in Gaza tied the hands and feet of a senior Palestinian official and hurled him, alive, from the 14th floor, I asked myself: What political or religious precepts must have been inculcated into the minds of these young people to make them treat a human life with such shocking cruelty?

"Earlier, I had watched on TV as the bodies of two Israeli soldiers were thrown from the second floor [of a building] in a Palestinian city. Whether or not it was the same Salafi mob behind that incident, [one asks oneself]: What language, [or rather,] what historic linguistic distortion could have erased from the human heart [all] moral sensibilities when dealing with a living and helpless human being?

"Arabs who are averse to such inhuman behavior must help me expose and eliminate the enormous lie that has for 60 years justified, extolled, and supported brutality. [Such behavior] is no longer limited to the expression of unconscious [impulses] by individuals, but constitutes a broad cultural phenomenon, which began in Lebanon, [spread to] Iraq and Palestine, and then [spread] - slowly but surely - to other Arab states as well.

"This enormous lie is what the Arabs called the Nakba - that is, the establishment of two states in Palestine: the state of Israel, which the Jews agreed to accept, and the state of Palestine, which the Arabs rejected.

"In our times, when science, with its accurate instruments, can predict climatic changes that will lead to drought or the movement of tectonic plates that causes earthquakes, it is inconceivable that a modern man can, without making a laughingstock of himself, attribute the destruction of cities ancient or modern to the wrath of Allah. Nevertheless, today, 80% of Arabs claim this to be the case. They are neither embarrassed nor afraid of being laughed at.

"This high percentage includes not only the illiterates who densely populate rural areas, villages, and small and large cities, but also students, teachers, lecturers, graduates of institutions of higher education, scientists, technology experts, physicians, graduates of religious universities such as Al-Azhar, historians, and politicians who have held or are currently holding public office.

"It is those numerous educated elites who have forced the Arab mentality into a narrow, restrictive, and deficient cultural mold, spewing violence, terrorism, and zealotry, and prohibiting innovative thought... All this was done to instill a false sense of oppression in the hearts of the Arabs, and to destroy them with the infectious disease of despair and confusion.

"[This attitude] is rooted in the 1947 Arab League resolution stating that Palestine is a 'stolen' land and that none but a Muslim Arab is entitled to benefit from it as an autonomous [political entity], even if another's historic roots there predate those of the Muslims or the Arabs."


The Nakba Boomerang

"[The upshot] of this confusion in [Arab] mentality is that the lie has boomeranged on the Arabs. [Thus] appeared [on the scene] Saddam Hussein, Hafez Al-Assad, Bashar Al-Assad, Osama bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Abu Mus'ab Al-Zarqawi, Hassan Nasrallah, Nabih Berri, Khaled Mash'al, Isma'il Haniya, and Mahmoud Al-Zahar, whose young [thugs] threw the senior Palestinian official from the 14th floor. Finally, from the foot of the eastern mountains bordering the Middle East came Ahmadinejad, who is committed to preparing the way for the anarchy and destruction that accompanies the advent of the long-awaited Mahdi, who will resolve the Palestinian problem.

"Today, owing to the ideological distortions that have afflicted the Arab popular consciousness since the so-called Nakba, and [also owing] to the lies that have accumulated around this notion, [the label of] 'terrorism' has become attached to Arabs, wherever they are.

"Despite the great political and cultural efforts by large and important Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and some Gulf states to restore Arab ties with the rest of the world, and to curb the culture of terrorism in Arab societies, they have all failed. This is because these attempts to rectify [the situation], from both within and without [the Arab countries], both stemmed from and were a logical extension of the concept of the Nakba.

"This proves that the Arabs have no hope of extricating themselves from the cultural and political challenge of terrorism unless they come up with [new] and different [fundamental] premises, and with an outlook completely free of the fetters of the religious ritual that they have devised in modern times and called the Nakba.

"Although Palestinian senior officials, leaders, educated circles, and public figures, whose patriotism is beyond doubt, have come to terms with the existence of the State of Israel, the aforementioned 80% of Arabs... do not accept this view, and consider it religious apostasy. Leaders of the [Arab] states in the region, and party leaders, inflame sentiment, entrancing them with the drumbeat of extremism.

"With the strident chorus of its secretaries, the Arab League ensures that every car crash in Gaza or the West Bank is interpreted as an Israeli conspiracy against the Arab future. This is because the Arab League... was established as a pan-Arab entity whose main function was to write reports and studies rife with distortions of fact so as to quell the conscience of any Arab who dared think independently and expunge [the concept of] the Nakba from his consciousness. [It has done] this instead of devising creative strategies for cultural and economic development, so as to improve the deteriorating standard of living in the Arab societies."


The Nakba is Rooted in a Culture that Does Not Recognize the Right of the Other

"Why did the partition resolution, which gave a state in Palestine to the Jews and one to the Arabs next to it, become the Nakba - [the star] that rises and sets daily over the Arab lands without emitting even the tiniest ray of light to illuminate the path for their peoples?

"Did the Jews have any less right to Palestine than the Arabs? What historic criteria can be used to determine the precedence of one [nation's] right over that of the other?

"Refusing to recognize the right of the other so as to usurp his rights was a governing principle of the Islamic conquests from the time of 'Omar bin Al-Khattab; during that historical period it was the norm. [But] at the turn of the [20th] century, this principle was abandoned and prohibited, because it sparked wars and [violent] conflict. The international community passed laws restricting the principle of non-acceptance of the other, in the founding principles of the League of Nations in 1919. Subsequently, with the U.N.'s establishment, these laws were developed [further], with appendices and commentary, to adapt them to the current historical era and to express the commonly accepted values of national sovereignty and peoples' right to self-determination.

"But because of their sentimental yearning for the past and zealous adherence to [old] criteria, the Arabs purged their hearts of any inclination to adjust to the spirit of the age. They thus became captives of the principle of non-acceptance of the other and of denying the other [the right] to live, [among] other rights.

"As a result, damage was done to the rights and interests of non-Arab nations and ethnic groups in the Arab lands - among them the Kurds, the Copts, and the Jews. [Thus,] the Arabs still treat the numerous minorities that came under their dominion 1,400 years ago in accordance with the laws from the era of Arab conquest.

"Despite the consequences of denying the other the right to exist, not to mention other rights - that is, [despite] the oppression, conflicts, wars, and instability [resulting from this]... the Arabs have steadfastly clung to their clearly chauvinist position. All problems in the region arising from minorities' increasing awareness of their rights have been dealt with by the Arabs in accordance with [the principle of non-acceptance]... [even] after the emergence of international institutions giving these rights legal validity, in keeping with the mentality and rationale of our time."


Refusing to Accept the Other: The Kurds in Iraq; the Christians in Egypt and Lebanon

The Kurds

"The denial of the Kurds' national rights by the Iraqi government, and the Arab League's support for it, has brought on wars lasting 50 years - that is, three-quarters of the life span of the state that arose in Iraq...

"After fabricating arguments to justify the [1921] combining of the Basra region with the Baghdad region in order to establish a new state in Iraq, British colonialist interests demanded that a large area historically populated by Kurds be added to the new state. [This was done] to satisfy the aspirations of King Faisal bin Al-Hussein [bin Ali Al-Hashemi], who had been proposed as head of state in return for protecting British interests in the region.

"In his persistent refusal to grant the Kurds their rights, from 1988 through 1989 Saddam Hussein murdered approximately 180,000 Kurds, in an organized [genocidal] campaign he called 'Al-Anfal.' He then used mustard gas against one [Kurdish] city (Halabja), killing its residents (5,000 people). The Arab conscience silently acquiesced to this human slaughterhouse, while Arab League secretary-general (Shadhli Al-Qalibi) called the international press coverage of these events 'a colonialist conspiracy against the Arabs and the Iraqi regime.'

"Syrian Kurds are considered second-class citizens, and are banned from using their language or [practicing] their culture in public."


The Christians in Egypt and Lebanon

"The ethnic oppression of the Kurds [in Iraq] was echoed by sectarian extremism against the Copts [in Egypt]. In both cases, the Arabs used the principle of denying the existence of the other so as to strip him of his rights.

"The Copts, who [initially] assimilated Arabs into their society, but who have over time themselves assimilated into Arab society, discover time and again that this assimilated state is but a surface shell, which quickly cracks whenever they demand equality... As a result, Egypt, as a state, is gripped by constant social tensions that keep rising to the surface and threatening to undermine its stability...

"Sectarian extremism in Egypt took the form of an organized party with the 1928 emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood, with the aim of splitting Egyptian society into two mutually hostile and conflicting parts. This was in line with the Arab religious and political principle of denying legitimacy to all non-Muslims or non-Arabs, [a principle practiced] since the Muslim armies reached Egypt in 639 [CE]...

"In Lebanon, the presence of armed Palestinian militias - which was in accordance with the decision of the Arab states - encouraged the formation of Lebanese militias, both Sunni and Shi'ite. Chanting slogans proclaiming Palestinian liberation, they frightened Christians by appearing armed in streets swarming with Lebanese [citizens] and tourists.

"This eventually led to a confrontation with Christian militias, which had also armed themselves out of fear of the pan-Arab slogans and fear for the [preservation of] the rights of the Christian sects.

"Lebanon was engulfed by an ugly 15-year civil war, that ended only after Syria, which had played an ignominious role as instigator [of the hostilities], attained full protectorate status over Lebanese affairs and the Lebanese people - [and this] took on the nature of colonialist hegemony...

"After the Lebanese were liberated from this [Syrian] control, in 2005 the clouds of civil war - albeit of a different kind - reappeared on the Lebanese horizon. The Arab League is making no effort to prevent the eruption [of this civil war] for two main reasons. First, the Syrian regime still supports ethnic tension, in order to regain control of Lebanon; and second, the current majority government, which opposes the renewed Syrian influence, is predominantly Christian...

"We had hoped that the Arab national conscience would recover from the illness afflicting it since the time of the Nakba, and that it would adopt [views] which, if not ahead of their time, would at least be appropriate to our time. But a group of journalists, writers, and several Arab historians guided by the principle of non-acceptance of the other has twisted the facts and concocted a false and gloomy history of the region - thereby trampling these dreams to the ground."


Jews Have a Rich and Ancient History in Palestine

"The Arabs see the Palestinian problem as exceedingly complicated, while it actually appears so only to them - [that is], from the point of view of the Arabs' emotional attitudes and their national and religious philosophy. The Arabs have amassed false claims regarding their exclusive right to the Palestinian land, [and] these are based on phony arguments and on several axioms taken from written and oral sources - most of which they [themselves] created after the Islamic, and which they forbade anyone, Arab or foreigner, from questioning.

"When the Arabs agreed to U.N. arbitration... to resolve the Palestinian problem, it transpired that their axioms clearly contradicted reliable historical documents [that] this new international organization [had in its possession]. As a result, they wasted decades stubbornly defending the validity of their documents, which do not correspond to the officially accepted version of the region's history - which is based on concrete and solid evidence [such as] archaeological findings in the land of Palestine, the holy books of the three monotheistic religions, accounts by Roman, Greek, and Jewish historians... and modern historical research..."


Jewish and Christian Ritual Sites in Jerusalem Predate Muslim Sites

"[A look at] the story of Al-Aqsa is now in order - a site considered holy by Muslim Arabs, who call it 'Al-Haram al-Qudsi al-Sharif' [The Noble Sanctuary] and [believe that] it was set aside for them by Allah since the time of Adam.

"[This site] contains several places of worship, including the Dome of the Rock, built by the [Umayyad Caliph] 'Abd Al-Malik bin Marwan in the seventh century CE - that is, 72 years after the Muslim conquests. This religious public gathering place was erected over a prominent [foundation] stone at the peak of 'Mount Moriah.' [Mount Moriah] contains three ancient Jewish public worship sites, as well as [some] Christian sites... The octagonal structure of the Dome of the Rock Mosque was constructed on the site of an ancient Byzantine church, adjoining Solomon's Temple, destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

"Since the majority of Muslims claim that the Temple Mount is an Islamic site to which no one else is entitled, they do not acknowledge the presence of Jewish and Christian places of worship predating the Dome of the Rock within its walls...

"The Arabs take great pride in their tolerance of and benign treatment of the Jews and Christians who lived under the Muslim rule since the Muslim conquests. This account is part of the distortions underpinning the edifice of the Arabs' religious and national culture. [Arab] writers and historians keep eulogizing this epoch... while the truth is the opposite of what they claim. [Indeed,] the Pact of 'Omar [compelled] the Jews and the Christians to choose between either abandoning their religion and embracing Islam, or paying the [poll] tax in return for being permitted to reside... and receive protection of life and property in their homeland. [The Pact of 'Omar] allowed them to practice their religion, build new houses of worship, and repair the old ones [only] with the permission of a Muslim ruler, and subject to numerous conditions.

"In subsequent historical periods, the Muslims imposed [additional restrictions] on the members of [these] two religions: They forbade them to raise their voices during prayer; [they forced them] to conduct their prayers and religious ceremonies in closed areas so as not [to disturb] passersby; they forbade them to carry weapons, ride saddled horses, or build houses taller than those of the Muslims. [Christians and Jews] were required to show respect for the Muslims, e.g. by giving up their seat to a Muslim if he wanted it. They were banned from holding government posts or from working in 'sensitive' public places.

"The Koranic verses cursing the Jews and casting doubt on [the veracity of] their Holy Book [the Torah] promulgated a desire among Arabs to set themselves above the Jews who lived in their midst, humiliating and persecuting them even without pretext. In time, this treatment made large numbers of Jews abandon their cities and their land and emigrate... while those who stayed [in Palestine] until the 19th century remained marginalized, living among the Arabs like criminals in a foreign land...

"The Arabs claim that the 'Wailing Wall' has been their property since the Prophet Muhammad tied his horse Al-Buraq to one of its supports when Allah transported him by night from the Holy Mosque in Mecca to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem... Although this night-journey story seems dubious, Arab historiography after the advent of Islam contains such oddities as giving a horse the prerogative of making a wall weighing more than 2,000 tons into Muslim property. This is only one of thousands of examples of tales concocted by zealots, with which they swept away the Arab imagination.

"...When the U.N. resolution on the partition of Palestine was issued on November 29, 1947... the Arabs refused to recognize it. They thereby rejected the state set out by the resolution as the right of the Palestinians and the Arabs, with the aim of establishing legal and historical equity. The Arabs called this resolution the Nakba, while their new states, formed several years before the State of Israel, launched the first war against Israel, in which regular military operations were combined with local attacks by gangs comprising Palestinians and Arabs from Arab regions near and far. [That war] ended in [the Arabs'] defeat. Persisting in their error, the Arabs established refugee camps for the Palestinians who had fled during and after the war...

"Chairman Mahmoud 'Abbas... was the first Palestinian leader to acknowledge that the Christian church in Gaza plundered by Hamas gangs had stood there 'before [we] came to Gaza.' By this he meant 'we the Palestinians' - particularly the current Gaza residents, [the descendants of] Bedouins from the Sinai and the Arabian Peninsula and of others, of unknown origin. [These people were] attracted by the wealth of the new Islamic state that extended from Persia to Southern Ethiopia, and came after the Muslim conquests and set themselves up over the local population - Christians, Jews, Phoenicians, Byzantines, and the remnants of the Sumerians...


Arabs Must Recognize the Jews' Right to Palestine

"In order to prevent more bloodshed among the innocent [population]... and in order to keep the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza, and the West Bank from making [these regions into] a quagmire that will spread to engulf all Arab states and societies, the Arabs must reassess the question of the Nakba and come up with a new, courageous vision for the region and for the future of its residents.

"[This vision] must involve public recognition of the Jews' legitimate right to their state - which is based on historical fact - instead of [recognition] of the writings filled with anger and demagogy produced and formed into an ideology by the confused [Arab] consciousness - a consciousness built upon lies, myths, and distortions stemming from the principle of non-acceptance of the other.

"The most important factor in strengthening such a new vision is [the adoption of] a principle [requiring] official condemnation of all individuals, groups, companies, religious and political parties, and totalitarian regimes that built their glory and hollow leaderships upon the notion of the Nakba, and which are always ready to absorb other false claims and fabrications.

"This must be done, so that a modern Arab face is turned to the world - [a face reflecting] ethical values that will not allow any Arab, under any pretext, to oppress his son or his brother who differs from him in religion, ethnicity, or ideology."




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[1] www.ahewar.org (formerly www.rezgar.com ), December 7, 2007.

[2] 'Aref 'Alwan is the first Arab author to publish his novels on the Internet. His doing so was the subject of his January 20, 2005 interview in the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.

Wilders Denies Softening Film After Pressure

(PICTURE AT SOURCE)

Geert Wilders (in front) walks past justice minister Hirsch Ballin prime minister Balkenende and home affairs minister Ter Horst during the parlementary debate about his film Fitna. Photo Roel Rozenburg.

Wilders denies softening film after pressure
Gepubliceerd: 2 april 2008 17:10 | Gewijzigd: 7 april 2008 15:46
By our reporters

Geert Wilders had originally planned to include footage of pages being torn out of the Koran and burned in his film Fitna, ministers said yesterday during a rowdy debate in parliament.

Justice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin used the debate to make public confidential notes taken during meetings between himself, Wilders, home affairs minister Guusje ter Horst and the Dutch anti-terrorism coordinator in October and November last year.

The notes show that the exact contents of the film were not known. However, Wilders said it would include quotes from the Koran which incited violence, film of beheadings and stonings and images of terrorist attacks. 'The film ends with Mr Wilders tearing parts out of the Koran,' state the notes, which were published yesterday. The notes also show that ministers expressed their concerns about the consequences of such a film. In the version released on Thursday the Koran is not torn up or set on fire.

Wilders yesterday denied that he had given details of his film plans in advance and that he had adapted them after government pressure. 'This is deception, it is not true,' Wilders said. 'The cabinet is brushing up its own image.'

Ministers used the notes from the meetings to defend their approach to dealing with the impending 'crisis' ahead of the film's release. Wilders accused prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende of so over-reacting that he called for a formal apology and submitted a motion of no-confidence in the government. Wilders was furious. 'How can people get hold of this information in God's name,' he said. 'Not only is it wrong, but I didn't say it.'

During the debate Wilders came under strong attack from other members of parliament. 'Your film is vicious and unnecessarily offensive,' said Christian democratic Pieter van Geel. 'You are a trouble-maker, a political pyromaniac,' said Mark Rutte, leader of the parliamentary Liberal party VVD, which Wilders used to be a member of. And Femke Halsema, leader of the left-wing Green party GroenLinks said that, by likening Islam to terrorism, Wilders implied that 'every believer is a fascist and a potential terrorist' and he was 'passing sentence on all Muslims'.

Indonesia

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Ulema council (MUI) will call for a boycott of the Netherlands and Dutch products if the government does not ban the film, Ma'aruf Amin, chairman of its fatwa commission, told NRC Handelsblad on Wednesday morning. The MUI is Indonesia's highest Islamic council and decides, for example, which products are halal and which are not. Earlier, Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono banned the film and declared Wilders persona non grata.

The Dutch consulate in Medan, on Sumatra, has been attacked by several dozen students. Local media reported that they set the Dutch flag and a nameboard on fire. That would make it the first violent demonstration against Fitna in Indonesia, after three days of demonstrations.