SPLC is one of the leaders in defending Muslims from hate crimes and the backlash that
resulted from the Sept.11 attacks. If they see a connection between the Islamists and the
Nazis, it is time to take notice.
The Swastika & the Crescent
In the wake of Sept. 11, new light is thrown on the international ties
increasingly linking Muslim and neo-Nazi extremists
by Martin A. Lee
As Germany's defeat loomed during the finals months of World War II, Adolf
Hitler increasingly lapsed into delusional fits of fantasy. Albert Speer,
in his prison writings, recounts an episode in which a maniacal Hitler "pictured
for himself and for us the destruction of New York in a hurricane of fire."
The Nazi fuehrer described skyscrapers turning into "gigantic burning torches,
collapsing upon one another, the glow of the exploding city illuminating the
dark sky."
An approximation of Hitler's hellish vision came true on Sept. 11, when
terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers in New York, killing nearly 3,000 people.
But it was not Nazis or even neo-Nazis who carried out the attack the deadliest
terror strike in history allegedly came at the hands of foreign Muslim extremists.
Still, in the aftermath of the slaughter, white supremacists in America and
Europe applauded the suicide attacks and praised Osama bin Laden, the mastermind
of the massacre. An official of America's premier neo-Nazi group, the National
Alliance, said he wished his own members had "half as much testicular fortitude."
The awestruck leader of another U.S. Nazi group called the terrorists "VERY
BRAVE PEOPLE." Neo-fascist youth in France celebrated the event that evening
with champagne at the headquarters of the extreme right Front National. German
neo-Nazis, some wearing checkered Palestinian headscarves, rejoiced at street
demonstrations while burning an American flag. Jan Kopal, head of the Czech
National Social Bloc, declared at a rally in Prague that bin Laden was "an
example for our children." Horst Mahler, a former left-wing terrorist and
prominent member of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany,
proclaimed his solidarity with the terrorists and said America had gotten
what it deserved.
What's going on here? For decades, American extremists have lumped Arabs
in with dark-skinned "mud people." In Europe, neo-Nazis have been implicated
in countless xenophobic attacks on Arabs, Turks and other Muslims. Extremist
parties on both sides of the Atlantic hope to bar entrance to non-white immigrants.
The peculiar bond between white nationalist groups and certain Muslim extremists
derives in part from a shared set of enemies Jews, the United States, race-mixing,
ethnic diversity. It is also very much a function of the shared belief that
they must shield their own peoples from the corrupting influence of foreign
cultures and the homogenizing juggernaut of globalization. Both sets of groups
also have a penchant for far-flung conspiracy theories that caricature Jewish
power.
But there is more. Even before World War II, Western fascists began to forge
ideological and operational ties to Islamic extremists. Over the years, these
contacts between Nazis and Muslim nationalists developed into dangerous networks
that have been implicated in a number of bloody terrorist attacks in Europe
and the Middle East. Wealthy Arab regimes have financed extremists in Europe
and the United States, just as Western neo-Nazis have helped to build Holocaust
denial machinery in the Arab world. In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia hired an American
neo-Nazi as a lobbyist in the United States. In the 1980s, U.S. neo-Nazi
strategist Louis Beam openly called for a linkup of America's far right with
the "liberation movements" of Libya, Syria, Iran and Palestine. In the 1990s,
an American Black Muslim was convicted in a plot to bomb the United Nations
and other New York landmarks that was masterminded by a blind Egyptian cleric
(see story on Black Muslims at bottom of this article). Just last year, a
meeting sponsored by a U.S. Holocaust denial group brought together Arab
and Western extremists in Jordan (see story on Holocaust denial, also at
bottom of this page). And after the Sept. 11 attacks, a spate of articles
by American neo-Nazis and white supremacists appeared in Islamic publications
and Web sites.
Although links like these illustrate the ties between Muslim extremists and
Americans, such ties are far more developed in Europe. But since the terrorist
attacks of Sept. 11, there are a number of signs including a spate of articles
by American neo-Nazis that have appeared in Islamic publications and Web
sites that an operational alliance may be taking shape in the United States
as well.
Banking for Allah
Perhaps the best contemporary snapshot of this Nazi-Islamist extremist axis
comes in the person of one Ahmed Huber, a neo-Nazi whose home in a suburb
of Berne was raided by Swiss police on Nov. 8, after U.S. officials identified
him as a linchpin in the financial machinations of Osama bin Laden. The raid
was part of a coordinated law enforcement dragnet that seized records from
the offices of Al Taqwa, an international banking group. Al Taqwa, which literally
means "Fear of God," had been channeling funds to Muslim extremist organizations
around the world, including Hamas, a group active in the Israeli-occupied
territories.
Huber, a former journalist who converted to Islam and changed his first name
from Albert, served on the board of Nada Management, a component of Al Taqwa.
After Swiss authorities froze the firm's assets and questioned Huber, the
74-year-old denounced Washington for doing the bidding of "Jew Zionists"
who "rule America." In January, Nada Management announced that it had gone
into liquidation.
A well-known figure in European neofascist circles, Huber "sees himself as
a mediator between Islam and right-wing groups," according to Germany's Office
for the Protection of the Constitution. Portraits of Hitler and SS chief
Heinrich Himmler adorn the walls of Huber's office, alongside photos of Islamic
political leaders and a picture of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the present-day boss
of the French Front National.
In accordance with his self-proclaimed mission to unite Muslim fundamentalists
and extreme right-wing forces in Europe and North America, Huber has traveled
widely and proselytized at numerous gatherings. In Germany, he speaks often
at events hosted by the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party, which publicly
welcomed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Huber also befriended British author
David Irving and other Holocaust deniers while frequenting "revisionist" conclaves.
A Bin Laden Fan in Chicago
At the same time, Huber made the rounds of the radical Islamic circuit in
Western countries. In June 1994, he spoke about the "evils of the Jews" at
a mosque in Potomac, Md. (just outside Washington, D.C.), where videotapes
of Huber's speeches are reportedly on sale. During a subsequent visit to Chicago,
he attended a private assembly that brought together, in Huber's words, "the
authentic Right and the fighters for Islam." Huber told journalist Richard
Labeviere that "major decisions were taken [in Chicago]. " [T]he reunification
is under way."
Huber acknowledges meeting al-Qaeda operatives on several occasions at Muslim
conferences in Beirut, Brussels and London. He has been quoted in the Swiss
media as saying that bin Laden's associates "are very discreet, well-educated
and highly intelligent people." The U.S. government claims that Huber's banking
firm helped bin Laden shift financial assets around the world. But Huber
denies any involvement in terrorist activities. He insists Al Taqwa was engaged
in charitable work, providing aid for social services that benefited needy
Muslims.
Described as "the financial heart of the Islamist economic apparatus," Al
Taqwa is intertwined with the Muslim Brotherhood, a longstanding, far-right
cult whose emblem is a Koran crossed by a sword. The influence of the Brotherhood
extends throughout the Muslim world, where it vigorously, and often violently,
opposes secular Arab regimes. In 1981, partisans of the Muslim Brotherhood
were implicated in the assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Several
members of Islamic Jihad, an extremist sect closely associated with the Brotherhood,
were also involved in the Sadat assassination. By the early 1990s, Islamic
Jihad would closely ally itself with bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Back to the Beginning
The roots of the Muslim Brotherhood and, in many ways, the Nazi-Muslim axis
go back to the organization's formation in Egypt in 1928. Marking the start
of modern political Islam, or what is often referred to as "Islamic fundamentalism,"
the Brotherhood from the outset envisioned a time when an Islamic state would
prevail in Egypt and other Arab countries, where the organization quickly
established local branches. The growth of the Muslim Brotherhood coincided
with the rise of fascist movements in Europe - a parallel noted by Muhammad
Sa'id al-'Ashmawy, former chief justice of Egypt's High Criminal Court, who
decried "the perversion of Islam" and "the fascistic ideology" that infuses
the world view of the Brothers, "their total (if not totalitarian) way of
life . . . [and] their fantastical reading of the Koran."
Youssef Nada, current board chairman of Al Taqwa, had joined the armed branch
of the Muslim Brotherhood as a young man in Egypt during World War II. Nada
and several of his cohorts in the Sunni Muslim fraternity were recruited by
German military intelligence, which sought to undermine British colonial rule
in the land of the sphinx. Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian schoolteacher who
founded the Muslim Brotherhood, also collaborated with spies of the Third
Reich.
Advocating a pan-Islamic insurgency in British-controlled Palestine, the
Brotherhood proclaimed their support for the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj
Amin Al-Husseini, in the late 1930s. The Grand Mufti, the preeminent religious
figure among Palestinian Muslims, was the most notable Arab leader to seek
an alliance with Nazi Germany, which was eager to extend its influence in
the Middle East.
Although he loathed Arabs (he once described them as "lacquered half-apes
who ought to be whipped"), Hitler understood that he and the Mufti shared
the same rivals - the British, the Jews and the Communists. Indicative of
the old Arab adage, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," they met in Berlin,
where the Mufti lived in exile during the war. The Mufti agreed to help organize
a special Muslim division of the Waffen SS. Powerful radio transmitters were
put at the Mufti's disposal so that his pro-Axis propaganda could be heard
throughout the Arab world.
A Mecca for Fascists
After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Grand Mufti fled to Egypt. His arrival
in 1946 was a precursor to a steady stream of Third Reich veterans who chose
Cairo as a postwar hideout. The Egyptian capital became a safe haven for
several thousand Nazi fugitives, including former SS Captain Alois Brunner,
Adolf Eichmann's chief deputy. Convicted in absentia for war crimes, Brunner
would later reside in Damascus, where he served as a security advisor for
the Syrian government.
Several American fascists visited the Middle East during this period, including
Francis Parker Yockey, who made his way to Cairo in the summer of 1953, a
year after the corrupt Egyptian monarchy was overthrown by a military coup.
The Brotherhood had played a major role in instigating the popular uprising
that set the stage for the emergence of Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser as Egypt's
new leader. But Nasser, who had little interest in mixing politics and religion,
would subsequently have a falling out with the Islamic fundamentalist sect.
When Nasser wanted to overhaul Egypt's secret service, he asked the U.S.
Central Intelligence Agency for assistance. But the U.S. government "found
it highly impolitic to help him directly," cia agent Miles Copeland recalled
in a memoir, so the cia instead secretly bankrolled more than 100 German
espionage and military experts who trained Egyptian police and army units
in the mid-1950s.
An American Reaches Out
During this period, the Grand Mufti maintained close relations with the
burgeoning Nazi exile community in Cairo, while cultivating ties to right-wing
extremists in the United States and other countries. H. Keith Thompson, a
New York-based businessman and Nazi activist, was a confidant of the Mufti.
"I did a couple of jobs for him, getting some documents from files that were
otherwise unavailable," Thompson acknowledged in an interview.
Thompson also carried on a lively correspondence with Johannes von Leers,
one of the Third Reich's most prolific Jew-baiters, who converted to Islam
and changed his name to Omar Amin after he took up residence in Cairo in
1955. "If there is any hope to free the world from Jewish tyranny," Amin
wrote Thompson, "it is with the Moslems, who stand steadfastly against Zionism,
Colonialism and Imperialism." Formerly Goebbels' right-hand man, Amin became
a top official in the Egyptian Information Ministry, which employed several
European fascists who churned out hate literature and anti-Jewish broadcasts.
Another German expatriate, Louis Heiden, alias Louis Al-Hadj, translated
Hitler's Mein Kampf into Arabic.
The Egyptian government also published The Protocols of the Elders of
Zion , the infamous anti-Semitic forgery that purports to reveal a Jewish
master plan for taking over the world. A staple of Nazi propaganda, the Protocols
also are quoted in Article 32 of the charter of Hamas, the hard-line Palestinian
fundamentalist group that is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood even though
Muslim scholars say such views are an anathema to mainstream Islam. "There
are no historic roots for anti-Semitism in Islam," says Hasem Saghiyeh, a
columnist at Al Hayat, a London-based Arab newspaper. "The process
of translating books like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on
a popular scale started in Nasser's Egypt, but only the Islamic fundamentalist
movement incorporated them into its literature."
Mercenaries for Palestine
After Israel's overwhelming victory in the Six Day War in June 1967, a mood
of desperate militancy engulfed the Palestinian refugee camps. Deprived of
a homeland, the leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) apparently
felt that they couldn't afford to turn down offers of help, no matter how
unsavory the donors. Karl von Kyna, a West German neo-Nazi mercenary, died
during a Palestinian commando raid in September 1967. Eager to continue their
vendetta against the Jews, several right-wing extremists subsequently joined
the Hilfskorp Arabien ("Auxiliary Corps Arabia"), which was advertised in
the Munich-based Deutsche National-Zeitung, a pro-Nazi newspaper,
in 1968.
The following year, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)
hijacked several commercial airplanes. When three PFLP members stood trial
after blowing up an Israeli jet in Zurich, the legal costs for their defense
were paid by Francois Genoud, an elusive Swiss banker described by the
London Observer as "one of the world's leading Nazis." Genoud had previously
picked up the tab for Adolf Eichmann's legal defense, and a number of other
Nazi war criminals and Arab terrorists would also benefit from his largesse.
Where did the money come from? According to European press accounts, Genoud
was managing the hidden Swiss treasure of the Third Reich, most of which
had been stolen from Jews. "Security services claim he transferred the defeated
Nazis' gold into Swiss bank accounts," reports Gitta Sereny, who called Genoud
"the most mysterious man in Europe."
After World War II, Genoud served as the financial advisor to the Grand Mufti.
In 1958, the Swiss Nazi set up the Arab Commercial Bank in Geneva to manage
the war chest of the Algerian National Liberation Front, whose partisans
were fighting to free their country from French colonial rule. Several Third
Reich veterans, including Maj. Gen. Otto Ernst Remer, who had served as Hitler's
bodyguard, smuggled weapons to the Algerian rebels, while other German advisors
provided military instruction. Under the guise of supporting the Arabs' struggle
against French colonialism, Genoud and his Nazi cohorts were following the
same geopolitical strategy that Hitler had pursued in the Middle East.
Europeans and Pro-Palestinian Terror
In addition to brokering arms sales to Arab militants, Genoud helped subsidize
terrorist networks in Europe and the Arab world. This financier of fascism
waited until the statue of limitations ran out before admitting that he had
personally written and sent ransom notes demanding $5 million to the German
airline Lufthansa and several news services after PFLP terrorists hijacked
another jet in 1972. That same year, the Black September organization murdered
nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. When Black September leader
Hassan Salameh needed medical attention, Genoud arranged for him to be treated
at a private clinic in Lausanne.
In 1974, PLO chief Yasser Arafat publicly indicated a willingness to renounce
international terrorism and declared his interest in a settlement that would
finally establish a Palestinian homeland in the Israeli-occupied territories.
These steps toward moderation angered Arab hardliners, who ruled out any
compromise with Israel. Not surprisingly, Genoud and other neofascists favored
the most belligerent factions that kept calling for the annihilation of the
Jewish state.
After bombing four U.S. Army bases in West Germany in 1982, Odfried Hepp,
a young neo-Nazi renegade, went underground and joined the Tunis-based Palestine
Liberation Front (PLF). Hepp, one of West Germany's most wanted terrorists,
was arrested in June 1985 while entering the apartment of a PLF member in
Paris. Four months later, PLF commandos seized the Achille Lauro cruise ship
and murdered Leon Klinghoffer, a wheelchair-bound Jewish American. Included
on the PLF's list of prisoners to be exchanged for the Achille Lauro hostages
was the name of Odfried Hepp.
Fundamentalism and the Iranian Revolution
Islamic fundamentalism got a tremendous boost when the Ayatollah Khomeini
toppled the Shah during the 1979 Iranian revolution. The Ayatollah's description
of the United States and the Soviet Union as "the twin Satans" dovetailed
neatly with the "Third Position" politics of many European and American neofascists,
an ideology that rejects both American capitalism and Soviet Communism. Some
white supremacists also shared Khomeini's dream of launching a "holy war"
against what was seen as decadent, Western-style democracy. When Iran issued
a call for the assassination of author Salmon Rushdie for writing The
Satanic Verses, several neo-Nazi groups supported the Iranian fatwa.
Far-right fanatics also hailed the 1983 suicide car-bombing by Iranian-backed
Shiite terrorists that killed 271 U.S. Marines in Beirut. The British National
Front had nothing but praise for Khomeini's Islamic Revolutionary Guards:
"Their belief in their cause is so strong that they will run through mine
fields unarmed to attack enemy positions; their ideals are so all-consuming
that they will drive truck bombs into enemy camps knowing full well their
[own] death is inevitable. " This power, this contempt for death, is the stuff
of which victories are made."
In 1987, French police cordoned off the Iranian embassy in Paris and demanded
that a magistrate be allowed to interrogate Wahid Gordji, an Iranian official
suspected of orchestrating a series of bombings that rocked the French capital
during the previous a year. French investigators got on to Gordji's trail
after they discovered a check for 120,000 francs (about $20,000) that he
had written to Ogmios, a neo-Nazi publisher and bookstore in Paris. The money
was used to underwrite a slick catalogue promoting The Myth of the Jewish
Holocaust and similar titles. But the Iranian government rebuffed the
French authorities who wanted to question Gordji, causing a rupture in diplomatic
relations between Paris and Tehran. The six-month embassy stand-off was finally
resolved after French officials met with representatives of a group called
"The Friends of Wahid Gordji" a group which included the redoubtable Nazi
banker Francois Genoud.
Nazis in Baghdad
Links between white supremacists and the Iranian government continued after
Khomeini's death in 1989. On several occasions in recent years, American neo-Nazi
chieftain William Pierce has been interviewed by Radio Tehran. U.S. white
supremacists have also snuggled up to Iran's archenemy, Saddam Hussein. In
1990, Gene Schroder, an ideologue of the far-right "common-law court" movement,
joined a delegation of Midwest farmers to Washington for a meeting in the
Iraqi embassy, where Iraqi officials were trying to drum up opposition to
the impending Persian Gulf War. During that 1991 war, Oklahoma Klan leader
Dennis Mahon organized a small rally in Tulsa in support of Saddam. Mahon
says he later received a couple of hundred dollars in an unmarked envelope
from the Iraqi government.
In addition, shortly before the war, German neo-Nazis solicited support from
Iraq for an anti-Zionist legion composed of far-right mercenaries from several
European countries. The members of this so-called international "Freedom Corps"
pretentiously strutted around Baghdad in SS uniforms. But as soon as bombs
started to fall on the Iraqi capital, the neo-Nazi volunteers scurried back
to Europe.
A number of prominent neo-fascists have expressed support for Saddam, including
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian demagogue, who visited Iraq after the Gulf
War. Jean-Marie Le Pen of the French Front National also got the red-carpet
treatment when he met Saddam in Baghdad. Although he built his political
career by disparaging Arab immigrants, Le Pen now claims that he is deeply
concerned about the plight of Iraqi children who have suffered under sanctions
imposed by the United Nations. His wife, Jany, who heads a group called SOS
Children of Iraq, has joined Le Pen on several trips to Baghdad. Thus far,
however, Arab children in France have yet to benefit from the supposed good
Samaritan act of the Le Pens.
The Libyan Connection
On June 28, 2000, the Times of London reported that Libyan leader
Muammar Ghaddafi had ordered the deposit of $25 million into a bank in Carinthia,
the Austrian province governed by Jorg Haider, de facto leader of the far-right
Freedom Party. (The Freedom Party is an immigrant-bashing organization that
is home to many neo-Nazis and former Nazis and has downplayed German war atrocities.)
Col. Ghaddafi's cash gift - which Haider described as "Christmas for Austria"
- was meant to ease the strain of sanctions imposed on Austria by the European
Union after the Freedom Party joined Austria's national governing coalition.
This was the second rabbit Haider pulled from his hat as a result of two
private forays to Tripoli, where he met Ghaddafi. After his first Libyan excursion,
Haider announced he was tackling Austria's high gas prices by arranging for
Libyan gasoline to be sold in Carinthia at a discount. News photos showed
Haider, the Porsche-driving populist, beaming as he pumped gas for motorists.
Over the years, Ghaddafi has been wooed by several neofascist leaders, including
Italian fugitive Stefano delle Chiaie, who was accused of masterminding a
series of bomb attacks in Rome and Milan. Described in a 1982 cia report as
"the most prominent rightist terrorist " still at large," delle Chiaie wrote
a letter to Ghadaffi, inviting him to join in a common struggle against "atheistic
Soviet Marxism and American capitalist materialism," both of which were supposedly
controlled by "international Zionism." Delle Chiaie added: "Libya can, if
it wants, be the active focus, the center of national socialist renovation
[that will] break the chains which enslave people and nations."
Ghaddafi, the Green Book and Western Extremism
Links between Libya and the European far right have been scrutinized in
several parliamentary and judicial probes in Italy. One Italian judicial inquiry
found that the Libyan embassy in Rome had provided money to aid the escape
of Italian terrorist suspect Mario Tuti shortly after the bombing of an express
train near Florence in 1974. Tuti was later captured and sentenced to a lengthy
prison term for orchestrating the attack, which killed 12 people and injured
44 others.
Ghadaffi's financial largesse and his militant anti-Zionism has generated
support for the Libyan regime among right-wing extremists around the world,
including in Great Britain, where the Green Book, Ghaddafi's political
manifesto, was promoted by the neo-Nazi National Front. In 1984, according
to former British Nazi leader Ray Hill (who later renounced racism and worked
with antiracists), the Libyan People's Bureau put up money for a special anti-Semitic
supplement to the National Front's monthly magazine. In addition, Ghadaffi's
government picked up the tab for several junkets so that neofascists from
England, France, Canada, the Netherlands and several other countries could
visit the Libyan capital.
Col. Ghaddafi is also widely admired by white supremacists in the United
States. The Green Book has been featured as the top online book on
the Web site of the American Front, whose professed aim is "to secure National
Freedom and Social Justice for the White people of North America." Asserting
that he is "against race mixing," American Front leader James Porazzo praises
Libya and says that his group has much in common ideologically with Louis
Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, which has its own links to Ghaddafi (see "Strange
Bedfellows" below). Porazzo also says he has "great respect for the actions
of Hamas and Hezbollah," two radical Islamist groups involved in suicide
bombings, as long as they "see that their home is in the Mideast and that
their religion is great for their people but not intended for all mankind."
'Working for Their Races'
The Philadelphia-based American Front thinks highly of Osama bin Laden, too,
describing him as "one of ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government, the name many
extremists give to the federal government, which they believe is run by Jews]
and the New World Order's biggest enemies." And it is not alone. Wolfgang
Droege, one of 17 Canadian racists who traveled on a "fact-finding mission"
to Libya in 1989, is similarly enamored of bin Laden, seeing parallels between
bin Laden's struggle and others supporting "racial nationalism" in North
America. "I've had dealings with Black Muslims, I've had dealings with Arabs,
I've had dealings with people of various races, and I realize that some of
these people are as motivated as I am in working for the interest of their
race," Droege told MacLean's magazine.
While they wouldn't want bin Laden, or anyone of non-European descent, living
next door, leaders of the hard-core racist movement in the United States
have seized upon the Sept. 11 attacks as an opportunity to expand their strategic
alliance with Islamic radicals under the pretext of supporting Palestinian
rights. After hijacked airplanes demolished the World Trade Center and damaged
the Pentagon, a number of Muslim newspapers published a flurry of articles
by American white supremacists ranting against Israel and the Jews. Anti-Zionist
commentary by neo-Nazi David Duke appeared on the front page of the Oman
Times, for instance, and on an extremist Web site based in Pakistan (www.tanzeen.com).
Another opinion piece by Duke ran in Muslims , a New York-based English-language
weekly, which also featured a lengthy critique of U.S. foreign policy by
William Pierce, head of the rabidly racist National Alliance. In the wake
of Sept. 11, several American neo-Nazi web sites also started to offer links
to Islamic Web sites.
The psychological dynamics that propel the actions of Islamic terrorists
have much in common with the mental outlook of neo-Nazis. Both glorify violence
as a regenerative force and both are willing to slaughter innocents in the
name of creating a new social order. The potential for an alliance between
American neo-Nazis and Islamic terrorists an alliance that could develop
into strong operational ties cannot be ruled out given the long and sordid
history of fascist links to the Muslim world.
Martin A. Lee is the author of The Beast Reawakens, a book about
neo-fascism.
Intelligence Report
Spring 2002
Issue 105
Strange Bedfellows
Some American Black Muslims make common cause with domestic neo-Nazis
and foreign Muslim extremists
In 1961, Elijah Muhammad, founder of the black supremacist Nation of Islam,
met with Ku Klux Klan leaders at the Magnolia Hall in Atlanta. Although they
had different ideas about the skin color of the master race, they shared the
belief that blacks and whites should stay separate. The following year, Muhammad
invited American Nazi Party chief George Lincoln Rockwell to address a Nation
convention in Chicago, even though Rockwell had often called blacks "the
lowest scum of humanity." Flanked by a dozen storm troopers in swastika armbands,
Rockwell told an audience of 5,000 Nation devotees that he was "proud to
stand here before black men. " Elijah Muhammad is the Adolf Hitler of the
black man."
Sporadic contacts between Black Muslims and white supremacists continued
after Louis Farrakhan set up his own branch of the Nation of Islam in 1975.
Klan leader Tom Metzger was so impressed with Farrakhan's anti-Semitic bombast
that he donated $100 to the Nation after a Farrakhan rally in Los Angeles
in September 1985. A month later, Metzger and 200 other white supremacists
from the United States and Canada gathered on a farm about 50 miles west of
Detroit, where they pledged their support for the Nation of Islam. "The enemy
of my enemy is my friend," explained Art Jones, a neo-Nazi militant from
Chicago. "I salute Louis Farrakhan and anyone else who stands up against the
Jews."
The Nation's contacts with non-black extremists has not been limited to
domestic neo-Nazis and Klansmen. During his international travels, Farrakhan
has been officially welcomed in a number of countries, including several repressive
Arab states. The Final Call, Farrakhan's newspaper, describes one
such globetrotting expedition in 1986, when he visited Libya for discussions
with Col. Muammar Ghaddafi, who had given Farrakhan a $5 million interest-free
loan the previous year. After Libya, Farrakhan ventured to Jeddah, where he
conferred with top Saudi Arabian officials before paying a courtesy call to
Idi Amin, the exiled Ugandan despot. Farrakhan was also warmly received by
General Zia-ul-Huq, the military dictator of Pakistan, whose abysmal human
rights record coincided with efforts to impose a harsh Islamic fundamentalist
regime in his country.
An American Takes Up the Cause
During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan played a crucial role in supporting
the U.S.-backed mujahedeen resistance forces that were fighting to expel
the Soviets from Afghanistan. Islamic volunteers from all over the world
flocked to mujahedeen training camps in Pakistan to help win this holy war
against godless Communism. They were joined by scores of combatants from the
United States, including Clement Rodney Hampton-El, an American Black Muslim
unaffiliated with the Nation, who suffered arm and leg wounds in Afghanistan.
After returning to Brooklyn, Hampton-El worked closely with a shadowy splinter
group called al-Fuqra, whose followers in the United States and Canada are
predominantly Black Muslims. Several other al-Fuqra initiates had also trained
in Pakistan as part of the effort to throw the Soviets out of Afghanistan.
Founded in 1980 by a Pakistani mystic named Shiek Mubarik Ali Jilani, al-Fuqra
was organized into independent terrorist cells. An avowed enemy of the Nation
of Islam, al-Fuqra has been linked by U.S. officials to 17 homicides and
13 firebombings in the United States. Its targets were usually other minorities
or rival Muslim leaders.
In 1995, Hampton-El was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his involvement
in a failed plot to bomb the United Nations and other New York City landmarks.
Nine other Muslim extremists were convicted as co-conspirators in this case,
including Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric, who is serving
a life sentence for his role as ringleader of the plot. The blind sheik has
also been linked to the terrorists who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993,
killing six people and injuring more than 1,000. Hampton-El told an FBI informant
that he had participated in a test explosion for the first attack on the World
Trade Center.
According to recent reports, the Justice Department is probing possible links
between al-Fuqra and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. American officials
have obtained a videotape of a December 1993 meeting in Sudan, then a nerve
center for the bin Laden organization, where al-Fuqra leader Shiek Mubarik
Ali Jilani met with members of Islamic Jihad, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist
groups. Representatives of al-Qaeda are also believed to have been present
at this meeting. Federal officials also believe that al-Fuqra members collaborated
with Wadih El-Hage, who was sentenced to life in prison this year for conspiring
with Osama bin Laden in the bombings of two American embassies in Africa in
1998.
Martin A. Lee
Intelligence Report
Spring 2002
Issue 105
Between Friends
U.S. Holocaust deniers help unite neo-Nazis, Arab extremists
American extremists who claim that Jews fabricated the Holocaust to discredit
Hitler and to justify the dispossession of Palestinians have made common
cause on the propaganda front with jihadists from the Middle East. At the
forefront of this collaborative effort is the Institute for Historical Review
(IHR), the leading promoter of Holocaust denial in the United States.
Founded in 1978, the Southern California-based IHR distributes books, pamphlets,
audio and videotapes that purport to prove the Holocaust never happened.
These "assassins of memory," as French literary historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet
calls the Holo-hoaxers, also publish the Journal of Historical Review
, which tries mightily to impress its readers with footnotes and other scholarly
trappings. A recent issue spoke breathlessly of a "white-hot trend: the rapid
growth of Holocaust revisionism, fueled by increasing cooperation between
Muslims and Western revisionists, across the Islamic world."
Early last year, the IHR organized a conference on "Zionism and Revisionism"
that was set for Beirut that March. Billed as an opportunity for North American
and European extremists to meet their counterparts in the Islamic world, the
event was delayed and relocated due to complaints by Jewish groups and diplomatic
pressure from the United States and Europe. An open letter signed by 14 leading
Arab intellectuals also denounced the conference, which was eventually held
in Amman, Jordan. The featured speaker at this scaled-down meeting, hosted
locally by the Jordanian Writers' Federation, was French negationist Robert
Faurisson, a longtime IHR advisor, who told a sympathetic audience that "Hitler
never ordered or allowed the killing of anyone on account of his or her race
or religion" and that "the Germans suffered, in reality, a fate far worse
than that of the Jews."
Feeding the Propaganda Machine
Driven by the proliferation of neo-Nazi propaganda and antagonism toward
Israel, Holocaust denial has gained widespread acceptance across the Arab
world in recent years. It's no coincidence that commentary on the IHR Web
site is translated and posted in Arabic, as well as in German and English.
IHR director Mark Weber takes pride in the fact that he and other "revisionists,"
as they like to call themselves, have been interviewed on Iranian state radio.
Iran's Islamic fundamentalist regime has granted refuge to several European
Holocaust-deniers, who were convicted of hate speech crimes in their home
countries. Jürgen Graf, an IHR editorial advisor, fled to Tehran rather
than serve a 15-month sentence in a Swiss prison.
A key IHR ally among Muslim extremists is Ahmed Rami, a former Moroccan army
officer who fled his native country after joining a failed coup attempt against
King Hassan in 1972. Today Rami runs Radio Islam, a Stockholm-based neo-Nazi
propaganda outfit. In addition to articles such as "USA's Rulers: They are
all Jews," the Web site of Radio Islam carries the full text of The Protocols
of the Elders of Zion, one of the vilest forgeries in modern history.
For many Palestinians, denying the Holocaust is an effective way to reject
any Jewish claim to Israel. Columbia University professor Edward Said, a
Palestinian American, laments the proliferation of this tendency among Arabs.
"If we expect Israeli Jews not to use the Holocaust to justify appalling human
rights abuses of the Palestinian people," Said says, "we too have to go beyond
such idiocies as saying that the Holocaust never took place."
Holocaust denial has become increasingly common in leading newspapers in
Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and other Arab countries, where official
thinking is reflected in tightly controlled national media. Support for denial
enables corrupt Arab governments to deflect attention from their own failures,
including their own exploitation of Muslim populations and brutal repression
of many peoples, including Kurds, Berbers, Egyptian Copts and Maronite Lebanese.
Saudi Arabia at the Forefront
Of all the Arab nations involved in promoting anti-Semitic propaganda, Saudi
Arabia is perhaps the most egregious offender. In the late 1970s, for instance,
the Saudi government retained the services of American neo-Nazi William Grimstead
as a Washington lobbyist. During this period, the Saudi royal family lavished
funds on numerous Sunni fundamentalist organizations, including the Pakistan-based
World Muslim Congress (WMC), which was headed by the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,
an anti-Semitic Nazi collaborator, until his death in 1974.
A few years later, the WMC mailed Holocaust denial literature to every member
of the U.S. Congress and the British parliament. Issah Nakleh, a Palestinian
writer affiliated with the WMC, became a fixture at IHR conferences in the
United States and a regular contributor to the Journal of Historical Review
. Nakleh was also well known to readers of The Spotlight , the anti-Semitic
weekly published by the IHR's now-defunct parent organization, the Liberty
Lobby. Acknowledging their political kinship, WMC secretary-general Dr. Inamullah
Khan, a trusted advisor to the Saudi royal family, sent a letter to The Spotlight,
praising its "superb in-depth analysis" and stating that the paper deserved
"the thanks of all right-minded people."
Like many American and European neo-fascist groups, the WMC espoused a "Third
Position" ideology critical of both Cold War superpowers, as underscored by
this headline from Muslim World, the WMC's official mouthpiece: "U.S.
and USSR Both Serve Zionist Interests." But the WMC tempered its anti-American
tirades when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Working closely
with Saudi and U.S. intelligence, the WMC supported the Afghan mujahedeen
in their struggle against the Soviet-backed rulers in Kabul. During this period,
WMC chief Inamullah Khan also served as head of the Pakistani section of
the World Anti-Communist League, an international umbrella organization that
included fascist collaborators from Europe, Latin American death squad bosses,
and right-wing extremists from Asia and North America. After the Soviets
abandoned Afghanistan, the World Muslim Congress and several other Islamic
extremist groups once again turned their fundamentalist wrath against the
United States.
"
Martin A. Lee
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