SS - An Origin of Contemporary Militant Islamists

I have decided to write this OP for several reasons: first was my short conversation with Gaines, here at this forum. Second, my father was involved in fight against 13th Waffen SS Handschar Mountain Division, a prototype of the present day Jihadists. My father was engaged in a military action to capture of one of the worst SS Hanjar sadists. The action took place in small Bosnian town Foca. The task of my father was also to bring him to the headquarters, alone. He was offered to tie the prisoner with a wire but he refused saying: "I know he wouldn't dare to escape from me" and let him walk with untied hands far in front of him through forest and walleyes.

Parts from the following text were directly taken from the existing literature sources without references.

The best sold book at Middle East is Hitler's' "Mein Kampf", translated as "My Jihad". The main objective of Daesh are to create a Caliphate – "Das Reich", re-creation of the Ottoman Empire and "final solution" – to finish the job of exterminating Jews. But links between the Nazis and Jihadists aren't pure speculation based on similar objectives and similar ruthlessness. It is possible to draw a solid, direct link between Hitler and Himmler with the present day protagonists of creating an Islamic Caliphate i.e. Islamic Reich.

At the very origin, there was hostility towards Western secularism and system of human rights, particularly – women's rights, after the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of influences from the West through new British and French possessions in North Africa and the Middle East. In 1928 al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood – the objective was the restoration of the Caliphate. Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Huseini incited a three year war against the Jews in Palestine and the British. During this time the Muslim Brotherhood found spiritual brothers in the Nazi Germany. At the beginning of the war al-Banna wanted to enter an Axis alliance. Muslim Brotherhood undermined the British army and served the Nazis by collecting information about the British army in Egypt and Middle East. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem served as a bridge to transfer the Nazi genocidal ideology into the Middle East. Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, an uncle of Jaser Arafat, created the Nazi inspired Palestinian national movement. In April 1943, the Mufti of Jerusalem was invited by the Nazis to assist in organizing and recruiting Muslims into the Waffen-SS and other units at Balkans, the present day Bosnia. Al-Husayni had flown from Berlin to Sarajevo in order to bless and inspect the SS Handschar division. The Bosnian 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar was a prototype of the present day militant Islamists.

After the war, Great Britain requested al-Husseini's extradition, arguing that he was a British citizen who had collaborated with the Nazis. Despite the fact that he was on the list of war criminals, France decided to consider him as a political prisoner and refused to comply with the British request. France refused to extradite him to Yugoslavia where the government wanted to prosecute him for war crimes. Al-Hussaini's successor Sayyd Qutb was the chief fanatical ideologue of the Muslim brotherhood. Qutb wrote that Jews were responsible for "the world's moral decay and the West's sexual depravity".

For decades later the same grudging homage to Hitler and earnest desire to see all Jews annihilated was expressed in the second largest, state controlled daily Al-Akhbar: "Our thanks to the late Hitler who wrought, in advance, the vengeance of the Palestinians upon the most despicable villains on the face of the earth. However, we rebuke Hitler for the fact that the vengeance was insufficient". (April 18, 2001)

The long legacy of Arab and Palestinian Nazism, and the Hitlerite themes of lebensraum, ethnic cleansing and genocide, continue to echo in the Middle East today.

This is a warning not only to the Jews but to all decent people: never again. (David Meir-Levi)

On the photos below:
1. The Great Mufti of Jerusalem greeting Bosnian SS volunteers in November 1943
2. Hitler and Hajj Amin al-Huseini
3. Himmler and Hajj Amin al-Huseini
4. Successor: Mohammed Yasser Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini (aka Jasser Arafat)

 

Great one Tamino!

 

Thank you for the info Tamino. Great post.

 

'Modern' Islamism has rather more complex roots than this, though certainly there is an element of it that was born, or at least 'fed' in the Balkans. Though that not quite in the second war, despite that being bound up with some of the religious polarisation that assisted the 90s collapse.

The Mufti was essentially a peripheral figure, a 'useful idiot' for the Nazis to use. Despite attempts to increase his and the Golden Square etc.s' significance in the light of current events, he and the fairly shambolic coups and revolts in the regions he touched never carried much more legitimacy or support than was gifted to them by whatever larger power felt it advantageous to do so.
A shared anti-semitism does not automatically connect one group with another across history, even as one party may use the most recognisable anti-semitic figure in history (Adolf) to provoke a Jewish state and cause the maximum offence in propagandic terms. (The Ustase, for instance were horrendously anti-semitic and bloody while also being associated with the SS (even appalling them at times), but could not be used like this as somehow a precursor of Islamism... That would be... beyond odd.)
Nationalism first in these WW2 groups like the Handschar, with Islam as very much a secondary identifier. More a propagandic peg to hang the Fez on than a driving force.
It's also rather sketchy to paint Arafat as a progenitor of the current breed(s) of Islamism.
Fatah was a nationalist movement first and foremost. It always used to be quite tolerant, even proud, of Religious and Ethnic diversity among what it defined as Palestinians. using reference to religion purely as a passing propagandic tool. Only in the late 80s did what we might recognise as Islamism begin to show within more formal factions of Fatah.

For the roots of 'Modern' Islamism, Maybe look to the rise of Wahabism first, which arguably formed a larger base for considering the more radical interpretations of Islam, and then, more significantly perhaps examine the Salafist stances which began to harden the somewhat obsessive fixation on Jihad.
Though even there, those two somewhat 'purist' interpretations of Islam and Jihad are apparently sneered at by many of the modern Islamists who have led to Al Quaeda, Isis etc. Not that you can even interchange ideals, interpretations and origins from group to group there, but their creeds are far more about the political spreading of Islam as a world government, their decisions more 'pragmatic' with the eventual purist aims seen as a later stage after the status quo is 'dealt with' and the much argued-over ideal Caliphate is (re)established .




Of course, the problem is I'd never say any of the roots of what we're seeing now are simple; massively complex being an understatement, but even after a few years of at least attempting to understand where all this has come from, I think I'd quite confidently say that the Handschar, Mufti etc. are of a rather different era's thinking, and while somewhat related, are not really a root.
I recently finished Maajid Nawaz's 'Radical', which while hardly being definitive of all paths, at least outlines his route into an Islamist pattern of thinking from a modern Westerner's starting point.
Well worth a shufti I think, as is much of the more detailed stuff the Quilliam foundation (which he co-founded) puts out on the whys and wherefores of current Islamism.

 

The Caliphate idea began when Islam began. It spread with the sword through the middle east and right into Europe as far as southern France, before being beaten back. It is interesting to look at the parallels between Radical Islam and Radical Socialism (Nazism - Fascism). They are extremely similar, I would just disagree that what is happening today is tied to Nazism. The two philosophies just happen to have a lot in common, but the Caliphate concept is much, much older.

 

@von Poop (PS: @KodiakBeer too)

I'm aware of dangers of simplistic generalizations while writing reasonably short opening post. Assertion that Jihadists originate directly and exclusively from conflicts at Balkans would have been a huge exaggeration. My intention was more modest: to show that there is a line connecting the present day militant Jihadists to the SS and there are clear historic facts that support my assertion. You're right, modern Jihadism is much more complex matter but it still involves elements "invented" by the Nazis and the Nazi ideas are still used to feed Islamic extremism. There is still some kind of Nazi-Arab, should I use that shabby word: synergy.

Regarding Arafat, I am a bit more critical - he was a terrorist however his image has been face-lifted for whatever reasons.

 

I'd hesitate on historical comparisons of a Caliphate. Caliph merely means 'ruler' (In place of Mohammad), or In more pragmatic terms, 'King' or 'Government'.
To conflate that ancient usage with the modern Islamist aim of imposing that rule on the entire world, with historical concepts of it regarding an empire or state, is a bit of a distortion.
The Ottomans etc. were no more attempting to impose the modern extreme concept of a Caliphate in their territories than the British or French Empires could be described as being expressions of extreme Christian Evangelism today. They had Christian rulers, legislatures and elites, the old Muslim Empires had Islamic rulers, legislatures and elites - concepts of what was 'proper' differed, but Neither was 'Islamism' as modern terminology has it. If that were so we might refer to the old Empires as 'Christianism', but we don't.
eg. Charles the First lost his head over a belief in the divine right of Kings, and various sects were persecuted or placed advantageously at various levels. That doesn't make him somehow particularly unusual or extreme in world historical terms. Current events are something rather... unusual.

Not that I'd disagree with the point that modern Islamism is more a form of Fascism than anything. I think that possibly needs to rammed home more; that Islam & Islamism are not interchangeable terms. Some blurred lines in some areas (sometimes perhaps too blurred in too many), but one religious, and one political.

 

We'll just have to agree to disagree. The modern "Caliphate" is being drawn directly from the laws, rules, principles of the original Caliphate. Just as men taken by the sword today are killed and their women used as sex slaves, so it was in say, Spain, until the nation was subdued. Following that, those bowing to submission (in most cases) were just robbed and subject to the non-believer (Jizra?) tax. Then, just as now "people of the book" (Coptic Christians and Jews) are subject to the tax and spared (after the fighting is over) - their churches destroyed, etc. Religions like the Yazidi have/had no rights at all, since they are not "people of the book." The men and children were/are killed, the women enslaved. They are applying the same rules today in Syria as they did in the 9th century.

The Ottomans were not Islamists in the sense that the original conquerors under Mohammed and the years following (9th, 10th, 11th centuries...) were. Islam had modernized and humanized somewhat by the time of the Ottomans. Why the original concept is returning is a question for a greater philosopher than I.

 

Voted.
Well said. Great reading. Kudo's to all.
It is impressive some of the readership are so close to the pulse of what the world is concerned about.
Another reason WW2F is so pertinent.