Showing posts with label 4 Islamists Germans; bomb plot; United States; al-Qaeda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4 Islamists Germans; bomb plot; United States; al-Qaeda. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Islam, Nazism and Anti-Semitism - By Daniel Greenfield

Andrew Bostom and Robert Spencer have both recently written pieces critical of the idea that Islamic Anti-Semitism was a product of Nazi propaganda. As any honest reader of the Koran already knows, Islamic Anti-Semitism, and general intolerance for non-Muslims originated with Mohammed himself. While Mohammed had set out to replace the region's existing religions, including Judaism and Christianity-- he only succeeded in eradicating and replacing the majority of the local polytheistic religions. While sizable numbers of Jews and Christians were forcibly converted to Islam, during the more than millennium of occupation of the Middle East-- the religions themselves survived.

This was something of a theological problem for Islam, which had shamelessly looted both Judaism and Christianity's holy books for material, and claimed Mohammed as the successor to both religions. But in reality, Islam only succeeded in replacing the polytheistic religions that were its true core. So that while on the surface, Jews and Christians were supposed to hold a higher status than pagans, Muslim resentment toward them ran far deeper than toward religions that Islam did not consider to be part of its chain of succession. Muslim daily prayers to this day reference Jews and Christians.
"Guide us to the Straight Way. The Way of those on whom You have bestowed Your Grace, not (the way) of those who earned Your Anger (such as the Jews), nor of those who went astray (such as the Christians)"

This prayer is also the opening of the Koran. And it demonstrates markedly more hostility toward the Jews, than toward the Christians. As does the Koran itself, which dated to a time when Muslims were at war with the Jews, but were not yet significantly at war with the Christians.

The above translation incidentally comes from the Hilali-Khan translation of the Koran, the most popular Sunni translation of the Koran. Muslims however avoid using this translation for non-Muslims, as one Muslim site explains; "I strongly recommend that you use an alternate translation of the meaning; the Hilali & Khan work is the least appropriate for dawah work; it comes across to non-Muslims as extremely bigoted... Scroll down to 1:7 and imagine you are trying to use that translation to bring Islam to a Christian or Jew.". The 1:7 being referred to here is the above quoted text. Dawah is Islamic missionary work. Of course it comes across to non-Muslims as bigoted... because it is.

Now it's possible to go into exhaustive detail on the subject of Islamic anti-semitism. Plenty of such work has been done. Entire books have been written on the subject, among them by Andrew Bostom. But it's sufficient here to simply point out that every time a Muslim opens the Koran and every day that he prays, he is reminded that Allah hates Jews and has very little use for Christians. It would be very hard to imagine such religious indoctrination not resulting in bigotry.

However Nazism had a profound impact on modern Islamic anti-semitism as well. While in some Asian countries such as Japan, their attempt to export Anti-Semitism was baffling and confusing to the locals-- Anti-Semitism was not a brand new product in the Middle East. But the Nazis had successfully used Anti-Semitism as one of their tools of political organization at home, and to form cross-cultural connections by finding common ground in other parts of the world. The Jews gave the Nazis and the Islamists something in common. Not the only thing of course.

Some of the Nazi elite were looking around for a replacement for Christianity, because of its Jewish associations and what they felt was its excessive humanism. Meanwhile the Islamists wanted to understand how to Islamize their countries in the wake of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, while challenging modernism. For the Nazi elite, Islam was fascinating because it emphasized obedience to authority and fused power and religion in a way that was appealing to them. For the Islamists, Nazism demonstrated how a reactionary ideology could use political organization to take over a country and move it back spiritually to the dark ages, while still being able to compete on the global stage.

And so the Cult of Hitler would owe something to the Koran, just as the Muslim Brotherhood would owe something to Mein Kampf-- which today remains one of the most popular books in the Muslim world. For Muslim rulers, Western dictators always had a special appeal because they maintained power without giving in to liberalization. But for the Muslim world, Nazism was more than just a dictatorship, it showed how political organization could be transformed into political power. And even after Hitler's defeat, numerous coups in the Muslim world would be derived from Nazism-- from secular Arab Socialist ones like Nasser's in Egypt to radical Islamist ones like the Ayatollah Khomeni's in Iran. Both men had been strongly influenced by Nazi propaganda.

But that propaganda did not teach them to hate Jews. Muslims did not need a lesson from the Third Reich on hating Jews. It was there every time they opened the Koran. What the Third Reich did teach them however, was that Anti-Semitism could be a powerful tool of political organization. This was not an entirely new idea in the Muslim world either. After all Mohammed's campaign against the Jews had as much to do with gaining followers with the promise of loot, as it did with religion. Much as Hitler's own had as much to do with finding ways to pay for his attempt to combine capitalism and socialism, without annoying either the owners or the workers-- as it did with Nazi ideology. And throughout the centuries, plenty of Muslim mobs had been led by men who understood that Ibtach al Yahood (Kill the Jews) was a safer cry than Down with the Caliph, but that once the mob had assembled and was looting the Jewish quarter, they might be feeling their oats enough to take on the Caliph as well.

Yet these sorts of tactics seemed crude compared to what the Nazis had accomplished. And the Islamists would borrow many things from them. Their love of uniforms and banners. Even their salute, which can still be seen performed today by more than a few Muslim terrorist groups such as Hezbollah or the KLA. And their exploitation of political Anti-Semitism. Had there been no Israel, the political Anti-Semitism of the Islamists would have been limited to domestic campaigns against Judaization, a theme duplicating that of the Nazis, but one that had existed beforehand in the Middle East. However the existence of Israel allowed the bulk of Jews living in Muslim countries a way out, and created Israel as a compass needle for the Islamists.

For the Islamists, the State of Israel become a goad, a way to humiliate the rulers of the Muslim world, by pointing to their ongoing failure to destroy Israel. This allowed them to portray the rulers they wished to overthrow as weak, corrupt and inept-- while promising that once in power, they would destroy Israel. The obvious analogy to the propaganda used by the Nazis is there. And what WW1 was to the Nazis, a theme of Germany's humiliation that they would always return to, the State of Israel is to the Islamists. And after generations of Muslim children growing up immersed in that brew of hateful propaganda, it is not at all surprising that the hatred of Jews in the Muslim world has reached absolutely psychotic levels.

Just as the Nazis turned defeating the Allies into the symbol of Germany's resurgence that would wipe away its humiliation in WW1, so too the Islamists turned killing Jews into the symbol of Islamic resurgence that would wipe away their humiliation over the independence of the Jews in the Middle East from Muslim rule. The same theme that had resonated in Germany, had far more reach in the Honor/Shame cultures of the Muslim world. And it has helped feed the war against the Jews, as even secular Muslim leaders feel obligated to maintain hostilities with Israel to stay ahead of the Islamists.

While the Nazis certainly did not teach Anti-Semitism to the Muslim world, they did teach the Islamists by example how to better exploit it for political power. The Islamists learned not Anti-Semitism itself, but technique from Nazi Germany. And it was not just the technique of exploiting Anti-Semitism, but many other techniques of political organization as well. Quasi-Fascism today remains common among political groups in the Middle East, who rejected the more liberal English and French models, in favor of the Fascist and National Socialist model. The results of this can be seen in politically sophisticated Islamist movements that monitor the media, use front groups, maintain social services for their supporters, employ uniforms, rely on support from the Muslim diaspora-- and the rest of the haul from Nazism, and of course Communism.

For the greater mass of the Muslim world, Anti-Semitism is a belief. For the Islamist elite however, it is a technique. One of many that they have at their disposal. It is not an original technique. The idea dated back to Mohammed, but it also predated him. Hitler however provided an example of the sophisticated and sharper uses that it could be put to in order to promote ideological purity. And the Islamists have profited by his example.
From NY to Jerusalem, Daniel Greenfield Covers the Stories Behind the News

Named one of the Jewish Press' Most Worthwhile Blogs, 2006, 2007 , 2008 and 2009

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Mush From the Wimp: Obama, Orwell and National-Security Psychobabble

With its unprecedented decision to sanitize the basic document defining U.S. national security strategy – cleanse from it terms that connect Islam to terror, jihad, extremism and the like – President Obama is once again propagating Orwellian babble.

And there’s little doubt but that the MSM are primed to parrot far and wide, as opposed to critically assess, the president’s now squeaky clean, official vocabulary of defense. Even after the carnage of 9/11, for example, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews could only bring himself vaguely to identify the attacks as “criminal acts of terror” – selecting out the unpalatable fact that all the terrorists were Islamic radicals.

WTC3

The administration’s latest rhetorical sleight of hand is just the latest evidence of its zeal for obfuscating the true nature of the terrorist threat. Recall the bizarre memo, originating from Obama’s Office of Management and Budget that instructed Defense Department staffers to use the term “Overseas Contingency Operation” in place of “Long War” or “Global War on Terror.”

Steven Emerson, a leading expert on terrorism, has called Obama’s avoidance of associating radical Islam with terror “absurd” and “dangerous.” Islamic extremism in its many manifestations (Al Qaeda, Hamas, etc.) is in fact, he shows, responsible for three decades of “murder or attempted murder of tens of thousands of civilians in nearly every corner of the globe.” Banning the word Islamic from the designation “Islamic terrorists”
… does not diminish the willingness to use violence or the religious hatred that radical Muslims hold for Jews and the United States. What the self-sanitization does is to exonerate Muslim leaders from having to confront the monster in their own communities, monsters that in many cases they helped create. Because it is radical Islamist groups—feigning recognition as civil-rights organizations, often with the connivance of news organizations and even government agencies—that have deliberately tried to erase the distinction between moderate Islam and radical Islam. Why? So these groups can tar anyone who criticizes militant Islam as a racist or Islamophobe or as someone trying to portray the U.S. at war with the religion itself.
We are at war with these monsters, and for our own president to shrink from naming them – denying before the world the religious fanaticism that motivates them to perpetrate violence against us and our allies – is to help to doom us by losing this war.

barack-obama-tour-cairo-mosque-on-thursday
The purging of the language – meaning, intent and guidance – of our leading national security blueprint must not be allowed to stand. Call the enemy by its rightful name, Mr. President.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

German Islamists convicted over bomb plot

BBCNews.com

Clockwise from top-left: Daniel Schneide, Fritz Gelowicz, Adem Yilmaz,  Atilla Selek


Prosecutors said the four men had a "profound hatred of US citizens"

Four Islamists have been convicted by a court in Germany of plotting to attack US facilities in the country.

The men, two of whom were German-born converts to Islam, were given prison sentences of between five and 12 years.

The judge said they had dreamed of "mounting a second September 11 2001" by killing US civilians and soldiers by bombing targets like Ramstein Air Base.

They were accused of operating as a German cell of the radical al-Qaeda-linked group, the Islamic Jihad Union.

According to the US state department, the Islamic Jihad Union was responsible for co-ordinated bombings outside the US and Israeli embassies in July 2004 in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

'Mistake'

The two German converts to Islam - Fritz Gelowicz, 30, and 24-year-old Daniel Schneider - were sentenced to 12 years in jail.

If the accused had managed to do what they planned, it would have led to a monstrous bloodbath, primarily among US army personnel and also civilians
Judge Ottmar Breidling

Adem Yilmaz, 31, a Turkish citizen, was given 11 years, while Atilla Selek, a 25-year-old German of Turkish origin, was sentenced to five years.

During the 10-month trial, all four admitted to belonging to a terrorist organisation, plotting murder and preparing explosive devices.

Schneider also admitted to attempted murder for grabbing a handgun from a police officer while attempting to evade capture and firing a shot. No-one was wounded in the incident.

He, Gelowicz and Selek renounced extremism and described their actions as a "mistake".

Ramstein air base (2007)
Vehicles packed with explosives were to be used to bomb Ramstein Air Base

Announcing the verdict, Judge Ottmar Breidling said the men had dreamed of "mounting a second 11 September 2001".

"If the accused had managed to do what they planned, it would have led to a monstrous bloodbath, primarily among US army personnel and also civilians," he added.

The judge added that there were now "many impressionable young men and men who have already been led astray, ready to kill for notions of jihad".

"Violent Islamism has penetrated our society and turned young men against it."

'Profound hatred'

Known as the "Sauerland group", after the area of western Germany where three of them were arrested in September 2007, the men had trained at camps in Pakistan and procured some 700kg (1,500lbs) of chemicals to produce 410kg (900lbs) of explosives, prosecutors said.

Such a quantity would have been 100 times the amount used in the 2005 London bombings, which killed more than 50 people.

Barrels of hydrogen peroxide stored by suspects that were seized by police (September 2007)
The four men had planned to produce 410kg (900lbs) of explosives

They had allegedly planned to use vehicles loaded with the explosives to kill or injure large numbers of people at locations visited by Americans, the US military base in Ramstein and Frankfurt airport.

But the security services uncovered the plot in December 2006 and conducted one of the biggest surveillance operations in post-war German history.

The men's movements were monitored around the clock for nine months, until it became clear that they were planning to move their huge stores of hydrogen peroxide and an attack was imminent.

Gelowicz, Schneider and Yilmaz were arrested at a rented cottage in Sauerland on 4 September 2007, while Selek was detained in Turkey in November 2007 and later extradited to Germany.

At the time, they were described as "very dangerous terrorists" with a "profound hatred of US citizens", acting on the orders of an "international network".

The BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Berlin says the participation of Gelowicz and Schneider in the plot has shocked Germans and raised concern that militant groups abroad are actively seeking out and signing up Muslim converts to attack the West.

Germany, which has soldiers in Afghanistan as part of Nato but did not send troops to Iraq, has been largely spared militant attacks.

But nine years ago, it emerged that an al-Qaeda cell had used the city of Hamburg as a base for planning the 11 September attacks.