Islam and the Nazis

[brogdale]

Last week's LRB carried an advert for a what looks like a new and fascinating book by David Motadel called "Islam and Nazi Germany's war". Aside from reading some content from the 'Look inside' function on Amazon, I've not yet read the book, but the FT review says...

Islam and Nazi Germany s War is the first book to provide an in-depth study of this complex relationship, charting its twists and turns as Hitler's paladins sought to bring Muslims onside. It is academically impeccable, drawing on a wealth of archival resources in a multitude of languages, yet it wears its erudition lightly. In the current climate, a subject such as this might be considered controversial. Motadel, however, is never less than resolutely serious and rigorous. The whiff of sensationalism never offends the nostrils. [...] Motadel s book is a brilliantly original study that achieves that rare feat of combining rigour with accessibility. Most impressively, in the hugely crowded field of the second world war and Nazi Germany it manages to explore an area of profound significance that had previously been overlooked."

Looking for other reviews I chanced upon this one in the Wall Street Journal which also considered a book by Stefan Ihrig called "Atatürk in the Nazi Imagination" which also looks interesting.

Aside from a vague knowledge of the stuff about the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and Hitler I have to admit that this is not an area that I'm very familiar with. So I was a little surprised to see that Dominic Green's WSJ review appeared to offer quite a bold claim that...

A revolutionary idea must be seeded before, in Heidegger ’s words, “suddenly the unbound powers of being come forth and are accomplished as history.” Seven decades passed between Europe’s revolutionary spring of 1848 and the Russian Revolution of 1917. The effects of Germany’s ideological seeding of Muslim societies in the 1930s and ’40s are only now becoming apparent.

Wondered if any of the resident historians had any views on this topic and, in particular, Green's apparent thesis that IS represents the flowering of a seed sown by the Nazi regime.

 

[hot air baboon]

...its an idea that's been out-there for a while & whose time has clearly arrived as far as publishers are concerned...this sounds like much the same territory albeit more sensationalised by the sound of it...



http://www.thehitlerlegacy.com/


In 1914, a German archaeologist decided it would be a good idea to unite the Islamic world behind the Kaiser's war with France, Great Britain, and Czarist Russia. In order to do this, he conceived of the idea of a "global jihad": the first-ever. The Sultan of the Ottoman Empire concurred, and a fatwa was issued to call Muslims everywhere in the world to rise up against the colonial powers and to support Germany in its war with the Allies.

Thus was the idea of global jihad born: not as a religious doctrine enshrined in the Qur'an or the Hadith, but as the ill-conceived notion of a German spy and intriguer to manipulate religion and religious sentiment for political ends.

This idea would be adopted and expanded later by the Nazis, and then during the Cold War by American intelligence and foreign policy makers under President Eisenhower who sought to employ Nazi officers and spies -- and especially former members of the SS and the intelligence services -- as part of the overall effort to contain and undermine the Soviet Union. To that end they recruited Muslims from Central Asia and the Middle East who were working with (and often financed by) the Nazi Underground to conduct a jihad against Communism.

That this strategy backfired dramatically is part of what we call "The Hitler Legacy."

 

[DrRingDing]

LRB?

 

[brogdale]

LRB?

http://www.lrb.co.uk/

 

[Pickman's model]

LRB?

lrb.

 

[brogdale]

lrb.

My fault. I wrote it in upper case in the OP/op.

 

[brogdale]

...its an idea that's been out-there for a while & whose time has clearly arrived as far as publishers are concerned...this sounds like much the same territory albeit more sensationalised by the sound of it...


That this strategy backfired dramatically is part of what we call "The Hitler Legacy."

Given the current state of the ME I suppose that's a fair point, but the publisher of both books is Harvard University Press so I doubt that they're expecting international best-seller status for either work.

Motadel's conclusion sets the Nazi attempt to harness Islam in its own interests within the wider context of similar policies by the 'great powers', but makes the point that...

 

[butchersapron]

Would just like to mention the Baku conference on this flying visit.

 

[brogdale]

Would just like to mention the Baku conference on this flying visit.

Well yes, but for obvious reasons, neither of the two books linked to is likely to consider the attempt of the 2nd Comintern to harness anti-imperialist movements to effect communist revolution. I suppose the time-span over which the Soviets engaged with colonised peoples (muslim and non-muslim) was considerably longer than that of the Nazis.

 

[porp]