Nazis and Muslims had a common enemy: the Jews

Here’s a recent piece from the Jerusalem Post that reminds us of the ideological simpatico between Islam and Nazism, focusing on Yasser Arafat’s uncle, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini:

A newly released report by the US National Archives details the close collaborative relationship between Nazi leaders and the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, indicating that Nazi authorities planned to use Husseini as their leader after their conquest of Palestine.

Husseini was paid handsomely by the Nazis for his efforts, recruited Muslims for the SS and was promised that he would be made Palestine’s leader after its Jewish population of 350,000 had been murdered.

The report, Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, US Intelligence and the Cold War, was prepared on the basis of thousands of documents declassified under the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.

(…)

β€œWe thought the April 1945 contract between the [German] Foreign Office and Husseini was striking evidence of an ideological collaboration both sides hoped would continue after the war.”

Husseini, who died in Beirut in 1974, was apparently paid 50,000 marks per month, and 80,000 additional marks a month for living expenses, according to a contract with the Germans. This was a time when a German field officer typically earned 25,000 marks a year.

According to the report, on November 28, 1941, Adolf Hitler told Husseini that the Afrika Korps would β€œliberate” Arabs in the Middle East and that β€œGermany’s only objective there would be the destruction of the Jews.”

β€œSS leaders and Husseini both claimed that Nazism and Islam had common values as well as common enemies – above all, the Jews,” the report states.

And this Nazi influence stretches down to the present day, as statements by current Islamic leaders show.

Some scholars have argued that this Nazi influence corrupted Islam, selectively playing on antisemitic elements that were in the Qur’an. I take a different view, that in each other, Nazism and Islam found a soul-mate, a sympathetic ally, and that each used the other to achieve their desired end: the destruction of the Jews. As Dr. Andrew Bostom has shown, Jew-hatred is a continuing theme in Islam from Muhammad, himself, to the present day. The Nazis didn’t exploit an aberration — they found a friend.

LINKS: More on the Husseini-Hitler friendship at WILLisms.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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