http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/DK05Ak01.html
Islamism, fascism and terrorism (Part 1)
By Marc Erikson
[Editor's note: As distinct from the world religion of Islam, Islamism - as
in part contextually defined below - is a political ideology that adherents
would apply to contemporary governance and politics, and which they
propagate through political and social activism.]
On November 7, 2001, on the request of the US government, the Swiss Federal
Prosecutor's Office froze the bank accounts of Nada Management, a
Lugano-based financial services and consulting firm, and ordered a search
and seizure raid on the firm's offices. Police pulled in several of the
company's principals for questioning. Nada Management, part of the
international al-Taqwa ("fear of God") group, is accused by US Treasury
Department investigators of having acted for years as advisers and a funding
conduit for Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.
Among those interrogated by police was a certain Albert Friedrich Armand
(aka Ahmed) Huber, 74, a Swiss convert to Islam and retired journalist who
sits on the Nada board of directors. Nothing too unusual perhaps, except for
the fact that Huber is also a high-profile neo-Nazi who tirelessly travels
the far-right circuit in Europe and the United States. He sees himself as a
mediator between radical Islam and what he calls the New Right. Since
September 11, a picture of Osama bin Laden hangs next to one of Adolf Hitler
on the wall of his study in Muri just outside the Swiss capital of Bern.
September 11, says Huber, brought the radical Islam-New Right alliance
together.
On that, as his own career amply demonstrates, he is largely wrong. Last
year's horrific terrorist acts were gleefully celebrated by Islamists and
neo-Nazis alike (Huber boozed it up with young followers in a Bern bar) and
may have produced closer links. But Islamism and fascism have a long, over
80-year history of collaboration based on shared ideas, practices and
perceived common enemies. They abhor "Western decadence" (political
liberalism, capitalism), fight holy wars - if needs be suicidal ones - by
indiscriminate means, and are bent on the destruction of the Jews and of
America and its allies.
Horst Mahler - once a lawyer for, later a member of, the 1960s/'70s German
ultra-left terrorist Baader-Meinhof gang, and now a leading neo-Nazi -
summed up convergent radical Islamic and far-right views and hopes in a
September 21, 2001 letter: "The USA - or, to be more exact, the World Police
- has shown itself to be vulnerable ... The foreseeable reaction of the East
Coast [= the Jewish controllers and their gentile allies = the US
Establishment] can be the spark that falls into a powder keg. For decades,
the jihad - the Holy War - has been the agenda of the Islamic world against
the 'Western value system.' This time it could break out in earnest ... It
would be world war, that is won with the dagger ... The Anglo-American and
European employees of the 'global players,' dispersed throughout the entire
world, are - as Osama bin Laden proclaimed a long while ago - military
targets. These would be attacked by dagger, where they least expected an
attack. Only a few need be liquidated in this manner; the survivors will run
off like hares into their respective home countries, where they belong."
Such convergence of views, methods and goals goes back to the 1920s when
both Islamism and fascism, ideologically pre-shaped in the late 19th
century, emerged as organized political movements with the ultimate aim of
seizing state power and imposing their ideological and social policy
precepts (in which aims fascism, of course, succeeded in the early '20s and
'30s in Italy and Germany, respectively; Islamism only in 1979 in Iran; then
in Sudan and Afghanistan). Both movements claim to be the true
representatives of some arcane, idealized religious or ethnically pure
communities of days long past - in the case of Islamism, the period of the
four "righteous caliphs" (632-662), notably the rule of Umar bin al-Khattab
(634-44) which allegedly exemplifies "din wa dawla", the unity of religion
and state; in the case of the Nazis, the even more obscure Aryan
"Volksgemeinschaft", with no historical reference point at all. But both are
in reality - as historian Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum,
puts it - 20th century outgrowths, radical movements, utopian and
totalitarian in their outlook. The Iranian scholars Ladan and Roya Boroumand
have made the same point.
The Nazi ("national socialist") movement was formed in reaction to the World
War I destruction of the "Second Reich", the "unequal and treasonous"
Versailles Treaty and the mass social dislocation that followed, its
racialist, corporatist ideology laid out in Hitler's Mein Kampf (My
Struggle). The Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikhwan Al Muslimun), parent
organization of numerous Islamist terrorist outfits, was formed in 1928 in
reaction to the 1924 abolition of the caliphate by Turkish reformer Kemal
Ataturk, drawing the consequences of the World War I demise of the Ottoman
Empire. Ikhwan founder Hassan al-Banna, an Egyptian school teacher, wrote at
the time that it was endless contemplation of "the sickness that has reduced
the ummah (Muslim community) to its present state" which prompted him and
five like-minded followers - all of them in their early twenties - to set up
the organization to rectify it.
Fascist Nazi history need not be dwelt on further here. It led to the
horrors and destruction of World War II and the Holocaust. Neo-Nazism,
whether in Europe or the US, remains a terrorist threat and - as the French
Le Pen version demonstrated in parliamentary elections this year - retains a
measure of political clout. It is nonetheless a boxed-in niche force with
little capability for break-out. Its ideological twin, Islamism, by sharp
contrast, has every chance for wreaking escalating world-wide havoc based on
its fast-growing influence among the world's more than one billion Muslims.
Immediately following September 11 last year, US President George W Bush
declared war on terrorism. It's a catchy phrase, but a serious misnomer all
the same. Terrorism is a method of warfare, not the enemy. The enemy is
Islamism.
Al-Banna's brotherhood, initially limiting itself to spiritual and moral
reform, grew at astonishing speed in the 1930s and '40s after embracing
wider political goals and by the end of World War II had around 500,000
members in Egypt alone and branches throughout the Middle East. Event
background, ideology, and method of organizing all account for its
improbable success. As the war drew to a close, the time was ripe for an end
to British and French colonial rule and the Ikhwan was ready with the
persuasive, religiously-buttressed answer: Free the Islamic homeland from
foreign, infidel (kafir) control; establish a unified Islamic state. And
al-Banna had built a formidable organization to accomplish just that: it
featured sophisticated governance structures, sections in charge of
different segments of society (peasants, workers, professionals), units
entrusted with key functions (propaganda, press relations, translation,
liaison with the Islamic world), and specialized committees for finances and
legal affairs - all built on existing social networks, in particular those
around mosques and Islamic welfare associations. Weaving of traditional ties
into a distinctly modern political structure was at the root of al-Banna's
success..
But the "Supreme Guide" of the brethren knew that faith, good works and
numbers alone do not a political victory make. Thus, modeled on Mussolini's
blackshirts (al-Banna much admired "Il Duce" and soul brother "Fuehrer"
Adolf Hitler), he set up a paramilitary wing (slogan: "action, obedience,
silence", quite superior to the blackshirts' "believe, obey, fight") and a
"secret apparatus" (al-jihaz al-sirri) and intelligence arm of al-Ikhwan to
handle the dirtier side - terrorist attacks, assassinations, and so on - of
the struggle for power.
In 1948, after the brotherhood had played a pivotal role in mobilizing
volunteers to fight in the war against "the Zionists" in Palestine to
prevent establishment of a Jewish state, it considered itself to have the
credibility, political clout, and military might to launch a coup d'etat
against the Egyptian monarchy. But that wasn't to be. On December 8, 1948, a
watchful Prime Minister Nuqrashi Pasha disbanded it. He wasn't watchful
enough. Less than three weeks later, the brethren retaliated by
assassinating the prime minister - in turn prompting the assassination of
al-Banna by government agents on February 12, 1949.
That didn't end it. Under a new, more radical leader, Sayyid Qutb, the
al-Ikhwan fight for state power continued and escalated. A mid-1960s recruit
was Ayman al-Zawahiri, present number two man of al-Qaeda and the brains of
the organization.
(C2002 Asia Times Online Co Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
[EMAIL PROTECTED] for information on our sales and syndication policies.)
Next, Part 2: The World War II Nazi connections of the Muslim Brotherhood,
the ideological precursors of Islamism, and its present-day exponents and
financiers.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~-->
Take a look at donorschoose.org, an excellent charitable web site for
anyone who cares about public education!
http://us.click.yahoo.com/_OLuKD/8WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM
--------------------------------------------------------------------~->
--------------------------
Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL
PROTECTED]
--------------------------
Brooks Isoldi, editor
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.intellnet.org
Post message: [email protected]
Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has
not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of
The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT
YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of
intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods,
techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other
intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes
only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material
as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use
this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,'
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
