The Swastika & the Crescent by Martin A. Lee
In the wake of Sept. 11, new light is thrown on the international ties increasingly linking Muslim and neo-Nazi extremists (from the Southern Poverty Law Center's "Intelligence Report," Spring 2002).
As Germany's defeat loomed during the finals months of World War II, Adolf Hitler increasingly lapsed into delusional fits of fantasy. Albert Speer, in his prison writings, recounts an episode in which a maniacal Hitler "pictured for himself and for us the destruction of New York in a hurricane of fire." The Nazi fuehrer described skyscrapers turning into "gigantic burning torches, collapsing upon one another, the glow of the exploding city illuminating the dark sky."
An approximation of Hitler's hellish vision came true on Sept. 11, when terrorists destroyed the Twin Towers in New York, killing nearly 3,000 people. But it was not Nazis or even neo-Nazis who carried out the attack, which allegedly came at the hands of foreign Muslim extremists. Still, in the aftermath of the slaughter, white supremacists in America and Europe applauded the suicide attacks and praised Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the massacre. An official of America's premier neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance, said he wished his own members had "half as much testicular fortitude." The awestruck leader of another U.S. Nazi group called the terrorists "VERY BRAVE PEOPLE." Neofascist youth in France celebrated the event that evening with champagne at the headquarters of the extreme right Front National. Jan Kopal, head of the Czech National Social Bloc, declared at a rally in Prague that bin Laden was "an example for our children." German neo-Nazis, some wearing checkered Palestinian headscarves, rejoiced at street demonstrations while burning an American flag. Horst Mahler, a former left-wing terrorist and prominent member of the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany proclaimed his solidarity with the terrorists and said America had gotten what it deserved.
What's going on here? For decades, American extremists have lumped Arabs in with dark-skinned "mud people." In Europe, neo-Nazis have been implicated in countless xenophobic attacks on Arabs, Turks and other Muslims. Extremist parties on both sides of the Atlantic hope to bar entrance to non-white immigrants.
The peculiar bond between white nationalist groups and certain Muslim extremists derives in part from a shared set of enemies: Jews, the United States, race-mixing, ethnic diversity. It is also very much a function of the shared belief that they must shield their own peoples from the corrupting influence of foreign cultures and the homogenizing juggernaut of globalization. Both sets of groups also have a penchant for far-flung conspiracy theories that caricature Jewish power.
But there is more. Even before World War II, Western fascists began to forge ideological and operational ties to Islamic extremists. Over the years, these contacts between Nazis and Muslim nationalists developed into dangerous networks that have been implicated in a number of bloody terrorist attacks in Europe and the Middle East. Wealthy Arab regimes have financed extremists in Europe and the United States, just as Western neo-Nazis have helped to build Holocaust denial machinery in the Arab world. In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia hired an American neo-Nazi as a lobbyist in the United States. In the 1980s, U.S. neo-Nazi strategist Louis Beam openly called for a linkup of America's far right with the "liberation movements" of Libya, Syria, Iran and Palestine. In the 1990s, an American Black Muslim was convicted in a plot to bomb the United Nations and other New York landmarks that was masterminded by a blind Egyptian cleric (see sidebar: "Strange Bedfellows"). Just last year, a meeting sponsored by a U.S. holocaust denial group brought together Arab and Western extremists in Jordan (see sidebar "Between Friends").
Although links like these illustrate the ties between Muslim extremists and Americans, such ties are far more developed in Europe. But since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, there are a number of signs including a spate of articles by American neo-Nazis that have appeared in Islamic publications and Web sites that an operational alliance may be taking shape in the United States as well.
Banking for Allah
Perhaps the best contemporary snapshot of this Nazi-Islamist extremist axis comes in the person of one Ahmed Huber, a neo-Nazi whose home in a suburb of Berne was raided by Swiss police on Nov. 8, after U.S. officials had identified him as a linchpin in the financial machinations of Osama bin Laden. The raid was part of a coordinated law enforcement dragnet that seized records from the offices of Al Taqwa, an international banking group. Al Taqwa, which literally means "Fear of God," had been channeling funds to Muslim extremist organizations around the world, including Hamas, a group active in the Israeli-occupied territories.
Huber, a former journalist who converted to Islam and changed his first name from Albert, served on the board of Nada Management, a component of Al Taqwa. After Swiss authorities froze the firm's assets and questioned Huber, the 74-year-old denounced Washington for doing the bidding of "Jew Zionists" who "rule America." In January, Nada Management announced that it had gone into liquidation.
A well-known figure in European neofascist circles, Huber "sees himself as a mediator between Islam and right-wing groups," according to Germany's Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Portraits of Hitler and SS chief Heinrich Himmler adorn the walls of Huber's office, alongside photos of Islamic political leaders and a picture of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the present-day boss of the French Front National.
In accordance with his self-proclaimed mission to unite Muslim fundamentalists and extreme right-wing forces in Europe and North America, Huber has traveled widely and proselytized at numerous gatherings. In Germany, he speaks often at events hosted by the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party, which publicly welcomed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Huber also befriended British author David Irving and other Holocaust deniers while frequenting "revisionist" conclaves.
A bin Laden Fan in Chicago
At the same time, Huber made the rounds of the radical Islamic circuit in Western countries. In June 1994, he spoke about the "evils of the Jews" at a mosque in Potomac, MD. (just outside Washington, D.C.), where videotapes of Huber's speeches are on sale. During a subsequent visit to Chicago, he attended a private assembly that brought together, in Huber's words, "the authentic Right and the fighters for Islam." Huber told journalist Richard Labeviere that "major decisions were taken [in Chicago] … [T]he reunification is under way."
Huber acknowledges meeting al-Qaeda operatives on several occasions at Muslim conferences in Beirut, Brussels and London. He has been quoted in the Swiss media as saying that bin Laden's associates "are very discreet, well-educated and highly intelligent people." The U.S. government claims that Huber's banking firm helped bin Laden shift financial assets around the world. But Huber denies any involvement in terrorist activities. He insists Al Taqwa was engaged in charitable work, providing aid for social services that benefited needy Muslims.
Described as "the financial heart of the Islamist economic apparatus," Al Taqwa is intertwined with the Muslim Brotherhood, a longstanding, far-right cult whose emblem is a Koran crossed by a sword. The influence of the Brotherhood extends throughout the Muslim world, where it vigorously, and often violently, opposes secular Arab regimes. In 1981, partisans of the Muslim Brotherhood were implicated in the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Several members of Islamic Jihad, an extremist sect closely associated with the Brotherhood, were also involved in the Sadat assassination. By the early 1990s, Islamic Jihad would closely ally itself with bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Back to the Beginning
The roots of the Muslim Brotherhood -- and, in many ways, the Nazi-Muslim axis -- go back to the organization's formation in Egypt in 1928. Marking the start of modern political Islam, or what is often referred to as "Islamic fundamentalism," the Brotherhood from the outset envisioned a time when an Islamic state would prevail in Egypt and other Arab countries, where the organization quickly established local branches. The growth of the Muslim Brotherhood coincided with the rise of fascist movements in Europe -- a parallel noted by Muhammad Sa'id al-'Ashmawy, former chief justice of Egypt's High Criminal Court, who decried "the perversion of Islam" and "the fascistic ideology" that infuses the world view of the Muslim Brothers, "their total (if not totalitarian) way of life ...[and] their fantastical reading of the Koran."
Youssef Nada, current board chairman of Al Taqwa, had joined the armed branch of the Muslim Brotherhood as a young man in Egypt during World War II. Nada and several of his cohorts in the Sunni Muslim fraternity were recruited by German military intelligence, which sought to undermine British colonial rule in the land of the sphinx. Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian schoolteacher who founded the Muslim Brotherhood, also collaborated with spies of the Third Reich.
Advocating a pan-Islamic insurgency in British-controlled Palestine, the Brotherhood proclaimed their support for the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, in the late 1930s. The Grand Mufti, the preeminent religious figure among Palestinian Muslims, was the most notable Arab leader to seek an alliance with Nazi Germany, which was eager to extend its influence in the Middle East.
Although he loathed Arabs (he once described them as "lacquered half-apes who ought to be whipped"), Hitler understood that he and the Mufti shared the same rivals -- the British, the Jews and the Communists. Indicative of the old Arab adage, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," they met in Berlin, where the Mufti lived in exile during the war. The Mufti agreed to help organize a special Muslim division of the Waffen SS. Powerful radio transmitters were put at the Mufti's disposal so that his pro-Axis propaganda could be heard throughout the Arab world.
A Mecca for Fascists
After the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Grand Mufti fled to Egypt. His arrival in 1946 was a precursor to a steady stream of Third Reich veterans who chose Cairo as a postwar hideout. The Egyptian capital became a safe haven for several thousand Nazi fugitives, including former SS Captain Alois Brunner, Adolf Eichmann's chief deputy. Convicted in absentia for war crimes, Brunner would later reside in Damascus, where he served as a security advisor for the Syrian government.
Several American fascists visited the Middle East during this period, including Francis Parker Yockey, who made his way to Cairo in the summer of 1953, a year after the corrupt Egyptian monarchy was overthrown by a military coup. The Brotherhood had played a major role in instigating the popular uprising that set the stage for the emergence of Col. Gamal Abdel Nasser as Egypt's new leader. But Nasser, who had little interest in mixing politics and religion, would subsequently have a falling out with the Islamic fundamentalist sect.
When Nasser wanted to overhaul Egypt's secret service, he asked the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for assistance. But the U.S. government "found it highly impolitic to help him directly," CIA agent Miles Copeland recalled in a memoir; so the CIA instead secretly bankrolled more than 100 German espionage and military experts who trained Egyptian police and army units in the mid-1950s.
An American Reaches Out
During this period, the Grand Mufti maintained close relations with the burgeoning Nazi exile community in Cairo, while cultivating ties to right-wing extremists in the United States and other countries. H. Keith Thompson, a New York-based businessman and Nazi activist, was a confidant of the Mufti. "I did a couple of jobs for him, getting some documents from files that were otherwise unavailable," Thompson acknowledged in an interview.
Thompson also carried on a lively correspondence with Johannes von Leers, one of the Third Reich's most prolific Jew-baiters, who converted to Islam and changed his name to Omar Amin after he took up residence in Cairo in 1955. "If there is any hope to free the world from Jewish tyranny," Amin wrote Thompson, "it is with the Moslems, who stand steadfastly against Zionism, Colonialism and Imperialism." Formerly Goebbels' right-hand man, Amin became a top official in the Egyptian Information Ministry, which employed several European fascists who churned out hate literature and anti-Jewish broadcasts. Another German expatriate, Louis Heiden, alias Louis Al-Hadj, translated Hitler's Mein Kampf into Arabic.
The Egyptian government also published The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the infamous anti-Semitic forgery that purports to reveal a Jewish master plan for taking over the world. A staple of Nazi propaganda, the Protocols also are quoted in Article 32 of the charter of Hamas, the hard-line Palestinian fundamentalist group that is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood -- even though Muslim scholars say such views are an anathema to mainstream Islam. "There are no historic roots for anti-Semitism in Islam," says Hasem Saghiyeh, a columnist at Al Hayat, a London-based Arab newspaper. "The process of translating books like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion on as popular a scale started in Nasser's Egypt, but only the Islamic fundamentalist movement incorporated them into its literature."
They are unlikely allies, but right-wing extremists and Islamic militants share a hatred for Israel and the United States that has drawn the attention of German authorities.
Since 2001, when Islamic extremists and neo-Nazis cheered the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., the two camps have echoed one another's abhorrence of what they view as a world controlled by Jews and enforced by Washington's military power. There are no links suggesting that right-wing and Islamic groups are collaborating on terrorism-related strategies, but law enforcement officials are concerned over the growing, and sometimes surreal, attraction between the two.
"The common ground they share is deep on two issues," said one Western diplomat. "They cannot tolerate the existence of Israel, and they share a conspiracy theory that the U.S. wants to control the Middle East and the world's energy supply. It's a very paranoid world view, but they share it deeply."
Though extremists in both camps have been eyeing each other for decades, many are skeptical that such an alliance can advance very far, given broad religious and philosophical differences and the strong racism among right-wing extremists. Neo-Nazis and skinheads historically have attacked immigrant Muslims and other foreigners for spoiling their dream of a pure German state. The street-level thugs of the right wing, according to some officials, will not easily abandon anti-foreigner sentiments in favor of joining Islamists in a campaign of violence against the U.S. and Israel.
"Right-wing extremists are so xenophobic that we can't imagine a deep structural connection between these groups," said Isabelle Kalbitzer, a spokeswoman for Berlin's Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which prosecutes offenses against the state. "But we are keeping a close eye on this."
Although neo-Nazi shock troops may not be embracing their Islamic counterparts, right-wing leaders and ideologues have come to admire the tenacity of Muslim militants. This was heightened after the Sept. 11 attacks, when right-wing extremists were awed by the Al Qaeda network's dedication and patient planning in striking the icons of American capitalism and military prowess.
"Islamic militants are strange heroes for the right wing," said Herbert Mueller, a government analyst of political extremism in Baden-Wuerttemberg state. "The right wing detests Islam, but that kind of commitment shows what they are lacking."
Udo Voigt, chairman of Germany's main far-right political force, the National Democratic Party, surprised the mostly Muslim audience in a university lecture hall late last year when he attended a speech by Shakir Aasim, a representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic organization branded dangerous by German authorities. Voigt also supports Ahmed Huber, a Swiss far-right leader who espouses closer ties with Muslim radicals and is under investigation by U.S. authorities for possible financial links to Al Qaeda.
In what was interpreted as a gesture of goodwill, Voigt was quoted by German television as telling the university crowd, "I think I speak in the name of all German nationalists when I say, if it comes to a great clash [between civilizations], we will not stand at the side of America."
Aasim said he was unaware Voigt was in attendance. "I was astonished," he said. "I didn't know who he was until someone told me." Aasim, whose group is being investigated by Germany for alleged ties to terrorist networks, said he doubts right-wing and Islamic movements will merge, adding, "We have very different ideas."
But there is evidence of attraction between the radical views of East and West. Islamic fashion has even added a dash of color to the drab skinhead uniform of high boots and jeans. Neo-Nazis have been appearing at German rallies wearing Palestinian scarves and calling for worldwide intifada.
And last summer, members of the far-right fringe group Fighting Union of German Socialists attended a ceremony at the Iraqi Embassy in Berlin to receive an award from Saddam Hussein's regime. "For us," a member of the group, Tomas Behl, was quoted as saying, "Iraq is of special importance because in Saddam Hussein there is a person who reminds us of our leader, Adolf Hitler, who is standing up against superpower America and who is not willing to bend his knees."
Groups such as the Fighting Union of German Socialists are considered absurd by law enforcement and intelligence officials. But more mainstream right-wing leaders, such as Austria's Joerg Haider, the unofficial head of the Freedom Party, have made overtures to the radical Arab world. Haider visited Libya and Iraq several times in recent years. One of the most troubling figures on the far right is Huber, a Swiss businessman who travels throughout Europe and the U.S. promoting his radical views.
Huber converted to Islam in the 1960s. He denies that the Holocaust happened, and he supports jihad, or Islamic holy struggle. He was a member of the board of Nada Management, a financial services subsidiary of the international Al Taqwa group. U.S. law enforcement agencies allege that Al Taqwa served as a financial advisor to Osama bin Laden. Huber, who could not be reached, has said that the Sept. 11 attacks signified a war against "Satan's symbols."
Huber told the media that he met members of Bin Laden's network and found them "very discreet, well educated, very intelligent people." Huber has denied any wrongdoing and has stated that Nada has no ties to terrorist organizations.
The Sept. 11 attacks reaffirmed the common hatreds that kept right-wing extremists and Islamic radicals involved with each other for decades. Hitler entertained the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, in the 1940s because of their mutual hatred for Jews. During the 1991 Persian Gulf War, neo-Nazis attempted to form a contingent to fight alongside the Iraqis.
William L. Pierce, the late American novelist who wrote "The Turner Diaries," which is considered defining literature for far-right groups, was invited to speak at a 1997 conference in Beirut rejecting the Holocaust. Other proposed speakers included members of Hezbollah and Horst Mahler, a left-wing militant turned far-right ideologue and member of Germany's National Democratic Party.
The Lebanese government canceled the event.
In a recent interview, Mahler's comments on Jews and the United States' strength around the world sounded similar to extremists in the Middle East. He said Jews control the world's money and business and are an invisible power operating behind globalization and protected by American imperialism. "The U.S. wants to mix up Europe, to destabilize European powers so there couldn't be any opponent in dominating the world," Mahler said. "And, therefore, the center of Europe is Germany and Germany must perish.... I see them as enemies."
Despite shared sentiments, right-wing extremist and Islamic groups are too suspicious of one another to unite as a significant terrorist threat, according to many law enforcement officials and experts on extremism. The National Democratic Party, for example, supports the radical Muslim derision of Jews, but the party also wants to deport Germany's predominantly Muslim population of 2 million Turks. Neo-Nazi violence continues against Muslims.
"For the neo-Nazis on the street, their common enemy with Islamic militants is not enough for them to suspend their anti-Islamic racism," said Alfred Schobert, an analyst at the Information Service Against Right-Wing Extremism. "They wear the Palestinian scarf as a point of identification with Palestinian fighters in Israel. That's OK, so long as the Palestinians live there and not in Germany.
"You can't love the Arabs just because they hate the Jews too.... Still, one has to be concerned about it." <SNIP>
Michael Pugliese