Jihadism and the ‘Dreamers of the Day’
Since the 9/11 attacks, the world has become all too aware of the growth of a fanatical ideology grounded in an extreme interpretation of Islam and centred on totalitarian fantasies. In recent years, we have seen the emergence of a far more politicised brand of Islam often referred to as Islamism. This loosely connected movement seeks to bring about global Islamic rule by creating a series of Islamic States which are to be ruled according to strict adherence to Shari’ah law. At the same time, we have seen the emergence of an even more extreme ideology, which in this article I have termed ‘Jihadism’. While there are considerable similarities between Islamism and Jihadism, there are significant differences that mark Jihadism as a seperate ideology. Islamism envisages a world in which Islam is the guiding principle and seeks to convert people to following the religion. In the absence of conversion it envisages a situation as found in many periods of Islamic history in which non-Muslims live in the Islamic State as second class citizens, as the Dhimmi. While Islamism seeks to re-order life around strict Islamic principles, Jihadism is centred on a cult of death and idolises the ‘martyr’ as the highest of all humans. Where Islamism seeks to make non-Muslims subordinate, Jihadism has no wish to see them existing at all. Jihadism presents the world as a battle ground between absolutes of good and evil, light and darkness. For the Jihadist, the kuffar are worthy only of death and are seen as a form of subhuman to be exterminated. So, while Islamism offers a reactionary social vision based around the restriction of freedom and a turning back of modernity, Jihadism is obsessed with war, epic struggles, and acts of destruction as ends in themselves. While British Jihadists, for example, proclaim a desire that Islam should ‘conquer’ the world and claim that Islam will ‘dominate’ Britain, they consider that this will come about through mass bloodshed, and revel in the prospect of mass murder and grotesque terrorist campaigns. As I shall argue, Jihadism is only superficially linked even to political Islam, because it draws its ideas not from a rational understanding of the world, but rather from a twisted mystical vision of an eternal struggle in which a fetishisation of death plays a central role. In this, it shares the obsessions and aspirations of followers of other genocidal and terroristic movements, both from the far-Left and far-Right of the non-Islamic political spectrum. To interpet Jihadism as essentially religious or essentially a reaction to Western foreign policy is to fail to recognise that the movement has far deeper psychological roots and that it is grounded in exactly the same kind of fantasy-driven convergence of narcissism and nihilism that we find in the European Fascism of the Twentieth Century.
A recently leaked M15 intelligence document entitled ‘Understanding radicalisation and violent extremism in the UK’ states that there is no easy way to identify those who become involved in terrorism in Britain, that there is no single pathway to violent extremism, and that Jihadists are largely ‘demographically unremarkable’:
Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices. Very few have been brought up in strongly religious households, and there is a higher than average proportion of converts. Some are involved in drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes … Far from being lone individuals with no ties, the majority of those over 30 have steady relationships, and most have children. MI5 says this challenges the idea that terrorists are young men driven by sexual frustration and lured to ‘martyrdom’ by the promise of beautiful virgins waiting for them in paradise. It is wrong to assume that someone with a wife and children is less likely to commit acts of terrorism … Those involved in British terrorism are not unintelligent or gullible, and nor are they more likely to be well-educated; their educational achievement ranges from total lack of qualifications to degree-level education. However, they are almost all employed in low-grade jobs.[1]
An examination of the backgrounds of Jihadist terrorists and their supporters in the UK certainly turns up a wide variety of characters. What seems to most closely bind them is that they have not been brought up in an atmosphere of Islamic extremism. Some come from moderate Muslim families and others from families who are Christian or non-religious. The other key factors seem to be a disaffection with mainstream society and/or their insignificant and unremarkable lives. Many Jihadists once lived characteristically ‘Western’ lifestyles, indulging in alcohol, recreational drugs, partying, nightclubs, and casual sex, as well as enjoying other ‘normal’ interests such as sports. There are also a significant number of former criminals to be found in the Jihadist subculture, as well as some who have moved from another extreme – far-Left or far-Right politics – into an extreme interpretation of Islam.
Kenan Malik recalls a shift in some of his former friends and associates back in 1989, at the time of the Satanic Verses furore. Malik was in Bradford a fortnight after a demonstration at which Rushdie’s infamous book was publicly burnt and came across an old friend from London named Hassan. Malik recalls: ‘I was astonished. The Hassan I knew in London had been a member of the Socialist Workers party (as I had been for a while). Apart from Trotskyism his other indulgences were sex, Southern Comfort and watching Arsenal’.[2] The British extremist ideologue Anjem Choudary, a fomer leading member of Al-Muhajiroun and spokesman for Al Ghurabaa, both of which are now proscribed organisations, was also riled by The Satanic Verses. A former friend of Choudary from the days when he was a student at Southampton University and known as ‘Andy’ recalls: ‘You didn’t want to get him started on that. He would go on and on about the fatwa and he supported calls for the book to be banned. But he would have a glass of cider in his hand when he was carrying on about it’.[3] Just as Malik’s friend once enjoyed alcohol, women, and sport, so also Choudary lived a very ‘un-Islamic’ lifestyle while a student; drinking, indulging in casual sex, smoking cannabis, and even using LSD. Famed for his ability to drink a pint of cider in a few seconds, a former acquaintance recalls of ‘Andy’: ‘At parties, like the rest of us, he was rarely without a joint. The morning after one party, I can remember him getting all the roaches (butts) from the spliffs we had smoked the night before out of the ashtrays, cutting them up and making a new one out of the leftovers’.[4] While railing against Rushdie and saying that ‘he was a Muslim and was proud of his Pakistani heritage’, Choudary was also indulging in forbidden pleasures, preferring intoxication and sex with white women to visiting mosques.
Such backgrounds are not uncommon for British Jihadists. Hasib Hussain, the 7/7 bus bomber, ‘was known for his clubbing and occasional drug-taking’ prior to being ‘saved’ by a group which included the other 7/7 suicide terrorists.[5] Jermaine Lindsay, the 7/7 Russell Square underground train bomber, was a former cannabis user and drug dealer, who sold heroin and crack cocaine despite being a carpet fitter by trade and a supposedly devout Muslim since the age of 15. Bizarrely, he would sell drugs while ‘wearing his Islam outfit’, carried out assaults, and proclaimed that ‘all white people were trash and said he was going to get them all on drugs to kill them off’.[6] A 2004 Newsnight Special Report on the Jihad supporting Al-Muhajiroun group found white converts who had once embraced drinking and partying and now idolised Osama bin Laden and called the 9/11 attacks ‘magnificent’. One convert, Simon, was formerly ‘a party loving teenager’ whose brother recalled taking his then unemployed sibling for nights out: ‘I’d take him down the pub, nightclubbing, Brighton, Brixton, London, we used to go everywhere. Good night out’.[7] Another convert who had taken the name ‘Osama’ also spoke of a former life of drinking and unemployment. As already mentioned, such backgrounds are in no way uncommon for British Jihadists, and, indeed, prisons are now one of the biggest recruiting grounds for Islamic extremists in Britain.[8] What we find in this group of Jihadists is that they formerly led lifestyles that varied from hedonistic to criminal and dissolute, and for a time some of them even continued to lead ‘un-Islamic’ lifestyles (drinking cider, selling drugs) while espousing Islamic radicalism.
The path from unpious behaviour to Jihadism is not unique to British Jihadists. An interesting case in point is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the now dead leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, a man who delighted in carrying out beheadings of Western hostages and whose group launched bombing campaigns not only against coalition forces in Iraq but also against fellow Muslims he considered to be insufficiently ‘pure’ (Iraqi Shi’ites). Hailed in the ‘martyrdom’ videos of 7/7 bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer, Zarqawi was not raised as a Jihadist fanatic but instead found his ‘salvation’ in extremism. Those who knew Zarqawi in his youth in Jordan remember him as ‘an idealistic young man, irascible and hard to control’ who was ‘looking for a way to break free of the dead-end situation in which he felt he was stuck, a way to give meaning to his life and shape his destiny’.[9] For two years, compulsory military service filled the void he felt in his life, yet on his return ‘he was again at loose ends and led a dissolute life’. He became ‘the neighbourhood lout, feared by other young people’. Those who knew him at the time report that ‘he drank like a fish and covered his body with tattoos’. In a few months he ‘won the reputation of a cantankerous hoodlum’, opposing the police, getting himself arrested for a stabbing, shoplifting, and drug dealing, and being questioned over an attempted rape.[10] Zarqawi would go on to embrace radical Islam and travel to Afghanistan where he spent the 1980s. Returning to his native Jordan in the ’90s, he engaged in terrorist activities, serving five years in prison before returning to Afghanistan to set up Jihadist training camps. His final move was to Iraq, where he organised the most brutal faction of the insurgency before meeting his demise in a US air attack on June 7 2007. In Zarqawi, we again see a man who turned from alcohol and criminality to devoting his life to the fanatical, blood soaked ideology of Jihadism.
We have already seen in the account of Kenan Malik’s friend Hassan, a former activist with the far-Left Socialist Worker’s Party, that some who turn to radical Islam do so as a result of disillusionment with other radical, specifically political, movements. Malik recalls that in the Asian communities of 1980s Britain, for many the ‘white Left’ was seen as a dead end and ‘the only place offering shelter for disaffected youth was militant Islam’.[11] Contemporary Jihadism, however, holds an appeal beyond providing a radical political alternative for Asians, and offers an extreme political vision attractive to white converts as well. When the BBC’s Richard Watson attended a meeting of Al-Muhajiroun in London, he was informed that Capitalism ‘is crumbling’, that Communism ‘is finished’, and that Islam is ‘the only other ideological belief around now’. He was told in no uncertain terms that ‘Islam is not a religion. Let’s make it clear. It’s a political ideological belief’.[12] One convert told Watson that ‘I believed in democracy, freedom, so it was about doing what I liked and making most out of this life. Enjoyment to the max, whereas I embraced Islam all of that changed [sic]‘. Now the convert’s position was that ‘I don’t believe in democracy. It’s man made’.[13]
What Watson’s report didn’t touch on is that it is not just those who have given up on Capitalism and Communism who embrace Jihadist Islam as an alternative and anti-democratic political ideology, for there are also Fascists who have turned to Jihadism (and, as we shall see, modern Jihadism is deeply indebted to the European Fascism of the past). In June 2008, the BBC reported that a convicted murderer and former activist with the far-Right British National Party who has converted to radical Islam while in prison is now being held in a segregation unit after ‘he was caught attempting to radicalise a number of fellow inmates after he himself converted to Islam’. The former far-Right activist now preaches Jihadism and is suspected of recruiting for al-Qaeda associated groups.[14] Another case of interest is that of the former neo-Nazi ideologue David Myatt, who now goes by the name Abdul Aziz ibn Myatt. For much of his life, Myatt has been a propagandist, recruiter, and street thug for a number of neo-Nazi groups in Britain, and has spent time in prison for racist attacks. Perhaps he is most famous as the founder of the National Socialist Movement, a group whose members included the nailbomber and killer of three, David Copeland, and as the author of a terrorist manual entitled ‘The Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution’. Eventually, Myatt gave up on the idea of ‘Aryan Revolution’ and now embraces Jihadism instead. In his own words:
The pure authentic Islam of the revival, which recognises practical jihad (holy war) as a duty, is the only force that is capable of fighting and destroying the dishonour, the arrogance, the materialism of the West … For the West, nothing is sacred, except perhaps Zionists, Zionism, the hoax of the so-called Holocaust, and the idols which the West and its lackeys worship, or pretend to worship, such as democracy … This may well be a long war, of decades or more – and we Muslims have to plan accordingly. We must affirm practical jihad – to take part in the fight to free our lands from the kuffar (unbelievers). Jihad is our duty.[15]
Again, this kind of crossing over from Fascism and Nazism to Jihadism is by no means unique to Britain. In 2002, Henry Schuster of CNN interviewed a Swiss convert, Ahmed Huber, who turned from adoration of Adolf Hitler to praising Ayatollah Khomeini and ‘wanted to forge a fresh alliance between Islamic radicals and neo-Nazis in Europe and the United States’.[16] As Schuster noted, Huber ‘cannot be simply dismissed as a crackpot’ for he served on the board of directors of a Swiss bank and holding company that has been accused of funding al-Qaeda affiliated groups.
So far we have looked at Jihadists who turn to the ideology having grown disillusioned with hedonism, criminality, and radical secular politics, but there are others who turn to Jihadism as an escape from a humdrum existence. Two key examples of this kind of Jihadist are the 7/7 suicide bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer. Kahn was a family man with a wife and a 14 month old daughter. He worked as a learning mentor in a school and those he worked with described him as ‘gently spoken, endlessly patient, and immensely popular with children who called him their buddy’.[17] Tanweer used to volunteer to play sports with children at a local community centre and, according to his father, he ‘was respected by everybody and respected everybody in return’.[18] Both were religious, but neither of their extended families in Britain suspected them of involvement with Jihadism. Both Kahn and Tanweer appear to have lived double lives. While engaging in worthy and caring roles in their community, they were also starting to fantasise about what they viewed as heroic actions in the name of justice for other Muslims. Both men were said to be angered by reports of civilian casualities in Iraq, and, on a trip to visit family in Pakistan, Tanweer reportedly spoke of his desire to become a ‘holy warrior’.[19]
Just as, many years before, Hassan and Choudary were to feel that their ‘identity’ was under attack, so also Khan and Tanweer appear to have increasingly embraced the notion that, as Muslims, any suffering of a fellow Muslim was by extension an attack on something integral to who they were. In some respects, the sense of solidarity fostered by Islam has similarities with nationalism. In nationalism, one’s countrymen, or in Nazism, one’s ‘racial kin’, are viewed as part of a huge family unit. In Islam, this is also sometimes the case. Many Muslims pereceive themselves to be part of a vast international family, to which they have their primary allegiance. Hence, for example, Choudary has stated that ‘[i]t doesn’t matter to me whether I am in Britain or Pakistan I’m a Muslim first, last and always. While I’m in Britain I will be a Muslim practising my religion in Britain. If tomorrow I find myself in Abu Dhabi or in Pakistan or anywhere else in the world I’ll be a Muslim practising my religion there’.[20] This sense of international comradeship is particularly pronounced in Jihadist circles. An Al-Muhajiroun member told the BBC that before his conversion he ‘didn’t have no family [sic]. Now I’ve got one billion point, so many brothers around me. I couldn’t ask for a bigger family in my life now’.[21] Kahn and Tanweer differed from this convert, of course, in that they were members of loving families, but as their ‘martyrdom’ videos attest, these families were seen to be subordinate to the higher family of Muslims worldwide.
There are two popular interpretations of the suicide bombings carried out by Kahn and Tanweer that both miss an important aspect of their embracing Jihadism. Some, especially secularists and those of other faiths, seek to explain their actions largely in terms of religious belief. In these arguments, Islamic fundamentalism is the key motivating factor for the attacks, and indeed both Kahn and Tanweer’s videos contain references to Allah, to Islam, and to their expected reward of paradise for their actions. However, there are many Muslims in Britain who hold to ‘fundamentalist’ beliefs – the Qur’an as the literal Word of God, paradise in the afterlife for believers, special rewards for those who die defending Islam or Muslims, and so on, but what we haven’t seen in recent years is a massive wave of thousands of suicide bomb attacks as a result. Yes, the Qur’an contains much that is objectionable, but no, it is not a manifesto for suicide murder.
Another account downplays the religious aspects of the attacks and seeks instead to find rational, political, materialist explainations for the bombers’ actions. A good example of such thinking is found in a recent article in the Socialist Workers Party journal International Socialism, in which John Molyneux argues:
[I]t is central to the ideology of the neocons, Bush, Cheney, Blair and Brown that Muslim hostility to ‘the West’ is unprovoked and unjustified. It is not seen as a reaction or response to Western imperialism, exploitation and domination, but rather an offensive religion-based campaign aimed at destroying, conquering or perhaps converting the non-Muslim world.
Some see these aims as inherent in mainstream Islam, while for Bush, Blair and Co it derives from an ‘evil’ misinterpretation or perversion of Islam, but in both cases the motivation is religious. It is an interpretation which flies in the face of the declared statements of both Al Qaida, who made explicit political demands such as the removal of US troops from Saudi Arabia, and the 7/7 bombers in London, who said they were motivated by what was being done to Iraq, and defies reason. The notion that America, Britain or any big Western nation could be destroyed, conquered or, indeed, converted by planting bombs on the underground or flying planes into buildings is so utterly absurd that it cannot be the real motive for any sustained campaign. The idea that the US could be induced by a terrorist campaign to stop supporting Israel or to get out of Afghanistan is also mistaken but it is not completely implausible. For Bush, Blair and Co, however, the ‘religious’ interpretation is mandatory, as without it they would be forced to concede the culpability of imperialism and of their own policies – and the Dawkins approach dovetails with this and reinforces it.[22]
In this kind of account of Jihadist terrorism, then, we see the inversion of the idea that religion is the primary motivating factor, and instead Molyneux offers a Marxist materialist interpretation that sees Kahn and Tanweer’s attacks as essentially political. Just as the religious interpretation has to marginalise or ignore the ‘political’ content of Kahn and Tanweer’s ‘martyrdom’ videos, so the political interpretation treats their religious rhetoric as having little importance. The poverty of such a reductionist intepretation is partly found in Molyneux’s inability as a Marxist to understand anything outside the narrow confines of a purely materialist and ‘rationalist’ framework. He claims that ‘[t]he notion that America, Britain or any big Western nation could be destroyed, conquered or, indeed, converted by planting bombs on the underground or flying planes into buildings is so utterly absurd that it cannot be the real motive for any sustained campaign’, yet this is an argument from his personal, atheistic incredulity. The idea that an angel dictated the Qur’an to Muhammad or that non-Muslims will suffer eternal hellfire are also utterly absurd to many of us, but millions would disagree. One should never underestimate the fantasies that are really believed by the religious. Molyneux’s argument is not simply flawed in his inability to accept the reality and power of religious fanatacism, it is also shown to be flawed by the bland throw-away remark that ‘the 7/7 bombers … said they were motivated by what was being done to Iraq’, as they said a lot more than this.
After an initial generalised rant, Kahn’s ‘martyrdom’ video opens with the words ‘I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we believe.Our driving motivation doesn’t come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam – obedience to the one true God, Allah, and following the footsteps of the final prophet and messenger Muhammad’. Kahn then goes on to state that his murderous actions are motivated by ‘atrocities against my people all over the world’ and praises ‘heroes like our beloved Sheikh Osama Bin Laden, Dr Ayman al-Zawahri and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’.[23] Kahn does not offer Iraq as his justification, then, but rather a sense of worldwide Muslim oppression and a solidarity with the Jihadist movement. Tanweer’s ‘martyrdom’ video is considerably longer than Khan’s and he does indeed mention Iraq, but he also cites Muslim suffering in Palestine, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Kashmir as causes of his rage. British support for Israel and the holding of fellow Jihadists in Belmarsh prison also raise his ire, and, as with Khan, he also praises Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi.[24]
What is clear here is that it is only Muslim suffering that concerns Kahn and Tanweer, for there is no mention here of any other injustice, and that their justificationary diatribes have no clear focus or serious political message. Hassan Butt, a former British supporter of Jihadism, also undermines Molyneux’s position when he states: ‘I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy. By blaming the Government for our actions, those who pushed this “Blair’s bombs” line did our propaganda work for us’.[25]
If both reductionist religious and political interpretations of the acts of the 7/7 bombers fail, then is the truth somewhere in between? I believe that this is also an incorrect interpretation. The religious explanation makes little real sense when one considers Khan chose to detonate his bomb on a train at Edgware Road, in an area heavily populated by predominantly Muslim Arabs. The political interpretation fails as the bombers’ message is so general it is unconvincing as a real statement regarding international affairs. Both Islam in a religious sense and politics in the sense of real world events are only superifically present in the ‘martyrdom’ rants of Kahn and Tanweer, and even a combination of the two does not adequately explain why these apparently normal individuals should choose to end their lives by indiscriminately killing others. There was, in fact, no need for any of the 7/7 bombers to have died in their attacks and this is significant. Bombs in bags could easily have been left on trains and buses and remotely detonated, but the 7/7 group chose to die in their attacks. We could explain this is a desire to enter the paradise of the martyrs, yet why would Khan, for example, be hankering after virgins when he had a devoted wife and a young child? There has to be more to it than that.
There is a less common interpretation of Western Jihadism that seems closer to the truth of the matter. As we have seen, the 7/7 bombers were unremarkable: Kahn and Tanweer in particular were in many ways ‘model citizens’; members of stable families, hard working, community minded. Yet, they, as well as their partners in crime, were low paid workers destined for a life in obscurity. We have also seen that jaded hedonists, criminals, and the politically disillusioned have found in Jihadism a new and exciting life, a life in which they are suddenly part of a revolutionary global movement, a life ostensibly injected with meaning. The same can also apply to those who are fundamentally dissatisfied with a simple, unassuming life. We in the West live in a world drenched in ‘celebrity’ culture, ‘reality TV’ shows, glitz and glamour. We also live in a world which can often feel superficial and to lack authenticity. Modern Jihadist violence can ironically enough be seen to be connected to both. From celebrity culture comes the narcissism of Jihadist propaganda videos such as those made by Kahn and Tanweer, and from a generalised sense of cultural emptiness comes the attraction to the twisted ‘glamour’ of Jihadist violence.
Roger Griffin’s article ‘”Shattering crystals”: the role of “dream time” in extreme right-wing political violence’ [26] offers some interesting perspectives for understanding Jihadism, especially of the 7/7 variety. While Griffin is writing of extreme right-wing violence, there are similarities to be found in Jihadism and other forms of ‘ideological’ violence. In violent political acts ‘that consciously incur the risk of death to their perpetrators’, Griffin finds an almost atavistic return to pre-modern mystical notions of self-transformation, and contrasts ‘clock time’ with ‘dream time’. ‘Clock time’ is where we find ourselves in our everyday lives, whereas ‘dream time’ connotes a kind of fantasy world of those seeking to transcend mundane existence. Where ‘clock time’ can be felt to be permeated by ‘futility and emptiness’, in ‘dream time’ the individual projects his or her fantasies into the world, seeking to transcend everyday reality through ‘a sense of being “chosen” for a mission of destruction [which] can precipitate the experience of being reborn in a new supra-individual dimension’. Griffin quotes a telling observation of T. E. Lawrence: ‘All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible’. It is, Griffin maintains, those who allow their self-important fantasies of heroism and destiny to break through into everyday existence who are inclined towards extreme acts of violence, which they imbue with eternal significance. This, far more than any bland religious or political interpretation, provides a view into the mindset of those who believe they have the right, or even the duty, to carry out horrific acts of ‘ideological’ violence.
The ‘martyrdom’ videos of Khan and Tanweer clearly demonstrate examples of ‘dreamers of the day’ acting out their fantasies. The two men, a classroom assistant and community centre volunteer, appear in the videos in Islamic head dress and have psychologically transformed themselves into the heroes they wish they were. Khan arrogantly points his finger towards the camera and tells the world, ‘We are at war and I am a soldier’. Already living in ‘dream time’, he claims that ‘I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters’, thereby displaying the fantasy of ‘chosenness’ which will lead (in his mind) to his rebirth as a mighty hero as he blows himself and other humans to pieces. He goes on to speak of this rebirth as he prays, ‘raise me amongst those whom I love like the prophets, the messengers, the martyrs and today’s heroes’.
Tanweer, in a deluded state of self-importance and almost taking on the role of a divine judge, tells the people of Britain, ‘You are those who have voted in your government … You have offered financial and military support to the U.S. and Israel, in the massacre of our children in Palestine. You are directly responsible for the problems in Palestine, Afghanistan, and Iraq to this day. You have openly declared war on Islam, and are the forerunners in the crusade against the Muslims’. He passes all responsibility for his murderous actions onto his victims, and clearly believes he has been charged with punishing those whom he is addressing. ‘We love death the way you love life’, he proudly boasts, and prays, ‘Oh Allah, grant us martyrdom in your cause’.
Kahn and Tanweer here show themselves to be immersed in a narcissistic dream of becoming heroes and martyrs, of becoming significant, of becoming famous. How important they must have felt, knowing that they were now ‘soldiers’ being immortalised on video for all the world to see. This had essentially nothing to do with the religion of Islam or with politics, and everything to do with delusions of grandeur and a kind of self-infatuated mysticism. That formal religion is, as with politics, largely incidental to the vision of Western Jihadists, as opposed to being integral to it, is found in the direct similarities to the 7/7 Jihadists’ outlook which can be found in the words of non-Islamic ‘ideological’ killers.
We have already seen that Jihadism presents Muslims the world over as a kind of collective unity, and is not bound by national boundaries and identities. As Choudary, for example, has explained, he is a Muslim in Britain, not a British Muslim. The followers of Islam are presented as a family, and essentially treated in a similar way to a nation, albeit one that is scattered throughout the world. Jihadists see themselves as charged with a duty to protect all members of this nation, and consider themselves to be at war with all who are outside it. Hence, in Khan’s ‘martyrdom’ speech, he claims that ‘I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters’ and Tanweer advocates the Jihadist fantasy that the West has ‘declared war on Islam’, a fantasy that is promoted in Jihadist propaganda as a continuation of the medieval Crusades, with the enemy being ‘Jews and Crusaders’. A movement with a similar outlook is that of post-war neo-Nazism, which has moved beyond narrow national confines and now defines the entire ‘white race’ as a ‘nation’. Just as Jihadists are caught up in a dream of an international war between Muslims and non-Muslims, so neo-Nazis see themselves as fighting to preserve the white race from forces massed against it, forces orchestrated by ‘the Jews’, the secret rulers of the world (a conspiracy theory which is also espoused by Jihadists). And just as Jihadists are self-appointed ‘martyrs’ for ‘the Muslims’, so there have been self-appointed ‘martyrs’ for ‘the white race’.
In September 1983, a Washington State cattle farmer named Robert Jay Mathews formally founded a neo-Nazi terrorist group called The Order, the members of which dreamt of overthrowing the US Federal Government and saw themselves as a vanguard for saving ‘white America’. They engaged in criminal acts including armoured car robberies, bank robberies, and counterfeiting, as well as bombing a cinema and a synagogue, and murdering a Jewish talk radio host. As with the 7/7 bombers, The Order lived in a dream world in which they were ‘revolutionaries’ fighting against a conspiracy to destroy ‘their’ people. A leading member of The Order, David Lane, described his path to neo-Nazi terrorism as follows: ‘By 1978 my research was essentially complete and the real problem was sharply delineated in my mind. The Western nations were ruled by a Zionist conspiracy … [and] the Zionist conspiracy above all things wants to exterminate the White Aryan race’.[27] In 1984, after having been tipped off about his whereabouts, police moved in to arrest Mathews, who refused to come out of the building he was hiding in and instead engaged in an exchange of gunfire that ultimately resulted in his death. The reason Mathews refused to surrender is similar to the reason the 7/7 bombers chose to die in their attacks – he shared the same fantasies of martyrdom. In an autobiographical piece Mathews penned shortly before his death, he explained that ‘I realized that White America, indeed my entire race, was headed for oblivion unless White men rose and turned the tide’. He claimed that ‘I have no choice. I must stand up like a White man and do battle … [W]e have no choice left but to stand and fight back. Hail Victory!’ Of his group, he boasted, ‘I am proud that we had the courage and the determination to stand up and fight for our race and our heritage at a time in history when such a deed is called a crime and not an act of valor’. Most tellingly, he foresaw his own death: ‘I have no fear. For the reality of my life is death, and the worst the enemy can do to me is shorten my tour of duty in this world. I will leave knowing that I have made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the future of my children’.[28]
Here we read the words of a man who was a neo-Nazi, not a Jihadist, who saw white people as his ‘nation’, as opposed to Muslims, but who shared the same imaginary vision of the world, a world in which his people were oppressed by a conspiracy and he had been called to make ‘the ultimate sacrifice’ for a higher cause. ‘We are at war and I am a soldier’, stated Khan. ‘I must stand up … and do battle’, wrote Mathews. ‘I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters’, claimed Khan. ‘White America, indeed my entire race, was headed for oblivion unless White men rose and turned the tide’, wrote Mathews. ‘We love death the way you love life’, boasted Tanweer. ‘I have no fear’, wrote Mathews, ‘[f]or the reality of my life is death’. Just as the 7/7 bombers are glorified as martyrs – the ‘Lions of London’ – in Jihadist circles (which is, of course, what they most dearly wanted), so also Mathews, through choosing to die in a hail of police gunfire, has entered the neo-Nazi pantheon of ‘martyrs’, glorified by neo-Nazis worldwide for making ‘the ultimate sacrifice’. Western Jihadists are fantasists who actualise their narcissistic dreams of being ‘chosen’ to ‘defend’ Muslims worldwide through murder and the glorification of death, and in Mathews we see that exactly the same kind of dream of heroism, martyrdom, and acts of eternal significance can come to life in a very different political and ideological context. There is no war against Muslims, and there is no war against the white race; both are products of the imagination, both are dreamed up to give meaning to those who long for a twisted kind of heroism, and both become deadly in the hands of the dreamers of the day.
Another figure who fits the mould of a dreamer of the day – a man who harboured dark fantasies of death, war, and destruction, and who sought to actualise those dreams – can be found among the ‘martyrs’ of the extreme Left. Che Guevara is a man who is idolised today by many on the far-Left, some on the centre Left, some on the far-Right, and many, many others who see him exactly as he hoped history would see him: as a revolutionary leader who fought for justice, a man who showed love and compassion for the Cuban people and who rose up against Western oppression. The real Che Guevara, however, was nothing of the sort, and devotion to Che is indeed ‘an infantile disorder’.[29] The story of Che is the story of an Argentinian student who went on to become a mass murderer and advocate of genocide.
During the first few years of Castro’s regime in Cuba, Che was ‘second in command [and] chief executioner for a regime that jailed and tortured more political prisoners as a percentage of population than Stalin’s and executed more people as a percentage of population in its first three years in power than Hitler’s’.[30] Che was a man who delighted in ordering and carrying out executions and found no need to give prisoners a fair trial. For him, to present a legal case and amass evidence was to waste time on ‘archaic bourgeois details’.[31] He was a totalitarian who declared that ‘individualism must disappear!’[32] He made ‘effeminate behaviour’ a crime and set up concentration camps for gay men with the words ‘Work Will Make Men Out of You’ inscribed over their gates.[33] Reading the man’s own words gives a chilling insight into his mentality. In an essay in which he called for ‘two, three, many Vietnams’, Che wrote: ‘Hatred as an element of struggle; unbending hatred for the enemy, which pushes a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him into an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine. This is what our soldiers must become’.[34] In his ‘Message to the Tri-Continental Conference’, he promised:
We will bring the war to the imperialist enemies’ very home, to his places of work and recreation. We must never give him a minute of peace or tranquility. We’ll attack him wherever we find him. The imperialist enemy must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves. Thus we’ll destroy him! These hyenas are fit only for extermination. We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm![35]
Just as Jihadists dream of an epic global confrontation and delight in the 9/11 attacks on New York City (‘magnificent’, according to British Jihadists), Che dreamed of apocalyptic mass murder. However, unlike the Jihadists, Che found himself in a position in which these dreams could become a reality. While Nikita Khrushchev ultimately scuppered Che’s plans when he bowed to American pressure during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Che was clear about what he had hoped for. Speaking to The London Daily Worker in November 1962, he stated of the nuclear weapons, ‘We would have used them against the very heart of the US, including New York City’.[36] While in possession of nuclear arms, Che had stated a desire for the ‘atomic extermination’ of the ‘hyenas’ who resided in ‘the great enemy of Humanity: the United States of America’.[37] Just as the Jihadist claims to ‘love death as you love life’, so Che boasted at the First Latin American Youth Congress, in July 1959: ‘These people [of Cuba] you see today tell you that even if they should disappear from the face of the earth because an atomic war is unleashed in their names … they would feel completely happy and fulfilled’.[38] Indeed, as Paul Berman notes, ‘[t]o get himself killed, and to get a lot of other people killed, was central to Che’s imagination’.[39] Had Che’s dreams become a reality he would have almost certainly provoked nuclear war between the USA and the USSR. Millions would have died, including the Cuban people he is supposed to have loved so much, but that was what he most wanted. He fantasised of genocidal bloodbaths and fetishised death, just as today followers of the Jihadist movement do the same. With his plans for nuclear armageddon thwarted, Che instead planned a conventional bomb attack on New York City. While this plot was also halted, this time by US Intelligence, Che had actually set in motion a plan to bomb Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. As Humberto Fontova notes, the Madrid train bombings carried out by Jihadists in March 2004 used a grand total of 100 kilos of TNT and killed and maimed almost 2,000 people.[40] Had Che’s assault on New York come to fruition, the toll of deaths and casualties could have reached 10,000, with 9/11 paling in comparison.
As with other terrorist murderers, Che was a dreamer of the day; a man whose darkest visions almost became a reality and who, thanks to having a position of governmental power, was able to enact some of his totalitarian dreams. The key difference between Che and Jihadists such as the 7/7 bombers was one of the ability to carry out his fantasies. While Che’s fantasies were ostensibly rooted in Communist ideology and opposing ‘imperialism’, and while Jihadism is ostensibly rooted in Islam and protecting Muslims from ‘imperialism’, the parallels between the two are too strong to be passed off as coincidental. Che was a narcissistic fantasist, as are Western Jihadists. Che wanted ‘nuclear extermination’, ‘cold-blooded killing’ and ‘many Vietnams’. The recently convicted gang of would-be British Jihadists also expressed similar desires in their self-important ‘martyrdom’ videos. Abdulla Ahmed Ali spoke of ‘floods of martyr operations, volcanoes and anger and revenge and erupting among your capital [sic]‘ and found himself ‘over the moon’ at the thought of ‘your people’s body parts … decorating the streets’. Umar Islam stated that he was ‘happy’ at the thought of ‘[m]artyrdom operations upon martyrdom operations … raining on these Kuffar’ and that he and others were happy because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ‘because Allah could make martyrs of them’. Ibrahim Savant told British Muslims to ‘[c]ease debate and enter the battlefields seeking paradise’ and, addressing dead ‘mujahideen’ of the past, stated that he had desired ‘for years’ to ‘sacrifice what you have sacrificed’. Arafat Waheed Khan promised: ‘We will rain upon you such a terror and destruction that you will never feel peace and security. There will be floods of martyrdom operations and bombs falling through your lands’.[41]
Just as Jihadism bears many similarities to post-war left and right-wing extremist movements, in contemporary Jihadism we find a movement made up of exactly the kind of people who flourished in the Third Reich. The nightmare of National Socialist Germany effectively came into being as a result of people paying heed to the fantasies of an obscure second-rate failed artist and a superstitious chicken farmer. The failed artist imagined himself to have been ‘chosen’ by Destiny to ‘save’ Germany, while the chicken farmer thought of himself as the head of an order of medieval knights. I am speaking of course of the messianic fantasist Adolf Hitler and his oddball sidekick Heinrich Himmler. It may sound flippant to speak of some of the worst mass murderers of the last century using such language, yet fundamentally these men were as narcissistic and out of touch with reality as the Jihadists who point at a video camera and think they are ‘soldiers’. As with Che Guevara, what distinguished the Nazis from the Mohammad Sidique Khans and Shehzad Tanweers of the world was their gaining real political power. The horrors of Nazism, still incomprehensible to many of us, are, as Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke puts it, the direct result of ‘apocalyptic hysteria in the leadership of a modern state’.[42] The Third Reich was ‘the ultimate dream-world’ of a band of twisted fantasists.[43]
As with Jihadists, Hitler had a vision of a world in flames and, more than anything, was a follower of the cult of death. Just as Jihadists think the Crusades never actually ended, and that the reason for Islamic ‘humiliation’ is because of ‘imperialists’ and a Jewish conspiracy, so Hitler also railed against the ‘oppression’ suffered by Germany and indulged in fantasies of a Jewish plot to rule the world and of his role as a national saviour, striking a decisive blow in an epic war of the ‘Aryans’ against ‘international Jewry’. Hitler’s status as a dreamer of the day is solidified in the fact that his politics were based almost entirely on illusory notions. The world Jewish conspiracy didn’t exist, and Germany didn’t lose the First World War because of Jewish subversion. Just as Jihadists use the Iraq War to validate their nihilistic desires, so Hitler rallied Germany by appealing to the sense that their ‘honour’ had been stolen from them in World War One. Both Jihadism and Nazism thrive through the promotion of a sense of being a ‘victim’ of dark forces allied against them, and both use this as a ‘reason’ to justify their desire for grand conflicts and a quest to ‘purify’ the world through violence.
All countries pay tribute to those who have died defending their citizens from tyranny, but in the minds of Jihadists who dream of ‘martyrdom’ and also in the mind of Hitler, there is actually something more glorious about the ‘heroic death’ than there is in living a fulfilling life. Hence, as Frederic Spotts rightly notes, Hitler turned ‘reverence for the dead into a necrophilic cult as soon as he reached power’.[44] Hitler had ‘Temples of Honour’ built in Munich that were constantly watched over by an ‘Eternal Guard’ and held sarcophagi containing the remains of ‘Martyrs of the Movement’, men killed in the 1923 putsch attempt. He drew up plans for a huge ‘Soldiers’ Hall’ in the centre of Berlin, as well as a mausoleum and two ‘cemeteries of honour’, yet ‘[m]ore dramatic still were the gigantic Totenburgen, citadels for the dead. He envisaged a network of these huge stone structures to girdle his empire, from the Atlantic to the Urals, from Norway to North Africa. They were to glorify war, honour its dead heroes and symbolize the impregnable power of the German race’.[45] Himmler shared the same cultic approach to death and built a crypt in Wewelsburg Castle known as the ‘Realm of the Dead’ in which the cremated remains of his SS elite were to be entombed in granite obelisks.[46] In Hitler’s Germany, films were shown at the cinema featuring ‘chronicles of the Nazi martyrs’. The epic dedicated to Horst Wessel, Hans Westmar, ‘transmuted its hero … into an ascetic with burning eyes and jutting jaw, utterly indifferent to such mundane emotions as family feeling, personal friendship or sexual desire’.[47] Just as Mohammad Sidique Khan stated that he had willingly ‘forsaken everything’, including his wife and young child, so the hero of the Nazi imagination put aside such mundane concerns as family and life itself in pursuit of the higher cause. At the 1929 Nuremberg Rally, Hitler proclaimed: ‘The hero says, what is the value of my life if I can save the community?’[48] and his bodyguards enthusiastically sang:
In black we are dressed,
In blood we are drenched,
Death’s Head on our helmets,
Hurrah! Hurrah![49]
We have already seen that Che Guevara wanted to fire nuclear missiles at New York City and plotted huge bomb attacks when that plan failed to come to fruition. Hitler also shared the same perverted fantasies. He was ecstatic watching documentary films of London and Warsaw being consumed in a sea of flames caused by German air raids: ‘”Above all he was deeply impressed by photos of London burning,” Goebbels noted. On another occasion, while imagining New York being consumed in a hurricane of fire – “skyscrapers being turned into gigantic burning torches, collapsing upon one another, the glow of the exploding city illuminating the dark sky” – he worked himself into a delirium of joy’.[50]
As it turned out, where Hitler and Che failed, Jihadists succeeded. But the links between Nazi fantasies and those of Jihadists go far deeper than a shared dream of New York and London in flames. The Nazis actually helped to foment what has become the Jihadist movement and, as we shall see, the results of this union of hatred are still being experienced today. The Nazi-Jihadist collaboration is one of the less well know aspects of the history of the Third Reich, but it was deeply significant.
The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from 1921 to 1948, Haj Amin al-Husseini, is arguably one of the key figures in the genesis of the modern Jihadist movement. Al-Husseini was an extremist ‘[e]volving in a parallel track’ with the Egyptian Hassan el-Banna who established the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo in 1928, an organisation al-Husseini joined and went on to lead in Palestine after the Second World War,[51] and an organisation that provides the glue that binds elements within Islamism with radical Jihadism today. Al-Husseini was a great admirer of the German Nazi regime, and the Nuremberg Tribunals and Adolf Eichmann’s trial revealed the extent of this admiration. He first made contact with the Third Reich in 1937 via the German consul in Damascus and declared his solidarity with Hitler. Hitler duly sent Eichmann and SS Oberscherfuehrer Herbert Hagen to Syria for a meeting with the Mufti, resulting in his becoming Nazi Germany’s main representative in the Middle East.[52]. In 1943, al-Husseini contacted Alfred Rosenberg requesting the term ‘anti-Semitism’ be dropped in favour of ‘anti-Judaism’ as ‘anti-Semitism’ was a ‘term [that] had a negative connotation affecting the Arab world which sympathized with the Nazi cause’.[53] Just as today Jihadists co-opt the language of Western ‘anti-imperialist’ discourse to justify their actions, in the 1940s ‘Third Reich officials spouted “anti-imperialist” rhetoric when talking about the Arab world’,[54] much to the pleasure of al-Husseini.
Towards the end of the 1930s, the Mufti spent time in Lebanon agitating for the Nazis, before setting up a base in Iran. During the war, Iran became ‘a haven for Gestapo agents’, no doubt an agreeable situation for al-Husseini, whose ‘venomous rhetoric filled the newspapers and radio broadcasts in Tehran’.[55] Thanks in particular to the work of al-Husseini, ‘[i]n Tehran’s marketplace, it was common to see placards that declared, “In heaven, Allah is your master. On Earth, it is Adolf Hitler”‘.[56] In 1941, the Mufti relocated to Nazi Germany itself, where he met with Hitler, Himmler, Von Ribbentrop, and other Nazi leaders.[57] These meetings resulted in al-Husseini being given his own bureau in Berlin, as well as access to Radio Berlin, which he used to pump visciously anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi broadcasts into the Arab world.[58] One such broadcast in 1944 contained the command: ‘Arabs, rise as one man and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history and religion. This saves your honour. God is with you’.[59]
In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal was provided with a written statement by Dieter Wisliceny, a close collaborator of Adolf Eichmann in the ‘Jewish Affairs’ division of the Reich Central Security Office. This statement revealed that in 1942, Eichmann gave al-Husseini a detailed presentation on the Nazi ‘solution of the European Jewish question’. The Mufti was ‘very impressed’ by what he heard and requested that after Germany won the war, Eichmann should send one of his agents to Jerusalem, where he would serve as his ‘personal adviser’ in ‘solving the Jewish question in the Middle East’.[60] In a summer 1943 meeting with Himmler, the Mufti was told about the Nazi successes in ‘liquidating’ the Jews, with the Reichsführer-SS proudly boasting that ‘up to now we have liquidated around three million of them’.[61] In his post-war memoirs, al-Husseini attempted to whitewash the extent of his Nazi involvement by claiming to be shocked by what Himmler told him. Clearly the shock didn’t last long, as in November of that year he declared that Muslims should follow the example of the Nazis who had devised a ‘definitive solution to the Jewish problem’.[62] Years before this, the Mufti had received a cordial telegram from Himmler in which he proclaimed: ‘The National Socialist Party has inscribed on its flag “the extermination of world Jewry”. Our party sympathises with the fight of the Arabs … I send my greetings and wishes for success in your fight’.[63] Despite his typically Nazi attempts at post-war historical ‘revisionism’, it is clear that the Mufti fully endorsed the Nazi regime and, moreover, saw in it and its example the opportunity to annihilate every Jew in Muslim countries. When Westerners today excuse Jihadists’ talk of killing Jews by claiming they are referring only to Israelis and not to world Jewry, they would do well to take note of the example of al-Husseini.
Another aspect of al-Husseini’s relationship with the Nazis is even more shocking. Not content with merely promoting Nazism through his propaganda, he went a stage further and helped Himmler organise a Muslim division in the Waffen SS. In 1943, the Mufti travelled to Yugosalvia and succeeded in raising an army of at least 20,000 Muslims who made up the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar. The division dressed in Nazi uniforms and launched a genocidal campaign, killing thousands of Serbian civilians. The rampage of the Muslim division included the murder of Jews across Croatia and Hungary.[64; 65] This targeting of Jews was motivated by al-Husseini’s conviction that Jews are ‘the bitterest enemies of the Muslims who since time immemorial have confronted Muslims with cunning and trickery’,[66] language that we find on the lips of Jihadists today.
After Germany’s defeat and the collapse of the Third Reich, the Mufti made his way to Egypt, where he was given a luxurious villa in Alexandria by King Farouk. His arrival in Egypt served as a beacon to fugutive Nazis, and a ‘steady stream’ of Third Reich criminals hid themselves in Cairo: ‘As more Nazis inundated the Egyptian capital, the posh bars and elite social clubs of Cairo attracted a rogues’ gallery of SS renegades, Gestapo “interrogation” specialists, and German rocket scientists’.[67] Nazi experts were put to work assisting the Egyptian police force and ‘advising’ the Egyptian army,[68] and Major General Otto Ernst Remer was appointed as a ‘political adviser’ to President Nasser.[69] Joining Remer were several of his associates from the banned neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party, who busied themselves with gunrunning schemes for Arab clients. While in Cairo, Remer wrote an article claiming that Germans and Arabs were being oppressed by ‘international Jewry’ and that ‘the creation of a strong Arab army is the immediate and direct concern to Germany’s patriotic forces [i.e. Nazis], which are prepared to offer the services of their best men’.[70] In the post-Farouk era, the Mufti moved to a suburb of Cairo, where he lived in a guarded villa and ‘entertained delegations from throughout the Arab world while maintaining close contact with radical nationalists from Germany and other countries’. The Mufti engaged in fund raising from Arab anti-Semites and distributed more than a million dollars to various neo-Nazi groups to pay for anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propaganda.[71]
While in Cairo, Johann von Leers, one of the Third Reich’s most venomous anti-Jewish polemicists and a good friend of the Mufti, converted to Islam and adopted the name Omar Amin. Writing to an American neo-Nazi activist, von Leers informed him that ‘[i]f there is any hope to free the world from Jewish tyranny, it is with the Moslems, who stand steadfastly against Zionism, Colonialism and Imperialism’.[72] He explained further:
One thing is clear – more and more patriot Germans join the great Arab revolution against beastly imperialism. In Algeria half a company of German soldiers … have gone on the side of the Algerians and have embraced Islam. That is good! To hell with Christianity, for in Christianity’s name Germany has been sold to our oppressors! Our place as an oppressed nation under the execrable Western colonialist Bonn government must be on the side of the Arab nationalist revolt against the West. Let Adenauer be furious that honest German patriots [Nazis] are not extradited to him or to his British or American bosses, by those freedom-loving Arab countries. May the British swines call us ‘meddlers’ – in a short time British meddling in the Middle East will be over, as it has finished in Iraq where the infidel servants of British imperialism are all killed. l hamd ul Allah! [sic] … the backing given by USA to the Jewish tyrants in Germany will make the German nation revolt. Indeed, for our nation there is only one hope – to get rid of Western imperialism by joining the Arab-led anti-imperialist group.[73]
Thanks to the Mufti’s connections, von Leers found himself working for the Egyptian Information Ministry, where he churned out ‘anti-Zionist’ hate literature and made regular radio broadcasts on Radio Cairo that reached much of the Arab world.[74] Joining von Leers at the Ministry were ‘dozens of European Nazis who welcomed a fresh opportunity to continue their vendetta against the Jews’.[75] Nazis in the Ministry produced Arabic translations of Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which the Egyptian government then published. For Nasser, The Protocols ‘proves beyond the shadow of a doubt’ that Zionists ‘govern the fate of the European continent’.[76] As a great admirer of the Nazis, when organising his personal security detail Nasser called on the services of a former SS General wanted in Poland for war crimes and another SS man wanted for participating in the extermination of Jews in the Ukraine.[77]
Von Leers died in Cairo in 1965, thereby escaping war crimes charges, but without his hoped for German ‘revolt’ taking place. While von Leers is dead and the ‘revolt’ never occurred, his legacy remains in the form of the ideology he helped to spread throughout the Arab world. In a very tangible form, the legacy of the Cairo Nazis has returned in contemporary Britain.
In 2002, two Daily Telegraph journalists were surprised to find an Arab language copy of Mein Kampf on sale in three newsagents on Edgware Road in central London, in an area with a large Arab population. The book, with a picture of Hitler and a swastika on its cover, was being sold for £10, alongside newspapers, magazines, cigarettes, and sweets. The book was the product of a Lebanese publishing house and dated to the 1990s, but the translation itself dated to the 1960s and had an introduction by the translator, Luis al-Haj.[78] ‘Luis al-Haj’ was the Arab name adopted by Louis Heiden, a wartime employee of the German Press Agency and one of von Leers’ circle of emigree Nazis in Cairo,[79] and in the introduction he proclaims: ‘National Socialism did not die with the death of its herald. Rather, its seeds multiplied under each star’.
In 2005, another investigation of Edgware Road turned up Arab language copies of both Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in two bookshops. The copy of Mein Kampf is, once again, the translation of the Nazi Louis Heiden. The edition of The Protocols was published in Egypt and is accompanied by ‘academic’ analysis from Dr.Ahmad Hijazi al-Saqa (Professor of Comparative Religion at Al-Azhar University) and Hisham Khadr (a journalist for the Qatari periodical Al-Sharq), as well as a Foreword written by Ali Jum’ah (Professor of the Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence at Al-Azhar University).[80] As we have seen, Egypt has been exporting copies of Mein Kampf since the ’60s, thanks to the original work of German Nazis at the Egyptian Information Ministry. How von Leers would be gloating if he were aware that 40 years after his death his attempts at infecting Muslims with Nazi ideology were still succeeding.
It is not just Britain that the Muslim-Nazi alliance continues to haunt. Seven of the 9/11 terrorists spent time living and studying in Germany, and Jihadism has a worrying presence there. This year, Der Spiegel revealed that ‘[y]oung children raised to be anti-Semitic [by their Muslim parents] are already using the phrase “You Jew!” as a derogatory expression in kindergartens and on playgrounds. Schoolchildren berate their teachers, calling them Jew dogs, for not offering Sharia-compatible instruction, and Jewish schoolchildren are attacked and feel compelled to switch to Berlin’s Jewish high school and to hide the insignia of their Jewish faith – the yarmulke and the Star of David – when in public’.[81] A 2007 German Interior Ministry study on the worldviews of ‘Muslims in Germany’ concluded that ‘anti-Semitic attitudes were found among young Muslims far more often than among non-Muslim immigrants or domestic non-Muslims’ and that about 10% of Muslim students expressed ‘extreme’ prejudice towards Jews.[82] Teachers have reported Muslim students openly supporting the Holocaust, making comments such as ‘I like Hitler; he did the right thing with the Jews’, and refusing to participate in school trips to concentration camp memorials. In one incident, during a school visit to the German Historical Museum, ‘a group of Muslim youth gathered in front of a replica of a gas chamber in Auschwitz and applauded’.[83] Matthias Küntzel asks, ‘Can we blame Israel for the mindset that leads to such activities?’ and rightly suggests that ‘[p]erhaps it would be more apt to conclude that the waves of hatred that the Nazis’ shortwave radio transmitter once broadcast into the Arab world are now returning in the form of a delayed echo’.[84]
Just as Himmler admired and befriended Al-Husseini, and just as von Leers enthusiastically promoted a perverse union of radical Islam and Nazism, so today we find neo-Nazis applauding Jihadism and seeking to offer it their support. The 9/11 attacks are a case in point. In the aftermath of the atrocities of that day, neo-Nazis paid tribute to their Jihadist ideological brothers, thanking them for ‘knocking out’ the ‘common enemy’. The German former Red Army Faction terrorist turned neo-Nazi, Horst Mahler, called the Jihadist assault on civilian America ‘military attacks on the symbols of mammonistic world power’ that were ‘justified warfare by opponents of the global structures in the United States’, stating that ‘they have my full sympathy’. Another German far-Right group, National Resistance, said that September 11th was ‘a day for celebration’. Neo-Nazis in the North-Eastern town of Stralsund publicly celebrated and burnt the American flag, while a neo-Nazi in Eisenach was arrested after praising the attacks in a television interview.[85] On the evening of 9/11, French neo-Fascist youth celebrated with champagne. Jan Kopal, head of the Czech National Social Bloc, declared at a rally in Prague that bin Laden is ‘an example for our children’. Dr William Pierce, head of the American neo-Nazi organisation the National Alliance, stated that he wished neo-Nazis had ‘half as much testicular fortitude’ as the 9/11 attackers.[86]
Years after Hitler fantasised about New York’s skyscrapers ‘being turned into gigantic burning torches’, the 9/11 attackers made that dream a reality. For the far-Right, the ‘Zionist conspiracy’ that supposedly runs America had been given a pounding by ‘anti-imperialists’, while the far-Left, devotees of men like Che Guevara who dreamt of a nuclear Holocaust in New York City, justify Jihadism using the same ‘anti-Zionist’ and ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric. What the Nazis, neo-Nazis, Jihadists, and extreme Leftists all have in common is a shared illusory vision of the world. They are obsessed by fantasies of fighting epic and heroic battles against ‘imperialist’ forces, Jewish conspiracies, Capitalism, and so on; narcissistically and maniacally imagining themselves to have some ‘calling’ to obliterate the modern world. As we have seen, Jihadism is in no sense a unique phenomenon but rather an Islamically flavoured variant of the same totalitarian and death obsessed outlook that underlies all extremist ‘revolutionary’ movements. Horst Mahler has slipped easily from Marxist terrorism to espousing Nazism and applauding Jihadism; Johann von Leers swapped allegiance to the SS for allegiance to Jihadism; David Myatt has turned from advocating an ‘Aryan’ revolution to supporting Osama bin Laden. We find neo-Nazis hailing Che Guevara, Marxists making common cause with Hitler-admiring Jihadist suicide bombers in the Middle East, Leftists ‘explaining’ 7/7 as a response to the Western presence in Iraq, Muslims selling Nazi texts in the heart of London, and British born Muslims living out childish fantasies of being mighty soldiers by killing and maiming innocent people as they immolate themselves in explosions that they believe will earn them a place of honour in the history books. The truth is that extremists of all stripes are not motivated by real world events and concerns, but rather real world concerns are given as a justification for their desire to destroy, to kill, to glorify themselves. British would-be Jihadist Umar Islam illustrated this perfectly when he stated that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan actually made him ‘happy’ because they gave him a reason to become a ‘martyr’.
When we see people committing horrific acts we naturally look for a ‘reason’. Of Jihadists, people tend to blame religion or to blame the West for its foreign policy. Religion offers ‘justification’ for perverted actions, just as imperialism – real or imagined – can be used to ‘justify’ terrorism, but when we credit Jihadists with having an authentic, logical ‘reason’ for their murderous and nihilistic campaign, we play into their hands. They want us to think that they are martyrs for Allah or ‘soldiers’ opposing oppression. Osama bin Laden typifies this approach. He spouts Muslim rhetoric for a Muslim audience and ‘anti-imperialist’ rhetoric for Western liberals. Che Guevara was an atheist, he had no ‘heaven’ to go to, yet he fantasised also of mass deaths and a nuclear apocalypse, while at the same time claiming that it was ‘imperialism’ that was to blame. In Jihadism we are not seeing something uniquely Islamic, although it comes wrapped in the cloak of Islam. We are in fact seeing yet another example of the same poisonous self-infatuated death worship that lay at the heart of Nazism. We are indeed facing a new manifestation of Fascism, and perhaps, ironically, we can only ‘understand’ Jihadism in our inability to understand it.
How this ‘new’ outlet for the dreamers of the day can be fought in the West is a question beyond my capabilities, but the first solid step is looking realistically at exactly what we are facing. Every time we give an ounce of credence to the justifications given by Jihadists for their actions, we are are playing into their hands, emboldening them, and reinforcing their fantasies. This is perhaps where the rhetoric of the ‘War on Terror’ is most fatally flawed. They want a ‘war’ and we have handed it to them. Equally, every time we present this as an issue of Islam, we validate their nonsense about fighting for Islam. The Western media, especially the British media, have been all too complicit in pushing the Jihadists’ propaganda and boosting their egos. It is time we stopped listening to these people. We shouldn’t be seeing air time devoted to the ravings of self-important cultists like Al-Muhajiroun. Jihadists dream fundamentally childish dreams of epic battles and martyrdom, and delude themselves that they are ‘important’ people. It’s time we viewed them as the pathetic attention seeking criminals that they really are.
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[4] Ibid.
[5] Ian Herbert (2005) ‘Absence of youngest killer suggests he was just
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[10] Ibid, 13-14.
[11] Malik, ‘Born in Bradford’.
[12] Watson, ‘Al-Muhajiroun’.
[13] Ibid.
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[32] Ibid.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Quoted in Paul Berman (2004) ‘The Cult of Che: Don’t applaud The
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[35] Humberto Fontova (2007) ‘Che Guevara Planned Attacks Against the
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[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Quoted in Wolf, ‘Poster Killer’.
[39] Berman, ‘The Cult of Che’.
[40] Fontova, ‘Che Guevara Planned Attacks Against the U.S.’.
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[45] Ibid.
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[47] Richard Grunberger (1971) A Social History of the Third Reich
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[48] Quoted in Spotts, Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics: 114.
[49] Lumsden, Himmler’s Black Order: 145.
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[52] Ibid.
[53] Emerson Vermaat (2008) ‘Haj Amin Al-Husseini – Nazi collaborator
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[54] Martin A. Lee (1999) The Beast Reawakens: Fascism’s Resurgence
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[55] Edwin Black (2006) ‘Denial of Holocaust nothing new in Iran: Ties
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[56] Ibid.
[57] Mitchell Bard, ‘The Mufti and the Führer’, Jewish Virtual Library.
Online:
[58] Black, ‘Denial of Holocaust nothing new in Iran’.
[59] Quoted in Bat Ye’or (1985) The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under
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[60] Wolfgang G. Schwanitz (2008) ‘Amin al-Husaini and the Holocaust.
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[61] Ibid.
[62] Ibid.
[63] Quoted in Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: 390.
[64] Vermaat, ‘Haj Amin Al-Husseini’.
[65] Bard, ‘The Mufti and the Führer’.
[66] Quoted in Vermaat, ‘Haj Amin Al-Husseini’.
[67] Lee, The Beast Reawakens: 123, 127.
[68] Ibid: 129.
[69] Ibid: 127.
[70] Ibid: 127-128.
[71] Ibid: 128.
[72] Quoted in Martin A. Lee (2002) ‘The Swastika and the Crescent’,
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[73] Quoted in Kevin Coogan (1999) Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker
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[74] Lee, The Beast Reawakens: 128.
[75] Ibid: 129.
[76] Ibid: 129.
[77] Ibid: 130.
[78] Sean O’Neill and John Steele (2002) ‘Mein Kampf for sale, in Arabic’,
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[79] Lee, The Beast Reawakens: 129.
[80] Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (2005) ‘Exporting
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[81] Matthias Küntzel (2008) ‘”Wipe Out The Jews”: Anti-Semitic
Hate Speech in the Name of Islam’, Spiegel Online, May 16. Online:
[82] Ibid.
[83] Ibid.
[84] Ibid.
[85] Kate Connolly (2001) ‘Germans fear neo-Nazi link with Islamists’,
The Observer, October 7. Online:
[86] Lee, ‘The Swastika and the Crescent’.
Edmund Standing holds a BA in Theology & Religious Studies and an MA in Critical & Cultural Theory. His other articles on this website can be found in the articles archive.
