Islam's Fascist roots -- Rumsfeld uses the "F" word

By Aussiegirl

China Confidential has a lengthy and in-depth review of the deep roots of Fascism in Islam, dating back to WWII and the Grand Mufti's close association with Hitler. Powerful reading. Don't miss. When the Islamists squeak about being called Fascists, it's only because the truth hurts. Hard-hitting stuff you won't find anywhere else.

China Confidential

The defense secretary's use of the "F" word follows remarks earlier this month by President George W. Bush, after British security agencies foiled a plot to bomb US-bound passenger jets, that America was "at war with Islamic fascists."

Which is true. Islamism is a political movement, akin to clerical fascism. Presently bridging Islam's Sunni and Shiite branches, despite their theological differences and historical rivalries, Islamism has its origins in the formation of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna, the Brotherhood was an outgrowth of an earlier pan-Islamic movement.

In 1936, the Brotherhood's youth group and other fronts spawned paramilitary units, initially called the Rovers and then renamed the Battalions, which were explicitly modeled along European fascist lines.

Other Arab political parties founded during the '30s that were modeled after Nazi and fascist parties included Syria's Popular Party and Socialist Nationalist Party, whose leader, Anton Saada, saw himself as an Arab Hitler. The party's banner sported a Nazi swastika; members used the Nazi salute.

Iraq's Baath party was formed upon the principles and organizational structure of the Nazi party. Iraq, because of its oil, was a strategically important battleground between the Axis and Allied powers in World War II. Nazi propaganda was broadcast throughout Baghdad, and pro-Nazi Iraqis massacred Jews during the war.

In Palestine, the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini declared his solidarity with Nazi Germany in 1937. A cleric and political activist, the fanatically anti-Semitic Mufti led a campaign of terrorism against Jewish and British targets during the 1936-'39 Arab Revolt, which, according to documentation from the Nuremberg and Adolf Eichmann trials, was financed by the Nazi SS. The high ranking Nazi, who was responsible for implementing the industrialized genocide of the "Final Solution" that sought to exterminate European Jewry, visited British controlled Palestine during the '30s, met with the Mufti, and subsequently maintained regular contact with him in Berlin. The Mufti spent the war years in the Nazi capital as Hitler's special guest, advocating the mass murder of Jews in radio broadcasts aimed at the Middle East. The Mufti also recruited Balkan Muslims for SS units that massacred Jewish communities throughout the region.

At the Nuremberg Trials, Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny (subsequently executed as a war criminal) testified: "The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and Himmler in the execution of this plan. ... He was one of Eichmann's best friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito the gas chamber of Auschwitz."