Nazism and the Texas Synagogue Terrorist

One of the big international stories over the past few days has been the invasion of a Texas synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel, in Colleyville by an armed British-Pakistani man, Malik Faisal Akram. Akram took the rabbi and the congregation, who were there for morning prayers, hostage demanding the release of a Pakistani neuroscientist, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who was jailed for 85 years on terrorism charges in Afghanistan. Fortunately, the rabbi and his flock managed to escape as the FBI shot Akram dead. Akram’s brother blamed mental health issues, and two teens have been arrested, suspected of terrorism, in Manchester. Real anti-Semitic incidents like this are becoming all too regular. If I remember correctly, it was around this time last year that a White Nazi shot up the Tree of Life Synagogue in America. This is what real, vicious anti-Semitism looks like, not Jeremy Corbyn nodding in agreement with a Holocaust survivor who compares the Israeli state’s treatment of the Palestinians to the Nazis’ persecution of his. And as a survivor of the Shoah, I’d say that the gentleman concerned had every right to make that comparison, no matter how it may infuriate the extreme nationalists of the Israel lobby.

We’re used to western, Fascist anti-Semitism and its origins in stupid, poisonous conspiracy theories about an international Jewish plot to enslave Whites, and there is now a considerable amount of anti-Semitism in the Islamic world. A few years ago Egyptian television broadcast an adaptation of the infamous forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. While Islam’s history has not been entirely without Jew-hatred, historians have traditionally considered that it was much less than in Christendom. In fact, the type of poisonous anti-Semitism now inspiring such attacks and atrocities in the Muslim world really only dates from about the Second World War and the formation of the Jewish colonies in mandate Palestine. As conflict broke out between the Jewish settlers and Palestinians, the Nazis decided that they were going to try to appeal to the Muslim world as allies against the Jews and the British. They therefore recruited the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who formed a squad of Muslim Nazi auxiliaries to fight in the Balkans and elsewhere. The Nazis also got busy trying to formulate an Islamic version of their own wretched ideology, which would inspire Muslims to join them. They therefore decided that there were four important, defining similarities between Islam and Nazism. I can’t quite remember what they are – it’s a little while since I read up on it. But I do remember that they were so broad and vague that there was precious little in them that could be seen as unique to Islam, or convince anyone not already an Islamist Nazi fanatic that there was any particular similarity between Islam and Nazism. They also attempted to reformulate Islamic history, creating a gross distortion that presented the Jews as the inveterate enemies of Islam since the days of Mohammed. Mohammed did indeed fight battles against the Jewish tribes in Arabia during his career. But the impression I’ve had was that, after his victories over them, there wasn’t much anti-Semitism in Islam. Pogroms did break out sporadically, and in Morocco Jews were confined to ghettos as they were in Christian Europe. But generally Islam was more tolerant of the Jews than the Christian world.

From what I’ve seen, ,the Islamists responsible for terrorist atrocities across the world are very strongly influence by the Nazi conspiracy theories. They seem to believe, like their White, western counterparts, that there is some global, secret Jewish conspiracy controlling everything behind the scenes. The Jews are somehow responsible for every thing evil in the world, and particularly for any attack on Islam and its people. Combating Islamism means exposing and fighting the perverted view of Islamic history that was introduced by Hitler’s minions. Just as fighting anti-Semitism means standing up to White, non-Muslim Nazi thugs.

If this is done, then hopefully society will become more tolerant and terrorist attacks on synagogues, whether by Whites, Muslims or anybody, will become much rarer.

Tags: Aafia Siddiqui, Adolf Hitler, anti-semitism, Arabia, Christianity, Conspiracy Theories, FBI, Ghettos, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Holocaust, Holocaust Survivors, Israel Lobby, Jeremy Corbyn, Jews, Mohammed, Palestinians, Pogroms, Shootings, Synagogues, Texas, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Whites, World War II