Times of India Does it Again – VIII

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW&GZ=T

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Times of India Does it Again – VIII

The Times of India is on the rampage again. Tired of presenting its Front Page as the prime repository of news all the evils of the corruption and deep fissures in Indian politics and society, it has decided to bring in the Muslims in the focus to divert the attention of its harried readership to savour the rich store of inanities that its so-called progressives, including S. Balakrishnan and M. Wajihuddin, can dish out as quickly as any fast food in the now news-hungry land that has develop the acquired taste, nay the addiction to now feed on the sleaze and filth.

The distortion, disinformation and misinformation is deliberate and verging on criminal when Times of India owners allow its staff to sow seeds of dissension, division and strife in the community. While on the one side, it is burning midnight oil to feed the flames of ‘Asha ke deep’, making up friends with Pakistan, it has gone on to attack Sharia laws with its typical treatment of news in headlines, that has no bearing to the truth. This double dealing newsmaking can only earn deep resentment in 200 million Muslims of India, for deliberate provocation of India’s prime newspaper to take on the supposed might of the Mullahs, by distorted representation of Islam to open it to public derision and scorn.

It would have been fitness of objective reporting, if Times of India, had published the full scan of the Deoband fatwa, which according to TOI report headline has declared --- Women’s earnings Haram. Apparently TOI headline is being used by its editors without full knowledge of what the word ‘Haram’ connotes in Sharia. It merely exposes the open ignorance of the TOI staff, who have been allowed to frame headlines to inflame emotions and outrage among Muslims of India. The whole fatwa needs lots of context to be available for such mischievous and provocative headline. TOI’s S. Balakrishnan himself uses the same word ‘Haram’ in the next report on inside pages as describing proximity between males and females in a confined space, that can lead to unwanted consequences. Islamic Sharia from Malaysia to Saudi Arabia being Muslim dominated states; promote the same norms of Sharia that Deoband is plainly expounding. Deoband is not coming out with anything new or of its own exclusive authorship and copyright. The motive behind such attacks on Deoband, Sharia and Muslim society is to stop their commanding role in the newly emerging political clout of the Muslim voters that practically all political parties at all level are fully apprehensive of and have set the commercially handicapped mainstream media to start a campaign of distortion, disinformation and division among the Muslims. Muslims are neither uninformed of such Machiavellian shenanigans, nor are prepared to let barking dogs keep on barking. The quotes of harebrained women scholars who may be academically informed but woefully ignorant of the conspiracies hatched against Indian Muslims and therefore can only earn widespread derision and scorn for their almost automatic and programmed intervention in the national debate without any overall societal mandate.

India of today is not free of foreign domination and investor money rules the roost. The western capitalist and socialist model that promote consumerism have not gone full circle to fully grasp the difference between Sharia model of preferring distinct roles of men and women and family life in overall economic system. Those who are of open mind, can easily make out how the West is suffering from so many ills of the new society, geared to ‘women’s liberation’ while throwing them to wolves who would rather feed on their earnings and have comfortable lives. The kind of traumas that single women suffer in the western countries have yet to get any sympathy from these progressive brigades. The trafficking of women, the lonely lives of women, the childless misery of whole generations forced to go for adoption and artificial insemination and the most horrible and immoral route of surrogate pregnancies, are yet to get the attention of social reformers in right earnest. Is it not strange an India that should be rightly proud of its traditions, should be so brain-washed that nothing seems to be odd when gay Israelis are descending on our poor women and rent their bodies for pittances, so that they can live their immoral lives with the help of our impoverished womanhood. The national and nationalist media is silent. It has more urgent business to tackle Mullahs first. Thats where the moolah is.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

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Revenge of the Rabbi Sanhedrin

Revenge of the Rabbi Sanhedrin

 

In 1492, Chemor, chief Rabbi of Spain, wrote to the Grand Sanhedrin, which had its seat in Constantinople, for advice, when a Spanish law threatened expulsion.2

This was the reply:

” Beloved brethren in Moses, we have received your letter in which you tell us of the anxieties and misfortunes which you are enduring. We are pierced by as great pain to hear it as yourselves.

The advice of the Grand Satraps and Rabbis is the following:

1. As for what you say that the King of Spain obliges you to become Christians: do it, since you cannot do otherwise.

2. As for what you say about the command to despoil you of your property: make your sons merchants that they may despoil, little by little, the Christians of theirs.

3. As for what you say about making attempts on your lives: make your sons doctors and apothecaries, that they may take away Christians’ lives.

4. As for what you say of their destroying your synagogues: make your sons canons and clerics in order that they may destroy their churches. [Emphasis mine]

5. As for the many other vexations you complain of: arrange that your sons become advocates and lawyers, and see that they always mix in affairs of State, that by putting Christians under your yoke you may dominate the world and be avenged on them.

6. Do not swerve from this order that we give you, because you will find by experience that, humiliated as you are, you will reach the actuality of power.

(Signed) PRINCE OF THE JEWS OF CONSTANTINOPLE.”

2. The reply is found in the sixteenth century Spanish book, La Silva Curiosa, by Julio-Iniguez de Medrano (Paris, Orry, 1608), on pages 156 and 157, with the following explanation: “This letter following was found in the archives of Toledo by the Hermit of Salamanca, (while) searching the ancient records of the kingdoms of Spain; and, as it is expressive and remarkable, I wish to write it here.” — vide, photostat facing page 80.

~ The above was quoted from Waters Flowing Eastward by Paquita de Shishmareff, pp. 73-74

Queries in Public Arena:

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Queries in Public Arena:

1. Why all three recent accused --- Daivd Headly of 26/11, Abdul Muttalib of underwear bomb and Faisal Shahzad --- all had prior contacts with US agencies. Does that not point to some involvement of US agencies in all these incidents.

2. The two latest cases – Abdul Muttalib and Faisal Shazad attempts were aimed at US mainland. Both used crude and unprofessional devices. None died in the attacks. In both cases, US agencies were forewarned or as some will surmise were instrumental in planning the whole controlled operation to get media mileage, so that crucial budgetary cuts in terror security allotments may be restored. Other world-wide agenda cannot be ruled out.

3. Both Abdul Muttalib and Faisal Shahzad were promptly taken out of the usual court procedure under the pretext that they are cooperating with authorities. Some could say that this cooperation was not only post incidents, but even ongoing from a period earlier to the time of denouement.

4. How Faisal Shahzad got his US citizenship in such short time. Was that the carrot dangled before him to cooperate with US agencies?

5. Why conflicting scenarios came out from different agencies about the exact circumstances of Faisal Shahzad’s arrest from the departing Emirate flight. Why US Attorney General said that Shahzad was under surveillance and still he was allowed to assemble his crude bombing arsenal and park the car in the midst of crowded Times Square. What was the nature of US attorney general’s role in the whole episode?

6. Why the two NY Democratic Representatives were calling again and again for restoring the cuts in New York City’s budget allotments in their CNN interview. It was apparent that they were least affected by the ‘enormity’ of the attempt to kill Americans, and cared more for the restoring the cut by Federal Government.

7. Has the recent drying up of the world wide supposedly ‘Al Qaida’s possibly planned attacks on US mainland, forced US agency to organize its own proxy operations, to continue to hoodwink the world and keep alive its various terror related activities around the US and around the world.

8. Did this conspiracy to organize terror go all the way to US President Obama, as his comments lacked any passionate conviction over the whole charade?

9. How long US media keep fooling the world? 

The Double Deuce - The Sania-Shoaib-Ayesha affair had the nation transfixed. How did old-world Hyderabad take to the whole mess?

IS INDIA'S STATE, INCLUDING EXECUTIVE, LEGISLATIVE, JUDICIARY AS WELL AS MEDIA, ARE ALL WORKING IN TANDEM TO SUBVERT THE INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE? 

THE STEP BY STEP EROSION OF THE OLD TRADITIONS APPEARS TO PROCEED WITH DELIBERATE PLANNING TO BRING AN ALIEN CIVILIZATIONAL CHANGE TO THE IDEA OF INDIA. THE ARRAY OF WOMEN'S RIGHTS ARE GETTING SO OVERWHELMINGLY BIASED THAT WOMEN CAN GET AWAY WITH MURDER AND RAPE, WITHOUT ANYBODY GETTING ANY WISER. 

TIME FOR A MORE EVEN-HANDED LOOK ON WHAT CHANGES WOMEN DEMAND AND HOW IT CAN BE ACCOMMODATED WITHOUT ENCROACHING ON MEN'S RIGHTS!

GHULAM MUHAMMED, MUMBAI

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http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265008

Society / Sports MAGAZINE | APR 19, 2010

P. ANIL KUMAR Game on Sania, Shoaib address the media outside her house in Hyderabad HYDERABAD: SANIA-SHOAIB AFFAIR The Double Deuce The Sania-Shoaib-Ayesha affair had the nation transfixed. How did old-world Hyderabad take to the whole mess? SHEELA REDDY ,  MADHAVI TATA PRINT SHARE COMMENTS ALSO IN THIS STORY    As the star reporter of Hyderabad’s leading Urdu paper Siasat begins recounting the developments on Day Six of our most closely-watched love triangle drama in recent times, his ageing editor, Zahid Ali Khan, is looking anything but pleased. One would think it’s the stuff of every newspaper editor’s dream: young, attractive tennis star Sania Mirza—the scion of Hyderabad’s shrinking aristocracy and the darling of its modernising Muslim youth—announces her engagement to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik months after breaking off her engagement to local boy Sohrab Mirza. A day later, a mysterious girl with two names—Ayesha and Maha Siddiqui—surfaces with an old story of a messy marriage with Shoaib. Threats of legal action fly and the Pakistani cricketer scurries ahead of his baraat to his fiancee’s home in an attempt to clear his name. Instead, he gets embroiled in police charges of cheating, cruelty and harassment, with the “wronged woman” threatening to produce his semen-stained clothes in court and the man claiming to be his father-in-law, Ahmed Siddiqui, urging that Malik be stoned to death for having illegal sex with his daughter. Ayesha Siddiqui But there is growing distaste on Khan’s face as he hears his reporter out. “These two girls are making a mockery of the entire community...saare Mussalman ko nanga kar diya (they have shamed all the Muslims).” Community elders, right, get together at Ikram Kaleem’s apartment to discuss the Sania-Shoaib snafu There is the same consternation reflected on the faces of half-a-dozen Muslim “elders” gathered in the plush drawing room of businessman Ikram Kaleem’s luxury apartment on Tuesday evening. For two days now, they have been trying to work out a “compromise” between the Siddiquis and Malik, but with no success. “The Mirza family has been stonewalling us,” confesses Kaleem, who like his assembled friends, has little influence with the Mirzas, an old and respected family whose forebears served under the Nizam as high officials. All of them, however, are well acquainted with Maha Siddiqui from her childhood days spent in a gated community in Saudi Arabia where her father worked for the same airline company as they did. But that is not why they are so anxious to resolve the embarrassing melodrama. It’s because the Siddiquis seemed willing—even intent—on dragging not only their own daughter, but the entire community, through the muck. All of them concur that the Siddiquis were “different” from the other families in the airline colony. The Siddiquis’ two daughters were allowed to run “wild”, and according to them, were “spoilt brats” who flirted with strangers, Maha even changing her voice to make anonymous calls and playing cards with a gang of Pakistani boys living in the same colony. The elder daughter, Naghma, apparently went through two divorces and is now married for the third time. Maha, on the other hand, was “bold” but couldn’t catch a man because of her obesity. So now they have roped in a minister, Mohammed Ahmadullah, who is willing to play mediator. “I have been getting calls from all over India asking me what’s going on and why we are letting a private dispute besmirch an entire community,” he explains. Soon, the Siddiquis’ close friend and confidant, Dr Shams Babur, is summoned, and in closed-door negotiations—eight sessions with the Siddiquis and 12 sessions with Shoaib and the Mirzas, by means of cajoling, threats and intimidation that go on all night—they eventually get both sides to finally see reason. Shoaib agrees to sign the divorce papers that the Siddiquis have been urging him from the start to sign, and Ayesha withdraws her police complaint. VHP activists burn a Sania poster in Bhopal So who won? No one knows as yet but there’s no doubt about who lost. “The major casualty has been the Muslim community,” one of the leading Urdu dailies said in its editorial. Unlike the English media that went to town about Shoaib “the liar”, the Urdu press has blamed both the Mirzas and the Siddiquis for dragging their private affairs into the media glare. “When they knew that the Siddiquis may pose a problem to Sania and Shoaib’s marriage, why couldn’t they have conducted the wedding quietly somewhere else, in Dubai or Delhi?” wonders Siasat’s news editor and the proprietor’s son, Amer Ali Khan. Compromise or no compromise, the controversy has caused lasting damage to Muslims, says Amer. “Both the Siddiquis and Mirzas played with religion, raking up things like phone nikaah which are not there in Islam.” Advertising professional Arif Khan agrees, “Not many Muslim girls would have handled their lives like Sania did, but what people forget is that she’s more celebrity than Muslim. If you call yourself a Muslim, you have certain obligations: you can’t get engaged and break it off just because you don’t like the lifestyle being Muslim involves, you can’t bring in the personal law only when it suits you, and you certainly can’t live with your fiance under the same roof.” The Siddiqui camp at a press conference, Ayesha’s mother Farisa Siddiqui at right Even the more laid-back, upper-middle-class Muslims like Ismat Lateef Mehdi, a college lecturer, admit to being embarrassed by the whole controversy. But for Mehdi it’s not just to do with Islam, but with the ‘mismatch’ that an icon like Sania is proposing for herself with someone who is “simply not on par with her”. First, there is the Pakistani angle: according to Mehdi, young Hyderabadis today are uncomfortable marrying Pakistanis. “There are all the practical problems of phones being tapped, not getting visas, and the huge difference in culture. We fear we won’t be able to adjust.” Worse, there is the class issue: “Shoaib hasn’t even passed his tenth, nor does he have a bright career ahead of him.” Nor is the messy second marriage business in any way helping Hyderabadis reconcile to the fact that their shining star, “who could have married anyone in India she chose to”, is saddling herself with a has-been like Shoaib. “It’s a letdown,” admits Mehdi.     Worse is the class issue. “Shoaib hasn’t even passed 10th, nor does he have a bright career ahead of him.”     Then there are those like Hasanuddin Ahmed, former chairman of the Minorities Commission, who see in last week’s melodrama the breakdown of Hyderabadi culture. When Sania broke her engagement with Sohrab Mirza, Ahmed points out, both displayed Hyderabadi culture at its best: refusing to wash their dirty linen in public, and parting with great civility, as is expected of the old families they come from. Ayesha’s extraordinary behaviour, on the other hand, invites the old man’s finest disapprobation. “She kept quiet for eight years, then suddenly woke up when his marriage was announced, raked up dirty things in the media—it’s a get-rich mentality that is against Hyderabad’s old culture.” One reason why the old culture has been in near-terminal decline is because most elite Muslims were persecuted and fled the city in the wake of the police action in 1948, explains Ahmed. The divide between old money and new is creating a social tension in the community that wasn’t there before. As Amer Khan says, “Many Muslims have minted money thanks to the real estate boom. It’s creating a dangerous trend where people believe they can get away with anything if they have money.” Net control Muslim girls working in an IT office in Hyderabad It’s a sentiment that Anees Khan, the founder-principal of Nasser, the premier public school for Muslim girls, shares. There’s a big difference between the students who hail from the old families and the nouveau riche ones, according to her. “The value system among upper-middle-class Muslims is still very strong, while the others seem to be letting their children run wild.” “It’s a society in transition,” agrees Mehdi. “Some families are realistic enough to be aware of changes and adjust accordingly, while others have become ultra-conservative,  putting their daughters behind purdah—a phenomenon we had never heard of earlier.” But what was perhaps most saddening for those Muslims who stayed riveted to last week’s melodrama was the loss of yet another Hyderabadi Muslim icon. They have watched helplessly as first Azharuddin and now Sania have plummeted from grace. But it could be a good thing, as Arif Khan points out. “Once you stop relying on icons, you grow up and realise that a good Muslim and a good player are not necessarily the same thing.” By Sheela Reddy and Madhavi Tata in Hyderabad

Letter to the Editor: Sharad Pawar calls for Muslim quota in public housing

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Letter to the Editor: Sharad Pawar calls for Muslim quota in public housing

Last week, Sharad Pawar, the Union minister for Agriculture and the President of National Congress Party, which is a partner with Indian National Congress ruling coalition in Maharashtra, had called for a Muslim quota in government built housing in Mumbai.

Sharad Pawar is not known for any special soft corner for Muslims, in as much he is infamous for being one of the two Congress leaders that were the cause of prolongation of Bombay Riots in the aftermath of Babri Demolition. He, as the then Union Defence Minister, stationed at Bombay, had forces under his command to instantly organise a show of force to stop rioters going berserk in the city. He failed in his public duty by playing one-upmanship game with the then Congress Chief Minister.

Only this week, under Sharad Pawar's home minister, R. R. Patel, the state prosecution had failed to properly present its case against a batch of Bombay rioters and the court has set them free. It merely followed an old pattern of being soft on Bombay rioters by deliberately diluting their cases.

Sharad Pawar is also widely believed to have been instrumental in ordering direct firing on a grand peaceful Muslim rally taken out to protest against Israeli incursion in Al Aqsa Masjid --- a firing in which 12 Muslim protestors died. It was wanton murder of innocents.

On the positive side, he did allot a good sized plot for Muslim community housing, through one of his close Muslim party man, Late Maulana Ziauddin Bukhari, who completed the project of Millat Nagar that houses. Mumbai's first government approved Masjid is built within the colony. Maulana Ziauddin Bukhari was later gunned down supposedly over being more vocal than politically correct in speaking for Muslims caught in Bombay riots.

Sharad Pawar has a knack to court Muslims through co-opting Muslim politicians from other political parties and showing them off as decoration pieces for electoral propaganda exercises.

His call for separate quota for Muslims is nothing but an attempt to ingratiate himself with Mumbai's sizable Muslim population, which is about 3 million in the total of 13.5 million and which forms a big percent chunk of Congress/NCP vote bank in the city. Out of 3 million Muslims, about 2 million (20 lakhs) live in slum areas.

Still it should be noted that in comparison with Sharad Pawar, the Sonia’s Indian National Congress has never bothered to 'appease' Muslims by even justified affirmative actions to give them a fair share in public housing. (75% of Singapore population resides in public housing).

An ongoing campaign of demonization of Muslims keeps them in check from demanding any share in public pie, be that education, employment, health, housing, banking finances, trade opportunities. The continuous hauling of innocent Muslims following several bomb blast events gives media a god-sent opportunity to put ninety nine percent of Indian Muslims on the defensive through collective guilt innuendo.

Besides, it is anybody's guess how sincere and bureaucratically feasible is Sharad Pawar's call to do justice with Muslim population of Mumbai and Maharashtra.

Recently, NCP has benefited through overwhelming Muslim votes in its recent electoral successes. Muslims will have to see how Sharad Pawar's call translates into real term accommodations for Muslims in Mumbai and Maharashtra where NCP has ambitions to take over the government by defeating Indian National Congress, as well as Shiv Sena and BJP. Will Sharad Pawar resort to housing or rioting? Only time will tell.

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Comments posted on Daniel Pipes website over his Book Review of Jeffery Herb’s “Nazi propaganda for the Arab World”.

“More has been done by the Zionist occupation after 1948 to hurt and antagonize not only the Palestinians but the entire Arab and Muslim world than any propaganda by the Nazis. Writers and propagandists have to earn their bread and butter to whip up fresh line of Islamic phobias merely to detract the world attention from the atrocities and war crimes committed by IDF in occupied lands. The world is not blind to the virulent nature of Israeli policies to wipe out Palestinians from the lands that they rightly or wrongly claim as their own. Those middle age brutalities are no longer tenable in modern times of globalization and free democracies. While time has come to focus on the peace moves to solve the problem, it is sad to find that propagandists are hard at work to prolong the enmity between Israeland the Muslim world at large. Nobody knows how the events unfold in the near future. If peace arrives, all such bogus propaganda will be thrown in the dust bins.”

Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai

ghulammuhammed3@gmail.com

www.GhulamMuhammed.Blogspot.com

http://www.danielpipes.org/8257/nazi-propaganda-for-the-arab-world

Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World

by Jeffrey Herf
Yale University Press, 2009, 352 pages
Reviewed by Daniel Pipes
Commentary

April 2010

[Differs slightly from the published version]

The impact of National Socialism in the Middle East used to appear brief and superficial. Unlike with Communism, whose local parties and outside influence through the Soviet bloc lasted over many decades, the Nazis' moment lasted about six years, 1939-45, and they had little regional presence beyond Rommel's armies in North Africa and a fleeting pro-Nazi regime in Iraq.


But two powerful, important books have set the record straight. Djihad und Judenhass (2002) by Matthias Küntzel, translated into English in 2007 as Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11, shows the continuing influence of Nazi ideas on Islamists. Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World by Jeffrey Herf focuses on an earlier time, the 1930s-40s, and the major effort by Hitler and his minions to transmit their ideas to the Middle East. After reading Küntzel and Herf, I realize that my education about the modern Middle East was lacking a vital ingredient, the Nazi one.


A specialist in modern German history at the University of Maryland, Herf brings a new corpus of information to light: summary accounts of Nazi shortwave radio broadcasts in the Arabic language that were generated over three years by the U.S. embassy in Cairo. This cache reveals fully, for the first time, what Berlin told the Arabs (and to a lesser extent, the Iranians). As page after page of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World establishes in mind-numbing but necessary detail, the Germans above all pursued two themes: stopping Zionism and promoting Islamism. Each deserves close consideration.


Nazi propaganda in Arabic portrayed World War II, history's largest and most destructive war, as focused primarily on the sliver of land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. This interpretation both flattered Arabs and extended Hitler's grand theory that Jews wanted to take over the Arab countries and eventually the whole world, that the Allied powers were but pawns in this Zionist conspiracy, and that Germany was leading the resistance to them.
Palestine was the key, according to these broadcasts. If Zionists took it over, they would "control the three continents: Europe, Asia, and Africa. Thus they will be able to rule the whole world and spread Jewish capitalism." Such an eventuality would lead to Arabs oppressed and Islam defunct. "Should Bolshevism and Democracy be victorious," announced Nazi radio, "the Arabs will be dominated forever and all traces of Islam will be wiped out." To avoid this fate, Arabs had to join with the Axis.


As the war progressed, Berlin's incitement became ever more furious. "You must kill the Jews before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews" went a July 1942 broadcast. Herf notes the bitter irony: "At this moment of complete Jewish powerlessness, the Arabic broadcasts from Berlin skillfully adapted the general Nazi propaganda line about Jewish domination of the anti-Hitler coalition to a radical Arab and Islamic view."


At the same time, the Nazi regime developed an approach to Muslims that largely ignored the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mein Kampf, and other European sources in favor of selected passages from the Koran.


Hitler's propagandists assured Muslims, first, that Axis countries "respect the Koran, sanctify the mosques, and glorify the prophet of Islam." It cited the respectful work of German Orientalists as an important sign of goodwill. Second, it argued for what Heinrich Himmler called the "shared goals and shared ideals" of Islam and National Socialism. These included monotheism, piety, obedience, discipline, self-sacrifice, courage, honor, generosity, community, unity, anti-capitalism, and a celebration of labor and warfare.


In addition, Muslims were told that they and the Nazis were purportedly both fighting a "great struggle for freedom" against the British, the most important colonial power in the Middle East. The regime drew a parallel between Muhammad and Hitler and presented the umma as roughly analogous to its own notion of a totalitarian Volksgemeinschaft ("people's community").


Nazis portrayed Islam as an ally and, accordingly, called for its revival while urging Muslims to act piously and emulate Muhammad. Radio Berlin in Arabic went so far as to declare "Allahu akbar! Glory to the Arabs, Glory to Islam." The Germans held that Muslims who were not righteous enough (i.e., not following the Nazi ideological model) were causing the umma to languish: "Muslims, you are now backward because you have not shown God the proper piety and do not fear him." And not just backward, but also "invaded by merciless tyrants." Specifically for Shi'ites, the Nazis hinted at Hitler being the awaited Twelfth Imam or the Muslim eschatological figure of Jesus, who will fight the anti-Christ (namely, the Jews) and bring on the end of days.


The Nazis noted the parallel between sayings from the Koran (Sura 5:82, "You will meet no greater enemy of the believers than the Jews") and the words of Hitler ("By resisting the Jews everywhere, I am fighting for the Lord's work") and turned the Koran into an anti-Semitic tract whose primary purpose was to call for eternal hatred of Jews. They even falsely claimed that Muhammad ordered Muslims to fight the Jews "until they are extinct."


In the Nazi telling, Jewish-Muslim enmity dated back to the 7^th century. "Since the days of Mohamed, the Jews have been hostile to Islam" went one broadcast. "Every Moslem knows that Jewish animosity to the Arabs dates back to the dawn of Islam" declared another. "Enmity has always existed between Arab and Jew since ancient times" insisted a third. The Nazis built on this premise to establish the basis for a Final Solution in the Middle East, instructing Arabs to "make every effort possible so that not a single Jew … remains in Arab countries."


Herf emphasizes the remarkable symbiosis of German and Middle Eastern elements: "As a result of their shared passions and interests, they produced texts and broadcasts that each group could not have produced on its own." Specifically, Arabs learned "the finer points of anti-Semitic conspiracy thinking," while Nazis learned the value of focusing on Palestine. He describes the coming together of Nazi and Islamic themes in Berlin as "one of the most important cultural exchanges of the twentieth century."


Having detailed Nazi propaganda in Arabic, Herf then traces its impact. He begins by documenting the great energy and expense devoted to these messages—the quality of the personnel devoted to it, their high-level Nazi patronage, the thousands of hours of radio transmissions, and the millions of pamphlets.
He then rounds up assessments of the Axis impact, all pointing to its success. Allied estimates from 1942, for example, found that "the people were saturated with Axis talk," that "upwards of three-fourths of the Moslem world are in favor of the Axis" and that "90% of the Egyptians, including their government, believe that the Jews are mainly responsible for shortages and high prices of essentials." A report from 1944 found that "practically all Arabs who have radios … listen to Berlin."
Allied reluctance to contradict Nazi propaganda also points to Axis success.


Fearful of alienating Middle Easterners, the Allies stayed humiliatingly silent about the genocide taking place against the Jews; failed to refute allegations about Jews dominating London, Washington, and Moscow; did not dispute the distorted Koranic interpretations; and shied away from endorsing Zionism. Merely to dispute Nazi accusations, the Allies worried, would only confirm Nazi claims about Britain, America, and Russia being stooges of Jewish power. An internal U.S. directive in late 1942 acknowledged that "the subject of Zionist aspirations cannot be mentioned, inasmuch as … [this] would jeopardize our strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean."


Thus, when two leading U.S. senators, Robert Taft of Ohio and Robert Wagner of New York, proposed a resolution in 1944 endorsing a Jewish national home in Palestine, Berlin radio in Arabic called this an attempt "to erase Islamic civilization" and "to eradicate the Koran." Panicked, the entire weight of the Executive Branch came down on the senators, who felt compelled to withdraw their resolution. Clearly, Nazi offerings resonated deeply in the Middle East.


They continued to do well after the Nazi collapse and the war's conclusion. The defeat of Nazi General Erwin Rommel's aggressive push into North Africa meant that Nazi ambitions in the Middle East, in particular the Final Solution to annihilate its million or so Jews, were never implemented. But years of hate from radio and pamphlets and the repetitive, grotesque, ambitious, anti-Semitic, and Islam-based message detailed by Herf had taken root. Not only did the Middle East's Nazis emerge nearly invulnerable to prosecution, but they also prospered and were feted. An example: in 1946, Hasan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brethren, lavished praise on Hitler's favorite Arab, Haj Amin el-Husseini, calling him "a hero … a miracle of a man." Banna added for good measure: "Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin el-Husseini will continue the struggle." Acknowledging el-Husseini's exalted status, a British officer in 1948 described him as "the one hero in the Arab world."


Ideas the Nazis spread in the Middle East have had an enduring twofold legacy. First, as in Europe, they built on existing prejudices against Jews to transform that prejudice into something far more paranoid, aggressive, and murderous. One U.S. intelligence report from 1944 estimated that anti-Jewish materials constituted fully half of German propaganda directed to the Middle East. The Nazis saw virtually all developments in the region through the Jewish prism and exported this obsession.
The fruits of this effort are seen not only in decades of furious Muslim anti-Zionism, personified by Arafat and Ahmadinejad, but also in the persecution of ancient Jewish communities in countries like Egypt and Iraq, which have now shriveled to near-extinction, plus the employment of Nazis such as Johann van Leers and Aloïs Brunner in important government positions. Thus did the Nazi legacy oppress Jewry in the Middle East post-1945.


Second, Islamism took on a Nazi quality. As someone who has criticized the term Islamofascism on the grounds that it gratuitously conflates two distinct phenomena, I have to report that Herf's evidence now leads me to acknowledge deep fascist influences on Islamism. This includes the Islamist hatred of democracy and liberalism and its contempt for multiple political parties, preference for unity over division, cult of youth and militarism, authoritarian moralism, cultural repression, and illiberal economics.


Beyond specifics, that influence extends to what Herf calls an "ability to introduce a radical message in ways that resonated with, yet deepened and radicalized, already existing sentiments." Although a scholar of Europe by training, Herf's detective work in the U.S. archives has opened a new vista on the Arab-Israeli conflict and Islamism, as well as made a landmark contribution more broadly to an understanding of the modern Middle East.

To achieve Mideast peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip - By Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz - The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/09/AR2010040903263.html

To achieve Mideast peace, Obama must make a bold Mideast trip

By Zbigniew Brzezinski and Stephen Solarz

Sunday, April 11, 2010

More than three decades ago, Israeli statesman Moshe Dayan, speaking about an Egyptian town that controlled Israel's only outlet to the Red Sea, declared that he would rather have Sharm el-Sheikh without peace than peace without Sharm el-Sheikh. Had his views prevailed, Israel and Egypt would still be in a state of war. Today, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, with his pronouncements about the eternal and undivided capital of Israel, is conveying an updated version of Dayan's credo -- that he would rather have all of Jerusalem without peace than peace without all of Jerusalem.

This is unfortunate, because a comprehensive peace agreement is in the interest of all parties. It is in the U.S. national interest because the occupation of the West Bank and the enforced isolation of the Gaza Strip increases Muslim resentment toward the United States, making it harder for the Obama administration to pursue its diplomatic and military objectives in the region. Peace is in the interest of Israel; its own defense minister, Ehud Barak, recently said that the absence of a two-state solution is the greatest threat to Israel's future, greater even than an Iranian bomb. And an agreement is in the interest of the Palestinians, who deserve to live in peace and with the dignity of statehood.


However, a routine unveiling of a U.S. peace proposal,as is reportedly under consideration, will not suffice. Only a bold and dramatic gesture in a historically significant setting can generate the political and psychological momentum needed for a major breakthrough. Anwar Sadat's courageous journey to Jerusalem three decades ago accomplished just that, paving the way for the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt.


Similarly, President Obama should travel to the Knesset in Jerusalem and the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah to call upon both sides to negotiate a final status agreement based on a specific framework for peace. He should do so in the company of Arab leaders and members of the Quartet, the diplomatic grouping of the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations that is involved in the peace process. A subsequent speech by Obama in Jerusalem's Old City, addressed to all the people in the region and evocative of hisCairo speech to the Muslim world in June 2009, could be the culminating event in this journey for peace.


Such an effort would play to Obama's strengths: He personalizes politics and seeks to exploit rhetoric and dramatic settings to shatter impasses, project a compelling vision of the future and infuse confidence in his audience.


The basic outlines of a durable and comprehensive peace plan that Obama could propose are known to all:


First, a solution to the refugee problem involving compensation and resettlement in the Palestinian state but not in Israel. This is a bitter pill for the Palestinians, but Israel cannot be expected to commit political suicide for the sake of peace.


Second, genuine sharing of Jerusalem as the capital of each state, and some international arrangement for the Old City. This is a bitter pill for the Israelis, for it means accepting that the Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem will become the capital of Palestine.


Third, a territorial settlement based on the 1967 borders, with mutual and equal adjustments to allow the incorporation of the largest West Bank settlements into Israel.
And fourth, a demilitarized Palestinian state with U.S. or NATO troops along the Jordan River to provide Israel greater security.


Most of these parameters have been endorsed in the Arab peace plan of 2002 and by the Quartet. And the essential elements have also been embraced by Barak and another former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert.


For the Israelis, who are skeptical about the willingness of the Palestinians and Arabs to make peace with them, such a bold initiative by Obama would provide a dramatic demonstration of the prospects for real peace, making it easier for Israel's political leadership to make the necessary compromises.

For the Palestinians, it would provide political cover to accept a resolution precluding the return of any appreciable number of refugees to Israel. Palestinian leaders surely know that no peace agreement will be possible without forgoing what many of their people have come to regard as a sacred principle: the right of return. The leadership can only make such a shift in the context of an overall pact that creates a viable Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital -- and that is supported by other Arab countries.

For the Arabs, it would legitimize their own diplomatic initiative, embodied in the peace plan put forward by the Arab League eight years ago. Moreover, their support for Obama in the effort would be a vital contribution to the resolution of the conflict.
Finally, for Obama himself, such a move would be a diplomatic and political triumph. Bringing Arab leaders and the Quartet with him to Jerusalem and Ramallah to endorse his plan would be seen as a powerful example of leadership in coping with the protracted conflict. Since it is inconceivable that the Israeli government would refuse Obama's offer to bring Arab leaders and the Quartet to its capital, most of the American friends of Israel could be expected to welcome the move as well.


Of course, the proposal could be rejected out of hand. If the Israelis or the Palestinians refuse to accept this basic formula as the point of departure for negotiations, the Obama administration must be prepared to pursue its initiative by different means -- it cannot be caught flat-footed, as it was when Netanyahurejected Obama's demands for a settlement freeze and the Arabs evaded his proposals for confidence-building initiatives.


Accordingly, the administration must convey to the parties that if the offer is rejected by either or both, the United States will seek the U.N. Security Council's endorsement of this framework for peace, thus generating worldwide pressure on the recalcitrant party.

It is time, though almost too late, for all parties -- Israelis, Palestinians, Americans -- to make a historic decision to turn the two-state solution into a two-state reality. But for that to happen, Obama must pursue a far-sighted strategy with historic audacity.Fortunately, public opinion polls in Israel have indicated that while most Israelis would like to keep a united Jerusalem, they would rather have peace without all of Jerusalem than a united Jerusalem without peace. Similarly, although the Palestinians are divided and the extremists of Hamas control the Gaza Strip, the majority of Palestinians favor a two-state solution, and their leadership in Ramallah is publicly committed to such an outcome.


Zbigniew Brzezinski served as national security adviser for President Jimmy Carter and is a trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Stephen Solarz, a former U.S. congressman from New York, is a member of the board of the International Crisis Group.