'•Z\- DIE

WELT 0ES
BRILL Die Welt des IsUms 52 (2012) 331-350 ISLAMS

Arabs and Fascism: Empirical and Hieoretical

Perspectives

Peter Wien
University ofMaryland

Abstract
The article establishes an interpretive framework for Arab responses to fascism
during die 1930s and World War 11. Promoters of die Islamofascism paradigm
refer to this period as simply a manifestadon ofthe allegedly illiberal inclinations
of a vast majority of Arabs and Muslims. They present Arab expressions of
sympathy for fascism as conditioned by alleged authoritarian or totalitarian
structures inherent in the Islamic religion. In a more nuanced interpretation, Arab
reactions to fascism form a phenomenon that can only be understood in the local
and chronological contexts of decolonization, in which fascism was a model and
reference as a tool of social disciplining with the ultimate goal of getting rid of
colonial control. According to this framework, totalitarian references in polidcal
discourse were a means to an end that was widespread at the time. Other, equally
nuanced interpretations see pro-fascist trends in Middle Eastern states—as they
became manifest in party platforms, uniformed youth organizations, or
collaboration schemes with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy—as manifestations
of global fascism as a 'type'. According to this reading, totalitarian and racial
ideological systems and leader- and discipline oriented forms of social organization
have to be understood as representations of a worldwide trend comparable to
Marxist or Capitalist ideology. Examples from India and Latin America provide
a comparative framework for this. Neither ofthe two latter approaches subscribes
to a thesis of an Arab "Sonderweg" in the adoption of fascism. Reactions in the
Arab world in particular and in Muslim societies in general did not differ
substantially from those in other colonial societies.

Keywords
international fascism, generic fascism, Arab world, decolonization

© Koninklijke BrUl NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/15700607-201200A4

332 P Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350

This article combines an inventory of empirical research about pro-

fascist trends in the region, primarily until 1945, with an attempt to
locate fascism in the Arab world in a broader context of international
oi generic fascism as a phenomenon of non-European societies. This
latter part of the paper is comparative and theory-driven, but has to
remain eclectic due to the limits of the short article format. The topic
has an awkward currency today, after a surge in anti-Islamic rhetoric in
public discourse in the post-9/11 period. Within this debate, the term
Islamofascism plays a central role, and so does an historical argtxmen-
tation about Arab relations with Nazi Germany and especially the
imprint that Nazi anti-Semitism left on Arabs, Arab nationalist ide-
ology, and political Islam. The debate often foctises on Amln al-Htisaynl's,
the Mufti of Jerusalem's, exile in Germany from 1941 to 1945, and his
deep involvement in anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda to the Middle East.
For propagators of the Islamofascism paradigm, Hasan al-Bannâ, the
founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and his alleged admiration for the
Mufti, serve as the missing link between Amin al-Husayni and the
Muslim Brotherhood, and in extension modern Islamism. In turn, this
argumentation establishes a relationship between the Mufti, Nazi total-
itarianism, anti-Semitism and modern day Islamism, as well as Arab
Nationalism.' The topic therefore intertwines several sub-topics: Arab
immediate encounters with Fascism and Nazism (in occupied lands, as

'' Klaus Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten: Eine Politische
Biographie Amin el-Husseinis, Veröffentlichungen der Forschungsstelle Ludwigsburg der
Universität Stuttgart (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2007); Matthias
Künxzeljihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of9/11 (New York: Telos
Press Pub., 2007); Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, Halbmond und
Hakenkreuz: Das Dritte Reich, die Araber und Palästina (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 2006); Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2009). For a critique of this approach see Ulrike Freitag and
Israel Gershoni, "The Politics of Memory: The Necessity for Historical Investigation into
Arab Responses to Fascism and Nazism", Geschichte und Gesellschaft 37 (2011), 311-331;
Götz Nordbruch, "'Cultural Fusion' of Thought and Ambitions? Memory, Politics and the
History of Arab-Nazi German Encounters", MES 47 (2011), 183-194; Peter Wien,
"Coming to Terms with the Past: German Academia and Historical Relations between the
Arab Lands and Nazi Germany", IJMES42 (2010), 311-321. Asimilar, but at times polemic
critique is in Gilbert Achcar, The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives
(New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010).
 PWien/ Die Weh des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350 333

POWs, as exiles in Germany), Arab perceptions and reactions to the

news of the Jewish Holocaust, before and after 1948, and the adoption
and adaptation of fascist ideology in the Modern Middle East. While
all these topics have to be part of an exploration of the dimensions of
fascist trends in the Middle East, they are not necessarily intercon-
nected: Positive views of Nazi state- and society organization in the late
1930s did not automatically entail an adoption of Nazi anti-Semitism,
for instance.^
There is also a chronological dimension of the differentiation work
that needs to be done. Promoters of the Islamofascism paradigm often
ignore, deliberately or not, the foundation of the State of Israel and the
first Arab Israeli war as a paradigmatic change in an Arab Geschichtsbe-
wusstsein, or collective assessment and resulting awareness of history (in
a more precise translation: the historical consciousness) related to Jews,
the Holocaust, and the Nazi state. To ignore an all important marker
of historical consciousness—the Holocaust for Jews and the Nakba for
the Palestinians—represents an epistemological disconnection that ftiels
poptilist and pseudo-scientific debates conflating the rules of public
opinion-making with the historical record. This happens mutually and
deliberately between the two parties in the Middle East conflict.
A differentiated approach, therefore, needs to be based on a distinc-
tion between pre- and post-1948 assessments because the occurrences
of pro-totalitarian, pro-fascist, and pro-Nazi trends and representations
in the interwar Middle East require a different explanation than the
examples of near-totalitarian state control and the widespread occur-
rences of anti-Semitic propaganda in the Arab Middle East since the
end of the Second World War. Recent literature has shown, for instance,
that it is fruitful to test the structures of Saddam Hussein's Iraq in the
light of a totalitarian paradigm.' Studies on anti-Semitism and Holo-
caust denial in the Middle East paint a rather gloomy picture of the
reception of Nazi ideology and anti-Semitism in the post-World War
II Middle East. Yet, before 1948, the position that Arabs took vis-à-vis
the Holocaust was most of the time one of empathy. After '48, however,
a shift occurred towards allegations that the State of Israel was abusing

^' Compare the article by Nordbruch in this issue.

" Achim Rohde, State-Society Relations in Ba'thist Iraq: Facing Dictatorship (London/New
York: Routledge, 2010).
334 P- Wien / Die Welt des Iskms 52 (2012) 331-350

the Holocaust for its national interest. Holocaust denial is, in contrast,
a more recent phenomenon, whereas the usage of anti-Semitic stereo-
types, based to a large extent on the Protocols ofthe Elders ofZion, gained
in poptilarity immediately after 1948.'* On the other hand, research on
the Arab press of the pre-World War II period has shown that there was
a remarkable absence of racism and anti-Semitism, and a high degree
of critical engagement with all forms of fescism and totalitarianism.^5
These recent works represent the first two of three approaches to the
topic of Nazism and fascism in the Arab world that I would like to
highlight on the following pages:

Approach A. Countering the stereotype.

Approach B. Contextualization and phenomenology.
Approach C. Typology of generic fascism.

A. Countering the Stereotype

Research that follows this line of argumentation highlights the some-
times very critical perceptions that Arabs had of National Socialism and
fascism. Thus, this literature counters the widespread assumption that
Arabs had a general affinity towards Nazism, which ignores the strength
of socialist and communist, even explicitly anti-fascist movements in
the Middle East.^ In a recent book on Iraq, Orit Bashkin paints a vivid
picture of political pluralism in Iraq during the interwar period, with
a particular regard to social democracy.^ Götz Nordbruch and René

•" Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, From Empathy to Denial- Arab Responses to the Holocaust
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2009); StefenWild, "Die Arabische Rezeption der
'Protokolle der Weisen von Zion'", in Iskmstudien ohne Ende: Festschrift für Werner Ende
zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Rainer Brunner et al., Abhandlungen fur die Kunde des Mor-
genlandes 54,1 (Wurzburg: Ergon-Verl^, 2002), 517-528.
" Israel Gershoni and James P Jankowski, Conftonting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship Versus
Democracy in the 1930s (Stanford: Stanford Universit)- Press, 2010); Peter Wien, Iraqi Arab
Nationalism: Authoritarian, Totalitarian and Pro-Fascist Inclinations, 1932-1941 (London/
New York: Roudedge, 2006).
^ On and-fescism see 'Abdallah Hannâ, al-Haraka al-munähida li-l-fäshiyyaftSüriyä
wa-Lubnän: 1933-1945. Diräsa wathä'iqiya (Bayrüt: Dar al-Färäbi, 1975).
^ Orit Bashkin, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2008).
 p Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350 335

Wildangel have recorded the dissonance of voices that emerged from

Syria and Palestine, and I have presented that even staunch Arab nation-
alists in Iraq were highly eclectic in their perception and adaptation of
European thought.* Their admiration for totalitarian state-organization
coincided with a deep skepticism about anything that came from the
West. Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski's work highlights the critical
Egyptian discourse about fascism and Nazism in intellectual journals
that were authoritative as shapers of intellectual standpoints throughout
the Arabic speaking world. They also present how intellectuals like the
Egyptian Salama Mùsâ transited from supporters of Nazism in the early
1930s to fierce opponents under the impression of the Abyssinian war,
and they highlight the remarkably outspoken stance of the founder of
the Muslim Brotherhood Hasan al-Banna against Nazism. At the same
time they also highlight many instances of support of Nazism in the
1930s, such as in the movement and party "Young Egypt".'
It remains astonishing, however, how Arabs, including intellectuals
and political leaders, moved almost seamlessly from the critical stance
of the pre-war years to one of sympathy for Nazi racist politics that has
been a mainstay of Arab public discourse since the end of World War
11.'°

*' Götz Nordbruch, Nazism in Syria and Lebanon: The Ambivalence ofthe German Option,
1933-1945 (Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon/New York, NY: Roudedge, 2008); Wien, Iraqi
Arab Nationalism; René Wildangel, Zwischen Achse und Mandatsmacht: Palästina und der
Nationalsozialismus, ed. Zentrum Moderner Orient, ZMO-Studien 24 (Berlin: Klaus
Schwarz Verlag, 2007).
" Gershoni and Jankowski, Conftonting Fascism. See also Israel Gershoni, "Egyptian
Liberalism in an (s%c of'Crisis of Orientation': Al-Risäla's Reaction to Fascism and Nazism,
1933-39", IJMES3\ (1999), 551-576; Nir Arielli, Fascist Italy and the Middle East. 1933-
40 (Basingstoke/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Haggai Edich, "Periphery and
Youth: Fascist Italy and the Middle East", in Fascism outside Europe: The European Impulse
against Domestic Conditions in the Diffusion of Global Fascism, ed. Stein Ugelvik Larsen
(Boulder/New York: Social Science Monographs, Columbia University Press, 2001) 393-
423.
"" See Götz Nordbruch, "Geschichte im Konfiikt. Der Nationalsozialismus als Thema
aktueller Debatten in der ägyptischen ÖfFendichkeit", in Blindßr die Geschichte?Arabische
Begegnungen mit dem Nationalsozialismus, ed. Gerhard Höpp, Peter Wien, and René
Wildangel, ZMO-Studien 19 (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Vedag, 2004), 269-94; Litvak and
Webman, From Empathy to Denial.
336 R Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350

How was it possible that the language of Nazi anti-Semitism was so

quickly adopted after World War II? Arabs were avid consumers of news
media in the 1930s, and they were well aware of what was going on in
Europe during the 1930s and the World War, as analysis of the Arab
press has shown in recent years." Anti-Semitic topoi and imagery were
also known in the Arab world and some had adopted them in the pro-
pagandistic confrontations ofthe violent second half of the 1930s dur-
ing the Palestine revolt. ^^ The propaganda speeches of Amin al-Husayni
received some attention, even if they probably sounded quite alien in
their fierceness to many listeners in the Arab world during a time when
the Palestine conflict lay dormant because ofthe war.^^ The paradig-
matic change ofthe war of 1948, however, opened the doors to a rep-
ertory of images that could be used to denigrate and vilify the opponent,
but, arguably in a psychological sense, to overcome the collective trauma
of defeat and humiliation at the hands of the Zionists. Conspiracy
theories came in handy for that.

B. Contextualization and Phenomenology

To establish what I call a phenomenology of pro-totalitarian and pro-
fascist trends in the interwar period seems to do more justice to these
trends than mere allegations of fascism. According to this reading, they
are indeed manifestations of broader trends, but have to be seen in the
light ofthe immediate contexts of their occurrence. It is important to
note, however, that my usage of the term phenomenology is no imme-

' " Israel Gershoni, "'Der Verfolgte Jude'. Al-Hilals Reaktionen auf den Antisemitismus in
Europa und Hiders Machtergreifung", in Blindßr die Geschichte?, ed. Höpp, Wien, and
Wildangel, 39-72.
'2' WUdangel, Zwischen Achse und Mandatsmacht.
''' In Jidda, Saudi Arabia, the American Legation ofthe United States assessed that public
opinion of Germany was high during Wodd War II as long as there were reports about
German victories. As soon as they receded, the regard for Germany did so, too. See National
Archives and Record Administration, College Park, RG 84 Records ofthe Foreign Service
Posts ofthe Department of State, Egypt, U.S. Embassy and Legation, Cairo, Classified and
Unclassified General records, 1936-1955, Box 78, 1942: 820.02 Jidda, Saudi Arabia, to
the Department of State (copy to American Legation, Cairo), October 17,1942: Materials
supplied by the Office of War Information for Distribution in Saudi Arabia, pp. 2f.
 p Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350 337

diäte endorsement of the positions of the German historian Ernst Nolte

in the so-called German "Historikerstreit" of the mid-1980s. Nolte's
thesis that German Nazism and Soviet Stalinism were only two phe-
nomenologically different manifestations of the same fascist type was
fiercely rejected by many of his colleagues as apologetic of Nazi crimes,
especially his assertion that the Holocaust was a mere reaction to chron-
ologically earlier Stalinist crimes.''*
The historian Zeev Sternhell rejects a premise that is derived from
totalitarianism theory and implied in Nolte's phenomenology. It says
that any comparison of communist and fascist regimes has to contrast
them in terms of their actions because of the lack of ideological rigidity
in fascism. According to Sternhell's reading, Nolte's alignment of
Nazism with Stalinism rests on this premise. Sternhell, however,
demands that fascism shotild be taken seriously as an ideology, not least
because of the massive output of—in a broad sense—proto- or pro-
fascist literature since the late 19* century.'^ My argument is, however,
that the term phenomenology has to offer a great deal in a debate about
fascism in the Arab world. While Nolte's terminology has been described
as vague or even ill-defined,"^ its useflilness for the present debate is
that it offers a greater analytical flexibility than a rigid typology that
tries to establish a set of broadly shared characteristics of non-European
authoritarian regimes that would justify to put them into the fold of
transnational or international fascism. Rather than that, a phenomenol-
ogy analyzes local peculiarities of individual cases of seemingly fascist
movements in the Arab (or, for that matter, non-European) world, and
avoids highlighting larger trends with a broad brush.
I am not endorsing Nolte's paradigm either when I argue that inter-
war pro-fascist trends, and in particular those of the 1930s, were just
one variety of a theme of political radicalism and the fascination it
exerted on those who were in their late teens and twenties during the
period. In a recent book, Ilham Khuri-Makdisi threw light on a shared

' ' Historikerstreit: Die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der Natio-
nalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung, 2"''ed. (München: R. Piper, 1987).
'" Zeev Sternhell, "How to Think about Fascism and its Ideology", Constellations 15
(2008), 280-290.
'^ For a critique of the lack of rigidity in Nolte's terminology see Martin Kitchen, "Ernst
Nolte and the Phenomenology of Fascism", Science & Society 38 (1974), 131-148.
338 P Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350

pre-World War I ctilture of radicalism—a term which she uses to denote

left wing radicalism as opposed to, for instance, nationalism—in the
Mediterranean with a free flow of ideas and political practices that trav-
eled with the streams of migrants.'^ Anarchism, futurism, and left- as
well as right wing radicalism were not clearly discernible ideas at the
time and especially not in the chaotic first years after 1918. Even
later during the interwar period, radicalism still held a lot of tempta-
tions as a trait of the global market of ideas, especially in the colonial
world where young educated men became increasingly politicized, but
were most of the time barred from effecting their positions in political
functions.
In my own work on Iraq, I contextualized the occurrences of pro-
totalitarian and pro-fascist thought in the Iraqi public discourse during
the interwar period. I described this discourse in the Iraqi nationalist
press as a field that moved rather freely between pro-totalitarian, pro-
fascist, and pro-Nazi references without a clear commitment to any of
these positions. Intellectuals and publicists borrowed freely, in a highly
eclectic manner, and did not worry too much about consistency. They
re-worked what they adopted and adapted it to a partictilar local debate
overshadowed by the demands of decolonization. For example, I pre-
sented the young hothead Yùnus al-Sab'àwï as a multiplier of radical
ideas that he absorbed with a great deal of eclecticism and distributed
among his friends and associates. Sab'awi himself expressed the confti-
sion that members of his generation suffered when they had to juggle
ideas of early 20* century theorists like Le Bon and Bergson, who also
provided fodder for the European right wing extremists of the 1920s
and 1930s. Sab'awi and his associates imbibed these ideas, but they also
had little reservation when dealing with communists.^'
Moreover, I used the term fascist imagery to explain the usage of fas-
cist symbols in the political public (the fascist salute, the wearing of
uniforms, etc.) and the establishment of youth organizations that so
much resembled the European fascist youth. I refrained from calling
these organizations "fascist" because there are many characteristics that

'^ Ilham Khuri-Makdisi, The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism,
1860-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 3-11.
'*' Wien, Iraqi Arab Nationalism, 42.
 p Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350 339

they do not share with either their Italian or German counterparts.

Iraq's Futuwwa Youth organization was not attached to any party, but
was established as a state organization during Yâsïn al-Háshimi's term
as Prime Minister from 1935 to 1936. It was endorsed by a broad coali-
tion of the political establishment, including British diplomats who
regarded it as an offshoot of the Boy Scout movement rather than a
fascist organization that could threaten the hegemony of a pro-monar-
chical elite over the state. Originally, the Futuwwa was ethnically and
religiously inclusive. Iraqi Jews participated enthusiastically in al-Futuw-
wa's sporting and hiking activities and singing of national hymns."
In other Arab countries, youth organizations were mosdy strike forces
of political parties, and thus not an unambiguous representation of a
fascist trend. In some cases, they represented partisan interest (such as
the Christian White Badges in Aleppo) instead of a nationalist agenda.
The uniforms of the Damascene (and Aleppine) Iron Shirts concealed
that these were groups of urban roughs that rather represented the cli-
entele politics of the bourgeois National Bloc party and its control over
traditional networks in the city than the spirit and desires of young
nationalist extremists.^" Some examples stand out, however, such as the
Syrian Socialist Nationalist Party (SSNP) that Antun Sa'âda founded in
the 1930s. The mere adoption of the name and the party symbol
al-zawba'a, which is reminiscent of a swastika, are probably the closest
mimicry of Nazi symbols of all Middle Eastern parties we know, but
Sa'àda's explicit rejection of ethnic racism, though not of racial think-
ing, in his vision of the Syrian nation is a crucial example for the adap-
tation of European ideology to a specific local context.^' But even then.

'" Wien, Iraqi Arab Nationalism. On Jews in al-Futuwwa see Orit Bashkin, New
Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012)
79.
^'" Keith David Watenpaugh, Being Modern in the Middle East: Revolution, Nationalism,
Colonialism, and the Arab Middle Class (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006),
255-278; Philip S. Khoury, Syria and the French Mandate: The Politics of Arab Nationalism,
1920-1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 471-476. On Egypt see
James P Jankowski, Egypt's Young Rebels: "Young Egypt": 1933-1952 (Stanford: Hoover
Intitution Press, Stanford University, 1975).
^" Labib Zuwiyya Yamak, The Syrian Social Nationalist Party: An Ideological Analysis,
Harvard Middle Eastern Monographs 14 (Cambridge: Distributed for the Center for
Middle Eastern Studies of Harvard University by Harvard University Press, 1966), 77-88.
340 P Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350

German historian and political scientist Ghristoph Schumann has

pointed out that ideology only played a minor role in the young fol-
lowers' adherence to their leader: They cared less about contents of
books and treatises, but enjoyed the feeling of communal activism and
the display of strength.'^^ This was more "showing off' than pressing a
point. Differentiation and contextualization are therefore, once more,
of paramount importance.

Looking at individual youth movements and the context they emerged

from, at the usage of fascist imagery, and the manifestations of a pro-
totalitarian discourse in the media of the time is an approach that
highlights them as distinctive, singular phenomena that have to be
understood within the more or less narrow contexts of local grievances
and various political or social agendas. In the case of Middle Eastern
coimtries of the interwar period, the demands of decolonization loomed
large, but also the necessity for elite politicians to adopt what they per-
ceived as a modern outlook that concealed their paternalistic vision of
a disciplined society. A fascist self-fashioning of parties or their leaders
thus provided a bridge between different generations of political activists
in order to prevent the upheaval of a younger generation against the
bourgeois nationalists of Syria and Iraq. This older generation had
grown into an elite, unwilling to let go of power and privilege, but at
the same time tainted by cooperation with the colonial power, such as,
for instance, in the case of the Syrian National Bloc.^' This bridging of
the generations happened at the expense of the younger and no doubt
contributed to their radicalization, and their openness for totalitarian
ideas. According to a "phenomenology of fascism" in the Middle East,
the adoption of fascist principles was very superficial because it hap-
pened precisely out of a defensive position, and out of a concern for

" ' Christoph Schumann, Radikalnationalismus in Syrien und Libanon: Politische Sozialisation
und Elitenbildung 1930-1958 (Hamburg: Deutsches Orient-Institut, 2001), 282-285;
Christoph Schumann, "Symbolische Aneignungen. Antun Sa'ädas Radikalnationalismus
in der Epoche des Faschismus", in Blindßr die Geschichte?, ed. Höpp, Wien, and Wildangel,
155-189.
^^' On the elite co-opting the youth see Wien, Iraqi Arab Nationalism, 33. See also Rashid
Khalidi, "Arab Nationalism: Historical Problems in the Literature", American Historical
Review 96 {\^^\),\5GAÍ.
 p Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350 341

"Being Modern"^^ in a way that would challenge the comparatively

liberal nationalist leanings of an older generation.

C. Typology of Generic Fascism

How do these statements hold up in the light of approach C, looking
for commonalities in the ways how fascist imagery and discourse were
used in non-European, and especially decolonizing societies? Is it
fruitftil to establish a type of global fascism as part of a global typology
of generic fascism? Or wotild the claim that such a type exists simply
be a representation of Euro-centrism, in that it would reflect a general
disregard for the specificities of non-European societies? In other words,
is there generic non-European fascism, or maybe even colonial izsdsm?
The term globalfascism is, stricdy speaking, an aporia. Fascism, like
all nationalisms, is exclusivist in its nationalism and rests on an ever
clearer, if not radical or even brutally violent definition of the "other".
Fascism is therefore necessarily compartmentalized. At most, it exists
as various "fascisms". What we can speak of, though, is fascism as a
global phenomenon, and we can look for a taxonomy, or typology of
fascism, and for international contacts and transnational channels of
ideological exchange. However, the existence of a clearly shaped and
colorful imagery of Italian fascism and German Nazism—the often
referred to aesthetics of fascism—exacerbates the shaping of such a tax-
onomy. Italy and Germany set the parameters of the fascist imaginary
for an early medialized global culture, they defined the fascist brand in
popular culture as an effective vehicle for spreading the message. In
advertising, however, the brand says litde about the content.^^
With regard to content, there is no shortage of theories of fascism,
and it is impossible to do all of them justice in the confines of this
article. Moreover, they are often ambiguous and hardly withstand crit-
ical case by case testing, extending from a Marxist critique of fascism
as capitalism in crisis to theories that are so vaguely formulated that

" ' As in Watenpaugh, Being Modern.

" ' See Stein Larsen, "Was There Fascism Outside Europe?", in Fascism outside Europe, ed.
Larsen, 720ff.
342 P Wien / Die Welt des Iskms 52 (2012) 331-350

every occurrence requires the opening of a new category.^* Many theo-

ries point to anti-communism and anti-liberalism, mass following and
mass party organization, the cult of violence and the Führer principle,
as well as radical nationalism as common traits of fascism, often com-
bined with racism and a specific fascist style of politics. For some, the
problem to pinpoint fascism is that there is no single foundational text
for all its colors: There is no Fascist Manifesto. It would be remiss,
though, to draw the conclusion that fascism as a. phenomenon was void
of ideology.
The British historian and political theorist Roger Griffin sees fascism
largely as a product of late 19'*' century anti-Enlightenment trends. For
Griffin, fascism evolves out of a mythical understanding of the world
at a breaking point offering "palingenesis", or a re-birth of the indi-
vidual into a meaningful national community, leaving behind the frag-
mented and allegedly overly scientistic world of the early 20''' century
that imploded during World War I. For Griffin, as for many other
theorists of fascism, the World War I frontline experience was instru-
mental in bringing about fascist movements of like-minded seekers of
new meaning that were channeled by the communitarianism and "fes-
tival culture" of the fascist movements. Roger Eatwell adds that fascist
ideology claimed to offer a "radical third way" based on the creation of
an integrative (and exclusive as well as totalitarian) national community.
In Eatwell's model, the fascist style (of the shirt movements), the obses-
sion with action over theory, the cult of violence, and the demonizadon
of the "other" are only accidental matters of appearance. So are "nega-
tives" of other definitions of fascism (anti-commtmism, anti-liberalism).
They were part of fascism's propaganda but not its substance.^^ This
definition would provide as added value a platform for an assessment
of post-1945 movements in the Arab world, such as Ba'thism and Nas-
serism and the regimes that drew on them, because it avoids the rather

^® Kogei GúSín, ed.. International Fascism: Theories, Causes and the New Consensus, Arnold
Readers in History Series (London/New York: Arnold; Oxford University Press, 1998),
1-20.
^^ Roger Grififin, Modernism and Fascism: The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and
Hitler (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 6-10; Roger Eatwell, "Universal Fascism?
Approaches and Definitions", in Fascism outside Europe, ed. Larsen, 15-45.
 p Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350 343

simplistic focus on the slogans and uniforms of fascist self-fashioning.

Such an inquiry is, however, beyond the scope of this article.
Similar to Roger Griffin, Zeev Sternhell insists that fascism was not
just a function ofthe disruption that World War I caused. Fascism has
a core of ideas, and cannot be reduced to a reaction to the destruction
of 19''' century society, and to the emergence of Leninist and Stalinist
systems—as Nolte's phenomenology would suggest. Sternhell, instead,
points to the revolutionary roots of fascist thought and its hatred ofthe
Enlightenment as well.^*
Was there comparable anti-Enlightenment reasoning in the Middle
East? During the interwar period, admirers of fascism such as Salama
Mùsâ (only in die early 1930s) or the young enthusiasts of Iraq and
Syria saw themselves in the tradition of the modernizing forces of the
Enlightenment, to free or make better use ofthe potentials ofthe indi-
vidual.^' The authoritarianism of the interwar and immediate post-
World War II Arab states was rather based on paternalistic authoritarian
traditions ofthe late Ottoman polity than on the adoption of totalitar-
ian ideas.'" It has, nevertheless, been argued that the second half of the
1930s in Egypt in particular, but also in the Middle East in general,
represents a period of a "crisis of orientation" among intellectuals and
a frustration with the perceived failure of the so called "liberal
experiment".^' Once more, this argument evokes Ernst Nolte's reason-
ing about the foundations of radical political movements in the inter-
war period. Nolte suggested that the liberal system—not as a political
actuality, but as the dominant worldview of the bourgeoisie—offered
the "radical freedom to realize its opposite", and to give in to a "totali-
tarian temptation".'^ I have argued myself that the socio-political situ-

^" Sternhell, "How to Think about Fascism", 280-290.

^" Gershoni and Jankowski, Confronting Fascism; Bashkin, The Other Iraq; Nordbruch,
Nazism in Syria and Lebanon; Wien, Iraqi Arab Nationalism.
"" Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Patemal Privilege, and Gender
in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 19-57.
^" An overview and critique of this argument, debated by such scholars as N. Safran, P J.
Vatikiotis, C. Smith, and A. Ludi al-Sayyid Marsot, is in Gershoni, "Egyptian Liberalism",
551-554; and in Gershoni and Jankowski, Confronting Fascism, 6fF.
^^' Ernst Nolte, Die Krise des Liberalen Systems und diefaschistischen Bewegungen (München:
Piper, 1968). Quotes in Horst Möller, "Ernst Nolte und das 'liberale System'", in
Weltbürgerkrieg der Ideologien: Antworten an Ernst Nolte: Festschrifr zum 70. Geburtstag, ed.
344 P Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350

ation of generational conflict before World War II was conducive to a

mindset among young intellectuals that made them play with all sorts
of radical temptations, but it is almost banal to argue that colonial
dependence did not offer Arab politicians and intellectuals enough
opportunity to actually "give in" to these temptations in any significant
way. The only example of a totalitarian experiment in the Arab Middle
East during the first half of the 20* century was arguably the so called
Rashid 'Ali movement in Iraq of 1941, which—as I have shown else-
where—^was ambiguous in its orientation, geographically limited and
did not last long enough to allow for broad conclusions about the fea-
sibility of totalitarian radicalism in an Arab state." The multipolar
relationship between local elites in the Arab lands and their contenders
of a younger generation on the one hand, and on the other hand the
British and French imperialist hegemons in their states, and the Nazi
and fascist challengers of the post-World War I world order (as many
Arabs perceived them) created a highly complex cocktail of political
opinions and opportunities that is unlike the socio-political situation
of sovereign states that paved the way for the ascendance of fascist
movements in Europe after 1918. The aforementioned research by Ger-
shoni and Jankowski has put this "crisis of orientation" into perspective
arguing that authoritarian and pro-fascist voices were just a few in a
plurality of opinions in the Egyptian and broader Arab intellectual field.
This cacophony of voices forbids arguing for a general, radical rejection
of humanism and reason among Middle Eastern intellectuals and pol-
iticians at the time. Moreover, the pectiliar geo-strategic situation of
World War II does not allow to draw hard conclusions from the delib-
erations of Arab politicians and, in few cases, their decisions about
alliances as they happened in Iraq in 1941, in Tunisia during the Ger-
man occupation between 1942 and 1943 when monarch Moncef Bey
tried to keep equidistance from both the Allies and the Axis powers, or
in Egypt during the February Fourth Incident of 1942 when the British,

Thomas Nipperdey, Anselm Doering-Manteuffel and Hans-Ulrich Thamer (Berlin:

Propyläen, 1993), 60. See also the model about the connection between degrees of
liberalization and the potential for the development of fascist movements in Larsen, "Was
There Fascism Outside Europe?", in Fascism outside Europe, ed. Larsen, 812-815.
n, Iraqi Arab Nationalism, 14-51, 105-112.
 p Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350 345

with Rommel advancing, forced King Färüq at gunpoint to give up his

idea of appointing his pro-Axis confidant 'All Mähir as Prime Minister.

It is not an apologetic argument that there is litde basis for a comparison

between radical political and intellectual movements in the Arab world
and fascism in Europe. As a matter of fact, right wing political radi-
calism did exist in the Arab lands, and it bore resemblances to fascist
movements in Europe and worldwide during the interwar period. This
radicalism may not have had an immediate impact on interwar and
wartime Arab politics, but it is arguable that it prepared the ground for
long-term authoritarian trends in the post-war Arab states. In a recent
analysis, Federico Finchelstein introduces a way to apply a global fascist
taxonomy useftilly in the context of Argentina between the two World
Wars. Finchelstein argues that only an open, and in my terminology
phenomenological approach justifies the usage of the term fascism in a
non-European context at all. The tendency of many historians of fascism
in Europe to establish a rigid taxonomy and, on its basis, to rule out
that fascism ever existed outside Europe, represents for Finchelstein an
example of Eurocentric exclusivity. Finchelstein argues, in contrast, that
the Argentine adoption of fascism needs to be understood as a chaotic
and unsystematic process, yet one that was pursued by its actors in a
very self conscious manner, in a process of making sense of models
perceived from a distance, but in a local context. It is Finchelstein's
project to explain how this "making sense" actually worked, and how
it represents just one manifestation of a process that affected many
societies worldwide. In a similar way, historians of South Asia are grap-
pling with the question of how to contextualize the manifestations of
fascist inspired thinking among intellectuals like 'Inàyatullâh Khan
al-Mashriqi and the fascist aesthetics of his Khâksàr youth movement
in the 1930s.^'' In this regard, while there was no such thing as global

^'> Markus Daechsel, "Scientism and its Discontents: The Indo-Muslim 'Fascism' of
Inayatullah Khan Al-Mashriqi", Modem Intellectual History 3 (2006), 443-472. There are
striking parallels to the Middle Eastern context in Daechsel's account, but there is also a
tendency to use the term^ktciii indiscriminately. I would also take issue with evidence about
our present topic derived solely from the hyper-eclectic theoretical deliberations of a single
eccentric thinker. Ideas similar to those of Finchelstein are in Benjamin Zachariah,
"Rethinking (the Absence oQ Fascism in India, C. 1922-45", in Cosmopolitan Thought
346 P- Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350

fascism, it nevertheless became a traveling transnational ideology and a

reference point.''
An open, flexible taxonomy constituting a field of possible manifes-
tations of fascist or fascistic trends is quite useftil for a researcher of
comparative, global political and ideological movements and their trans-
national dispersion. This approach is the opposite of what proponents
of the Islamofascism paradigm are seeking. They diflFer, in turn, from
researchers who accept only European manifestations of fascism as trtily
fascist and consider equivalent non-European groups and parties as
performing mere mimicry. Instead, the proponents of Islamofascism
use shallow evidence of personal contacts and a superficial assessment
of representations to extend the fascist epithet to politicized Muslims,
with the intention to denigrate them as indistinct from fascism or
Nazism's rigorous ideological systems and forms of political practice
and extreme violence. Even Euro-centric fascism theory offers in spite
of its weaknesses a way to react to this assertion. Islamofascism's confla-
tion of modern Islamism and fascism suggests that both would share
an ideological core. On the level of abstraction that theorists like Grif-
fin, Eatwell and Sternhell apply, this essential core wotild have to be the
negation of humanist reasoning^* and the rejection of the Enlighten-
ment. It is arguable, though, that the origins of modern Islamism are
precisely the opposite. They do not lie in the rejection of reason and
science, but in debates about Islamic reform of the 19* century and
their engagement with reason and science. It would be a matter of
debate whether the militant, radical and murderous manifestations of
Islamism today are simply aberrations and hence accidental and not
essential characteristics of modern Islamism—or if they are symptom-

Zones: South Asia and the Global Circulation ofIdeas, ed. Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra,
Palgrave Macmillan Transnational History Series (Houndmills, Basingstoke/New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 178-209. It remains to be seen, though, if the disaggregation
of the term Êiscism as European historians use it, but still its retention for a non-European
context as Zachariah suggests, is really helpful to grasp the phenomenon on the long run.
35) Federico Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism: Ideology, Violence, and the Sacred in
Argentina and Italy, 1919-1945 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010), 4-11. Similar
issues are addressed in a wide array of short studies in Fascism outside Europe, ed. Larsen.
'*' Not of reasoning altogether, though. Fascism was "anti-rational", not "irrational".
Eatwell, "Universal Fascism", in Fascism outside Europe, ed. Larsen, 27.
 p Wien / Die Welt des Iskms 52 (2012) 331-350 347

atic for a digression into a "darker" terrain that Islamism entered in the
1960s or so.^^ 19* century Reformers such as Rifâ'a al-TahtäwI, Khayr
al-Din al-TunisI, Muhammad 'Abduh, but also 20* century figures like
Rashid Rida and 'Abd al-Hamid Ben Bidls, tried to reconcile the
achievements of the European age of reason with the Islamic heritage.
Their agenda was to protect the Islamic community against superstition
and to claim science and reason for an alternative, Islamic modernity.'*
In the late 1930s, Hasan al-Banna, the Muslim Brotherhood's founder,
rejected fascism explicitly, as well as nationalism and racism raging in
Europe, including the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. 'Hius he
wanted to present the Muslims of his organization as not only on a par
with Europeans, but even as morally superior.'' If mass organization,
fascist style and the cult of violence are accidental to fascism, as Eatwell
argues, then the same would apply to the extreme manifestations of
political Islam—in violence and rhetoric. Consequendy, fascism and
Islamism would be essentially different in the core: the former rejects,
and the latter endorses reason. On a different note, there is also no
similarity between Islamism and clericofascism of the extreme right in
catholic countries, as the shared religious reference might suggest. Cler-
icofascism represented an alignment between fascist movements and the
institutional church.^" The origins of modern Islamism are, however,
in a movement that opposed the religious establishment of Muslim
countries, which was perceived as inflexible and hostile to rationality.

Conclusion
In the 1930s, there were movements in the Middle East that consciously
chose a discernible fascist outlook, but to my knowledge no groups or
parties existed at the time, if ever, that were explicidy^cwi by name—
unlike Argentina, for example.^' In contrast there was a desire among

^^ Daechsel, "Scientism and its Discontents", 443.

' " See Sami Zubaida, "Islam and Nationalism: Continuities and Contradictions", Nations
and Nationalism 10 (2004), 409.
^" Gershoni and Jankowski, Conftonting Fascism, 214-218.
•"" Finchelstein, Transatkntic Fascism, 118-137.
•"' Ibid., 42, 112f.
348 P Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350

radicals to dissociate themselves from European right wing ideology. It

is debatable if this was merely due to the particular situation in a
colonial power relationship. I would argue, therefore and for the fol-
lowing reasons, that Middle Eastern movements were ovetúX fascistic,'''^
hence merely mimicking fascist style (discipline, uniforms, a discourse
of violence) but did not meet the core criterion of fascism to be based
on revolutionary expectations and a radical rejection of the Enlight-
enment—at least during the interwar period, if not beyond. The state
run al-Futuwwa movement of Iraq, or the militias of the bourgeois
Wafd party in Egypt or the Syrian National Bloc, while at times violent,
did not represent a radical agenda. There was no clear cut anti-com-
munism or emphasis on racial distinctiveness in these movements. The
SSNP in Lebanon and Syria and Young Egypt are arguably the most
explicit manifestations of this fascistic trend, but obviously they did
not build on a World War I trench experience and the ensuing mindset.
Their membership was relatively small and socially, their members were
too close to the elites.^^ They did not demand revolutionary change and
rebirth, but vied for recognition and generational change. The name of
the nascent Ba'th {Re-birth or Renaissance) party of the 1940s suggests
a palingenetic worldview, but it built a mass following only when fusing
in Syria with Akram Hawrâni's peasant based Arab Socialist Party in
1953, or in Iraq only once permanendy in government after 1968. In
comparison, far right nationalism was already a mass movement in the
1930s and 40s in Argentina.^* Both the SSNP's Sa'ada and the founders
of the Ba'th party put "feeling" over "thoughts" in the propagation of
political will, which is an aspect of Griffin's theory. But how do we deal
with an ideologue like Antun Sa'ada, who did adopt elements that some

''^' The German historian and Islamicist Fritz Steppat used the term "faschistoid". Fritz
Steppat, "Das Jahr 1933 und seine Folgen fur die arabischen Länder des Vorderen Otients",
in Die Große Krise der dreißiger Jahre: Vom Niedergang der Weltwirtschaft zum Zweiten
Weltkrieg, ed. Gerhard Schulz (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985), 274. In
contrast, Watenpaugh uses the term "fascist" quite indisctiminately. Watenpaugh, Being
Modem, 255-278.
'"' This is also true for the Muslim Brotherhood and Young Egypt: I. Gershoni and James
P Jankowski, RedeftningtheEgyptian Nation, 1930-1945, Cambridge Middle East Studies
(Cambtidge/NewYork: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 15f
•"' Finchelstein, Transatlantic Fascism, 62.
 p Wien / Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350 349

consider part of generic fascism, most prominendy the leadership prin-

ciple and the communitarian vision of society, but who at the same
time explicidy denounced that his party was in any way fascist or pro-
Nazi and even warned his followers not to believe Italian and German
propaganda?^' This statement is similar to Hasan al-Banna's aforemen-
tioned anti-fascist stance, in that it represents a genuine desire to differ
from European models.

A phenomenological approach of Middle Eastern fascist style move-

ments offers the possibility to locate them on a map of social conflicts
specific to their environment rather than giving them too much ideo-
logical weight. Robert Paxton, a further leading theoretician of fascism,
looks at governmental action to distinguish between the fascist or
authoritarian characters of movements. Only when in power, authori-
tarian movements are distinguishable from truly fascist ones. The for-
mer's mere usage of propaganda and stylistic motifs or their acceptance
of economic prerogatives that contradict their revolutionary agenda
separates them from fascists who deal uncompromisingly with existing
elite structures.''* None of the movements we are looking at ever
achieved meaningful political influence during the 1930s and even
when extreme nationalists took over government in the second half of
the 20''' century, the disconnect between their rhetoric and the actual
elite and leadership structures of regimes such as in Ba'thist Iraq or Syria
shows that ideology was only a means to an end. By that time, cliques
used parties to usurp power, adjusting ideology to their own immediate
needs in the most arbitrary manner.^''
At the end of the day, a serious enquiry should locate each of these
movements and their respective spokesmen in their particular local and

<" Akram Fouad Khater, ed., "Antun Sa'adeh Declares His Vision of 'Greater Syria' or
Regional Nationalism, June 1, 1935", in Sources in the History ofthe Modern Middle East,
2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2011), 128ff.
•'*' Robert O. Paxton, "The Five Stages oí ¥3scistti', Joumal ofModern History 70 (1998)
14-21.
•''' Compare, for instance, Eric Davis, Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective
Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Lisa Wedeen,
Ambiguities ofDomination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1999).
350 P Wien/Die Welt des Islams 52 (2012) 331-350

regional contexts. This position gains in strength, however, when

informed by a transnational comparison with other political trends
based on sound theoretical considerations. The discussion about generic
transnational fascism and fascism outside Europe is therefore only at
the beginning stage.
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