Dr.

Andrew Bostom
Uncreated, Uncreative Words

Hitler and Jihad (Part 1)

Posted on 22nd October 2008 | 2 Comments

The convergence of jihadism and Nazism: al-Mashriqi (left), and Hitler

(right) with Hajj Amin el-Husseini (center)

A recent report (summarized in translation here) by the Hamburg intelligence

service —the Office for the Protection of the Constitution [Verfassungsschutz]—
stressed the hostility of the neo-Nazi North German Action Office toward “Anti-
Islamification” efforts in Cologne. At the  North German Action Office’s
[Aktionsbüro Norddeutschland],  “campaigns” page website, links are featured with
titles such as “National Socialists in Lower Saxony,” “Free! Social! National!,” and
“May 1 — Day of struggle for national Socialism.” The Hamburg domestic
intelligence report noted the neo-Nazi group’s repeated allusions—commonplace
in Nazi “analyses”—to the American “east coast,” which are meant to characterize
“Jewish” domination of America and, by extension, the world. And in a statement
published on its website (German link) September 25, 2008, five days after an
“Anti-Islamification Congress” was banned by Cologne municipal authorities, the
North German Action Office elucidated its solidarity with the global jihad:
 
 Inasmuch as it is a determined opponent of the western-plutocratic one-world
policy, we regard Islam, globally considered, as an ally against the
mammonistic dominance of the American east coast. The freedom of
nations is not threatened by Islam, but rather by the imperialism of the USA
and its vassals from Jerusalem to Berlin.
 
Such concordance between Nazism and jihadism reflects an historical continuum
evident since the advent of the Nazi movement. This nexus was already apparent
in Hitler’s own observations from 1926, elaborated upon over the following
decades by both the Nazi leader, and other key Nazi officials, and ideologues. Not
surprisingly, there are two predominant, recurring themes in this discourse: jihad
as total war, and the annihilationist jihad against the Jews.
 
Perhaps the earliest recorded evidence of Hitler’s serious interest in the jihad was
provided by Muhammad ‘Inayat Allah Khan [who adopted the pen name “al-
Mashriqi”—“the Orientalist” or “the Sage of the East”].  Born in the Punjab in 1888, al-
Mashriqi was a Muslim polymath who attended Cambridge on a government
scholarship, and excelled in the study of oriental languages, mathematics,
engineering, and the sciences.
 
Not only did Mashriqi translate the standard abridged version of Mein Kampf (then
commonly available) from English into Urdu, during one of his sojourns in Europe,
which included time spent in Berlin, he met Hitler in the early years of the
Fuehrer’s leadership of the National Socialist [Nazi] Party. Their meeting took
place in 1926 at the National Library. Here is the gist of Mashriqi’s report on his
interaction with Hitler as described in a letter to the renowned scholar of Indian
Islam, J.M.S. Baljon:
 
I was astounded when he [Hitler] told me that he knew about my Tazkirah. The
news flabbergasted me. . . I found him very congenial and piercing. He
discussed Islamic Jihad with me in details. In 1930 I sent him my Isharat
concerning the Khaksar movement with a picture of a spade-bearer Khaksar
at the end of that book. In 1933 he started his Spade Movement.
 
Mashriqi also wrote this independent summary of his 1926 encounter with Hitler on May
31, 1935:
 
 
If I had known that this was the very man who was to become Germany’s savior I
would have fallen around Hitler’s neck, but on the occasion I was engaged in small
talk and tried to find out what he understood about Germany’s weakness at the time.
Professor [Weil, the host] said, introducing Hitler to me: “This is also a very important
man, an activist from the Worker’s Party.” We shook hands and Hitler said, pointing to
a book that was lying on the table: “I had a chance to read your al-Tazkirah.” Little did
 I understand at that time, what should have been clear to me when he said these
words!
 
The astonishing similarities—or shall we say the unintentional similarity between two
great minds—between Hitler’s great book and the teachings of my Tazkirah and
Isharat embolden me, because the fifteen years of “struggle” of the author {Hitler] of
“My Struggle” [Mein Kampf] have now actually led his nation back to success. But
only after leading his nation to the intended goal, has he disclosed his movement’s
rules and obligations to the world; only after fifteen years has he made the means of
success widely known. It is possible that he has arrived at those means and
doctrines by trial and error, but it should be absolutely clear that Mashriqi [referring to
himself in the third person] has identified those means and doctrines in al-Tazkirah a
full nine years and in the Isharat a full three years before the success of the Nazi
movement, simply by following the shining guidance of the Holy Koran.
 
Mashriqi founded the Khaksar Movement, an Indian Muslim separatist (i.e.,
promoting the Pakistan “idea”), and global jihad supremacist organization. Its
ethos is revealed in Mashriqi’s writings (for example, his Qaul-i-Faysel):  “…we
{Muslims] have again to dominate the whole world. We have to become its
conqueror and its rulers.” His widely circulated pamphlet Islam ki Askari Zindagi
further declared: “The Koran has proclaimed in unequivocal words to the world
that the Prophet was sent with the true religion and definite instruction that he
should make all other religions subservient to this religion [Islam]…”
 
Mashriqi emphasized repeatedly in his pamphlets and published articles that the verity of
Islam could be gauged by the rate of the earliest Muslim conquests in the glorious first
decades after the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s death (Mashriqi’s estimate is “36,000
castles in 9 years, or 12 per day”). He asserted “Nearly three-quarters” of the Koran
concerns conquest, jihad (holy war), and related themes. And Mashriqi reminded that the
Koran promises hellfire to all those who do not participate in Jihad bi-l-saif (“jihad with
the sword”), or object to it. Mashriqi also believed the Koran’s jihad verses
confirmed that if a Muslim fought for the cause of Islam, this action alone was
sufficient for his salvation, requiring no other good deeds. According to Mashriqi,
Islam’s “five pillars”—the confession of the oneness of Allah and Muhammad’s prophetic
mission, the ritual prayer five times daily, the pilgrimage (haj) to Mecca, the giving of
alms, and the fast in the month of Ramadan—were all aspects of military exercise: the
confession of faith actually meant that the true Muslim had to forsake all worldly gains in
the interest of military revival, prayer (to be performed in uniform and in a regimented
way) was a kind of military drill, the haj was something like a grand counsel of Muslim
soldiers where plans against enemies could be formulated, the fast was a preparation for
the deprivations of siege warfare, the giving of alms, lastly, was a means of raising funds
for Muslim re-armament. In short, he stated, “To leave the martial way of life is
tantamount to leaving Islam.”
 
But it was the “Ten Principles” Mashriqi elucidated in the Tazkirah—the work Hitler
discussed with him in 1926—which produced a quintessential message of Islam
enshrining the ideals of militaristic nation-building. This vision sounded almost identical
to sections of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (compare to Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 169-179,
Reynal and Hitchcock trans, 1941)—certainly in the following paraphrase from al-Tazkirah
prepared by some of Mashriqi’s colleagues for foreign consumption:
 
A persistent application of, and action on these Ten Principles is the true
significance of “fitness” in the Darwinian [sic] principle of “Survival of the
Fittest”, and a community of people which carries action on these lines to the
very extremist limits has every right to remain a predominant race on this
Earth forever, has claim to be the ruler of the world for all time. As soon as
any or all of these qualities deteriorate in a nation, she begins to lose her right
to remain and Fitter people may take her place automatically under the Law of
Natural Selection.
 
 
Albert Speer, who was Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, wrote
a contrite memoir of his World War II experiences while serving a 20-year prison
sentence imposed by the Nuremberg tribunal. Speer’s narrative includes a
discussion which captures Hitler’s effusive praise for Islam, “…a religion that
believed in spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations to that
faith. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament.” Hitler,
according to Speer’s account, repeatedly expressed the conviction that, “The
Mohammedan religion…would have been much more compatible to us than
Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”
These sentiments were also expressed by Hitler to Dr. Herman Neubacher, the first
Nazi Mayor of Vienna, and subsequently, a special delegate of the Nazi regime in
southeastern Europe. Neubacher wrote that Hitler had told him Islam was a “male
religion,” and reiterated the belief that the Germans would have been far more
successful conquerors had they adopted Islam in the Middle Ages. Additional
confirmation of Hitler’s very favorable inclination towards Islam is provided by
General Alexander Loehr, a Lutwaffe commander (executed in 1947 for the mass-
murders of Yugoslav civilians). Loehr maintained a smiling Hitler had told him
that Islam was such a desirable creed the Fuehrer longed for it to become the
official SS religion.
 

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Dr. Andrew Bostom