How a Mosque for Ex-Nazis Became Center of Radical Islam

[question everything]

The Beachhead

How a Mosque for Ex-Nazis Became Center of Radical Islam

Documents Reveal Triumph By Muslim Brotherhood In Postwar Munich
A CIA Plan to Fight Soviets

By IAN JOHNSON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 12, 2005; Page A1

(snip)

The soldiers' presence in Munich was part of a nearly forgotten subplot to World War II: the decision by tens of thousands of Muslims in the Soviet Red Army to switch sides and fight for Hitler. After the war, thousands sought refuge in West Germany, building one of the largest Muslim communities in 1950s Europe. When the Cold War heated up, they were a coveted prize for their language skills and contacts back in the Soviet Union. For more than a decade, U.S., West German, Soviet and British intelligence agencies vied for control of them in the new battle of democracy versus communism.

Yet the victor wasn't any of these Cold War combatants. Instead, it was a movement with an equally powerful ideology: the Muslim Brotherhood. Founded in 1920s Egypt as a social-reform movement, the Brotherhood became the fountainhead of political Islam, which calls for the Muslim religion to dominate all aspects of life. A powerful force for political change throughout the Muslim world, the Brotherhood also inspired some of the deadliest terrorist movements of the past quarter century, including Hamas and al Qaeda.

The story of how the Brotherhood exported its creed to the heart of Europe highlights a recurring error by Western democracies. For decades, countries have tried to cut deals with political Islam -- backing it in order to defeat another enemy, especially communism. Most famously, the U.S. and its allies built up mujahadeen holy warriors in 1980s Afghanistan to fight the Soviet Union -- paving the way for the rise of Osama bin Laden, who quickly turned on his U.S. allies in the 1990s.

(snip)

In 1920s Egypt, a young schoolteacher named Hasan al-Banna came down firmly on the side of orthodoxy. Troubled by what he saw as the immorality of a rapidly modernizing Egypt, he set up an organization called the Muslim Brotherhood. His plan was to re-Islamicize society by teaching the fundamentals of Islam in the everyday language of the coffee shop, not the classical Arabic of mosques. He set up welfare organizations and was famous for his commitment to social justice. But this collided with other visions of Egypt, especially those imported from the West, such as socialism and fascism. Heavily involved in the turbulent politics of postwar Egypt, Mr. Banna was assassinated in 1949. A few years later, a military coup brought in a socialist government that banned the group in 1954.

(snip)

Mr. Ramadan, like others in the Muslim Brotherhood, strongly opposed communism for rejecting religion. During the Cold War, that made him a natural ally of the U.S. But Mr. Ramadan also opposed the U.S. and other Western countries for their interference in Mideastern affairs. Then as now, that put people like Mr. Ramadan in a tough position: They needed to cooperate with the West but didn't want to be Western collaborators. Historical evidence suggests that Mr. Ramadan worked with the CIA. At the time, America was locked in a power struggle with the Soviet Union, which was supporting Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser. As Nasser's enemy, the Brotherhood seemed like a good ally for the U.S.


(snip)


For decades, German authorities paid little attention to the activities in Munich, viewing them as unconnected to German society. They were slow to grasp the warning signs. In 1993, after a car-bomb attack on the World Trade Center in New York killed six and injured 1,000, investigators discovered that one of the organizers was Mahmoud Abouhalima, who had frequented the mosque. He was tried in the U.S. and in 1994 was sentenced to life in prison without parole. German domestic intelligence began to observe the mosque, intelligence officials say, but dropped their efforts after a short while when no links to terrorism appeared. The Sept. 11 attacks changed that. Three of the four lead hijackers had studied in Germany, as did another key organizer. As German and U.S. law enforcement searched for clues, some, it is only now becoming apparent, led back to the Munich mosque.

(snip)

---- Almut Schoenfeld in Berlin contributed to this article.

Write to Ian Johnson at [e-mail]

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111964664777469127,00.html

[Jim Sagle]

1. Good article. No surprises, though.

[fujiyama]

2. Interesting about Hasan el Bana

Sounds a lot like Mohammad Atta actually. I remember hearing or reading somewhere that Atta also was angered greatly by skyscrapers and other western style buildings in Cairo.

[FreedomAngel82]

3. Definitley a good read

I'm going to share it. Thanks. It shows why we're in the problem we're in now I think.

[question everything]

4. Thanks. It is really very long and detailed article

with a long list of sources used. Was hard to condense it to these few allowed paragraphs. And I agree, it illuminates the connections between the different groups and debunks a lot of wishful thinking of other causes - like Israel.

[arendt]

5. Yes. Good article, but...

I challenge the WSJ to do a similar investigation
into links between fundamentalist churches and the
KKK. Also between Falwell and Rev Moon.

They just pilloried Durbin for using the word Nazi.
But, the WSJ is more clever. They associate the
Islamicists with Nazis by historical fact.

Too bad that, except for the interesting connection
of the "prayer breakfast" founder to the Nazis, there
is no such historical connection in the US. But I would
love to see the WSJ trace the fundies to the KKK.

arendt