Boca Islamic group under scrutiny for neo-Nazi ties

[drdon326]

A new Islamic advocacy group in Boca Raton is under scrutiny for its ties to William W. Baker, a former chairman of the neo-Nazi political party of presidential candidate David Duke who was run out of town last year when he attempted to speak at Florida Atlantic University.

Local Jewish and civic leaders said Friday they were alarmed that the Assadiq Islamic Education Foundation, whose headquarters are listed at 831 E. Palmetto Park Road in Boca, had invited Baker back to Boca as featured speaker at an April 30 banquet at the Boca Marriott. Invited by Muslim students to speak at Florida Atlantic University in April 2004, Baker’s first visit to the city was cancelled amid popular protest.

“I’d like to give the benefit of the doubt and say they got snookered, but this is the second attempt at getting Baker into Boca Raton, so they have to be aware of his reputation,” said Bill Gralnick, southeast regional director of the American Jewish Committee.

Leaders of the Anti-Defamation League also protested last year’s visit by Baker, on whom they have a long anti-Semitic file. Now head of Christians and Muslims for Peace (CAMP), Baker chaired the neo-Nazi Populist Party and organized its national convention in 1984.

“For me, it’s alarm bells,” Gralnick said. “Baker is in league with Islamicist elements that are probing the defenses of American Jewish communities. He makes money off them by being their white Anglo-Saxon mouthpiece who says bad things about Jews.”

http://www.bocaratonnews.com/index.php?src=news&category=Local%20News&prid=11371





ED NOTE...THIS ARTICLE IS ABOUT ANTI-SEMITISM.

[AlienGirl]

1. This is hardly surprising to me

The original Nazis made allies in the Muslim world, and the Ba'ath party was based on Nazism. It's not surprising that the present-day Nazi groups would do something like this.

Tucker

[Colorado Blue]

2. I'm glad you mentioned this. I don't think enough people are

aware of the Nazi influence and how it continues to afflict us.

[Darranar]

3. The Ba'ath Party was NOT based on Nazism...

it was based on a kind of pan-Arab socialism, in contrast to the pro-Soviet tendencies of the Communist parties.

That said, its current incarnations certainly tend towards fascism.

[Colorado Blue]

6. Well...there were some pretty strong sympathies. Here are

some links:

http://www.pim-fortuyn.nl/pfforum/post.asp?REPLY_ID=333427&TOPIC_ID=30689&method=ReplyQuote

Nostalgic admiration of Nazis has remained strong in Syria. Sami al-Joundi, a founder of the Syrian Ba'ath movement, writes: "We were racists. We admired the Nazis. We were immersed in reading Nazi literature and books that were the source of the Nazi spirit...We were the first who thought of a translation of Mein Kampf. Anyone who lived in Damascus at that time was witness to the Arab inclination toward Nazism."

http://home.att.net/~m.standridge/fweexter.htm

Ba'ath was founded in Syria in the mid40's by VichyNazi agents with connections with Charles Bedaux and, through him, with the Windsors and Standard Oil. Ba'ath's original platform, which hasn't changed much since, is antiMarxist, adopting a vague notion of socialism and virulent antiSemitism. (Bennis and Moushabeck 30). Many Nazi agents were in formerly Vichy Syria until 1945 (Higham 177-88). Syria was also the base for the Nazi agent Bedaux, who had strong ties to the Windsors (Bush's relatives) to 1943. He was arrested in April of 1943 (Higham 177-88).

In Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, New York: Random House, 1990, 85-7) Judith Miller, a professional reporter for the New York Times, and Laurie Milroie, a Harvard Mid-East expert, describe the pre-and post-World War II history of Ba'ath and its founders and give a more detailed history of the beginnings of the Ba'ath Party in the Middle East:

"The February 1964 coup against Qassim marked the arrival of a new and ruthless player in Iraqi politics--the Baath Party of Ahmad Hassan al-Bakr and, later, Saddam Hussein. The Baath (Arabic for 'renaissance') began as a political movement in Syria in the 1930s. It soon cmae to be dominated by two Damascus high school teachers, Michel Aflaq and Salah Bitar, who had studied together at the Sorbonne between 1928 and 1932....

"As a student in Paris, Aflaq was attracted to the fascist ideas then fashionable in Europe. He was 'full of enthusiasm for Hitler' and other German fascists, according to the Syrian-born historian Bassam Tibi. Aflaq saw in Nazi Germany a model for his ideas of a synthesis between nationalism and socialism. At the time of the 1941 coup of the pro-German Rashid Ali, he and Bitar formed a "Society to Help Iraq," the nucleus of what later became that country's Baath party, according to the Princeton historian Bernard Lewis. Aflaq's view of Arab nationalism was quite romantic and far more radical than that of the Arabs as a race, as expressed in the Baathist slogan, 'One Arab nation with an eternal mission.'...

http://www.safeplace.net/members/mer/MER_a043.htm
Bernard Lewis article

This gives some background and weaves it into a description of Ba'ath philosophy and the history of the time.

Note: these are from various viewpoints, but all seem to point to a certain political philosophy.

Certainly one cannot accuse the Ba'ath Party, either in Syria or in Iraq, of great tolerance for the individual or for minorites, nor of democratic tendencies.

[ikojo]

4. Morris Dees' organization, Southern Poverty Law Ctr had an

article about how some Muslim groups are allying themselves with neo nazi groups...

It's a long article...take from it what you will.

The Swastika and the Crescent

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=132

snip

An official of America's premier neo-Nazi group, the National Alliance, said he wished his own members had "half as much testicular fortitude." The awestruck leader of another U.S. Nazi group called the terrorists "VERY BRAVE PEOPLE."

snip

The peculiar bond between white nationalist groups and certain Muslim extremists derives in part from a shared set of enemies — Jews, the United States, race-mixing, ethnic diversity.

snip

In the 1970s, Saudi Arabia hired an American neo-Nazi as a lobbyist in the United States. In the 1980s, U.S. neo-Nazi strategist Louis Beam openly called for a linkup of America's far right with the "liberation movements" of Libya, Syria, Iran and Palestine.

snip

During that 1991 war, Oklahoma Klan leader Dennis Mahon organized a small rally in Tulsa in support of Saddam. Mahon says he later received a couple of hundred dollars in an unmarked envelope from the Iraqi government.

[Behind the Aegis]

5. That is just damn scary!

Talk about strange bedfellows! Just goes to show that they hate Jews more than each other. :( It was like when the religious leaders of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism came together to condemn a gay pride rally in Jerusalem! Sad that hate is what brings some people together!

[Colorado Blue]

7. Great. This new Crusade movie, Kingdom of Heaven, has

sparked controversy, but also some interesting articles.

BBC recalls, many Jews were slaughtered by Christians on their way to slaughter Muslims.

AAAAACCCCCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK.

And people honestly believe we run this insane planet?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4508401.stm

[ikojo]

8. I know, people forget that Jews were also victims of the

Crusades. Most do know that Muslims were victims but forget about Jews.

I hate it when people say that Judaism has killed the same number of people in the name of G-d as Christianity. The sentence usually goes something like this, "Jews, Christians and Muslims kill because others wont accept their version of the Bible."