Pam Geller is the poster girl of “Islamophobia”. In fact, she is the favorite straw-woman(?) for the PC police taking the low road of tarnishing the reputation of those who dare criticize Islam. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls her a hate monger, and with good reason.
Geller has mingled comfortably with European racists and fascists, spoken favorably of South African racists, defended Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic and denied the existence of Serbian concentration camps.
“Obama is a third worlder and a coward. He will do nothing but beat up on our friends to appease his Islamic overlords.”
— Pam Geller, AtlasShrugs.com, April 13, 2010“Hussein [meaning President Obama] is a muhammadan. He’s not insane … he wants jihad to win.”
— Pam Geller, AtlasShrugs.com, April 11, 2010
She is a racist and conspiracy nut, that I don’t doubt. Yet as it happens, even a broken clock, as the saying goes, is right twice a day. (Not that with Pam Geller it is that often.) Case in point: public transit ads by Geller sparking controversy.
The pro-Israel group American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), angered by anti-Israel ads that recently appeared on some Metrobuses, has countered with a big ad of its own, featuring the Nazi dictator.
The AFDI ad shows Hitler meeting with Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Palestinian nationalist and grand mufti [senior Islamic clergy issuing fatwas, aka religious decrees] of Jerusalem who allied himself with the Third Reich before and during World War II. Besides making propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis and recruiting European Muslims to serve in the Waffen SS, Husseini backed Hitler’s policy of exterminating Jews.
AFDI’s president, Pamela Geller, did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment on the ad.
The ad, as Geller likely hoped, has generated a lot of controversy. But is it fair? Shockingly, yes, to a point.
Appointed Mufti of Jerusalem by the British in 1921, Haj Amin al-Husseini was the most prominent Arab figure in Palestine during the Mandatory period. Al-Husseini was born in Jerusalem in 1893, and went on to serve in the Ottoman Army during World War I. Anti-British and anti-Jewish, the mufti was the key nationalist figure among Muslims in Palestine. Fearful that increased Jewish immigration to Palestine would damage Arab standing in the area, the mufti engineered the bloody riots against Jewish settlement in1929 and 1936.
There is no question that inciting violence against the Jews would go a long way to win the Nazis’ approval. But to impress them further, the Mufti also had unsurpassed credentials:
In the following year, he was also appointed to lead the Supreme Muslim Council, expanding his already significant powers. Known later as the Grand Mufti, al-Husseini was able to establish himself as the preeminent Arab power in Palestine.
One of the mufti’s most successful projects was the restoration of the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque. With funds collected from India and various Arab states, the Dome was plated in gold. The impressive looks of the Dome greatly enhanced the status of Jerusalem in the eyes of Muslims throughout the world. Similarly, al-Husseini’s own status as Mufti of Jerusalem increased his standing as an influential Arab leader.
The mufti was dismissed from his position following the riots of 1936. No longer able to stay in Palestine, he continued his extremist activities from abroad.
In 1941, Haj Amin al-Husseini fled to Germany and met with Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Joachim Von Ribbentrop and other Nazi leaders. He wanted to persuade them to extend the Nazis’ anti-Jewish program to the Arab world.
The Mufti sent Hitler 15 drafts of declarations he wanted Germany and Italy to make concerning the Middle East. One called on the two countries to declare the illegality of the Jewish home in Palestine. Furthermore, “they accord to Palestine and to other Arab countries the right to solve the problem of the Jewish elements in Palestine and other Arab countries, in accordance with the interest of the Arabs and, by the same method, that the question is now being settled in the Axis countries.” [Translation: he wanted his own Holocaust.]
In November 1941, the Mufti met with Hitler.
The Grand Mufti began by thanking the Fuhrer for the great honor he had bestowed by receiving him. He wished to seize the opportunity to convey to the Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich, admired by the entire Arab world, his thanks for the sympathy which he had always shown for the Arab and especially the Palestinian cause, and to which he had given clear espressos in his public speeches. The Arab countries were firmly convinced that Germany would win the war and that the Arab cause would then prosper: The Arabs were Germany’s natural friends because they had the same enemies as had Germany, namely the English, the Jews, and the Communists. They were therefore prepared to cooperate with Germany with all their hearts and stood ready to participate in the war, not only negatively by the commission of acts of sabotage and the instigation of revolutions, but also positively by the formation of an Arab Legion. The Arabs could he more useful to Germany as allies than might he apparent at first glance, both for geographical reasons and because of the suffering inflicted upon them by the English and the Jews. Furthermore, they had had close relations with all Moslem nations, of which they could make use in behalf of the common cause. The Arab Legion would he quite easy to raise. An appeal by the Mufti to the Arab countries and the prisoners of Arab, Algerian,Tunisian, and Moroccan nationality in Germany would produce a great number of volunteers eager to fight. Of Germany’s victory the Arab world was firmly convinced, not only because the Reich possessed a large army, brave soldiers, and military leaders of genius, but also because the Almighty could never award the victory to an unjust cause.
In this struggle, the Arabs were striving for the independence and unity of Palestine, Syria and Iraq. They had the fullest confidence in the Fuhrer and looked to his hand for the balm on their wounds which had been inflicted upon them by the enemies of Germany.
The Mufti then mentioned the letter he had received from Germany, which stated that Germany was holding no Arab territories and understood and recognized the aspirations to independence and freedom of the Arabs, just as she supported the elimination of the Jewish national home.
In these circumstances he was renewing his request that the Fuhrer make a public declaration so that the Arabs would not lose hope, which is so powerful a force in the life of nations. With such hope in their hearts the Arabs, as lie had said, were willing to wait. They were not pressing for immediate realization of their aspirations: they could easily wait half a year or a whole year. But if they were not inspired with such a hope by a declaration of this sort, it could be expected that the English would be the gainers from it.
There is no doubt that much of what he said was pure hyperbole. The Mufti had no authority to speak for all Arabs or Muslims, and neither did all or most of them collaborate with the Nazis. Further, the hyperbole clearly went both ways.
The Fuhrer replied that Germany’s fundamental attitude on these questions, as the Mufti himself had already stated. was clear. Germany stood for uncompromising war against the Jews. That naturally included active opposition to the Jewish national home in Palestine. which was nothing other than a center, in the form of a state, for the exercise of destructive influence by Jewish interests. Germany was also aware that the assertion that the Jews were carrying out the function of economic pioneers in Palestine was a lie. The work there was done only by the Arabs, not by the Jews. Germany was resolved, step by step, to ask one European nation after the other to solve its Jewish problem, and at the proper time direct a similar appeal to non-European nations as well.
Germany was at the present time engaged in a life and death struggle with two citadels of Jewish power: Great Britain and Soviet Russia. Theoretically there was a difference between England’s capitalism and Soviet Russia’s communism: actually, however, the Jews in both countries were pursuing a common goal. This was the decisive struggle: on the political plane, it presented itself in the main as a conflict between Germany and England, but ideologically it was a battle between National Socialism and the Jews. It went without saying that Germany would furnish positive and practical aid to the Arabs involved in the same struggle, because platonic promises were useless in a war for survival or destruction in which the Jews were able to mobilize all of England’s power for their ends.
(I have always wondered how much of this crap the Nazis themselves believed.)
The Fuhrer then made the following statement to the Mufti. enjoining him to lock it in the uttermost depths of his heart:
1. He (the Fuhrer) would carry on the battle to the total destruction of the Judeo-Communist empire in Europe.
2. At some moment which was impossible to set exactly today but which in any event was not distant, the German armies would in the course of this struggle reach the southern exit from Caucasia.
3. As soon as this had happened, the Fuhrer would on his own give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany’s objective would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere under the protection of British power. In that hour the Mufti would be the most authoritative spokesman for the Arab world.
The Grand Mufti replied that it was his view that everything would come to pass just as the Fiihrer had indicated. He was fully reassured and satisfied by the words which he had heard from the Chief of the German State. He asked, however, whether it would not be possible. secretly at least, to enter into an agreement with Germany of the kind he had just outlined for the Fuhrer.
The Fuhrer replied that he had just now given the Grand Mufti precisely that confidential declaration.
The Grand Mufti thanked him for it and stated in conclusion that he was taking his leave from the Fuhrer in full confidence and with reiterated thanks for the interest shown in the Arab cause.
The Mufti’s pro-Nazi activities, however, weren’t limited to just words.
During World War II, the mufti was involved in the mobilization of support for Germany among Muslims.
In 1945, Yugoslavia sought to indict the Mufti as a war criminal for his role in recruiting 20,000 Muslim volunteers for the SS, who participated in the killing of Jews in Croatia and Hungary. He escaped from French detention in 1946, however, and continued his fight against the Jews from Cairo and later Beirut. He died in 1974.
So back to the initial question: how fair is Geller’s ad?
Geller is certainly accurate in pointing out the Mufti’s collaboration with Hitler. She is also right in pointing out the antisemitism in Islamic scripture (even though I’d be quick to add that scriptural antisemitism is be no means limited to the Islamic version.) Further, she has a point in declaring Islam’s role, as a religion, in fostering antisemitism.
But all of this doesn’t make the ad entirely accurate, or its plea a reasonable one. For starters, despite Mufti’s undeniable stature, Geller is not justified in calling him “the leader of the Muslim world”. Such a “position” simply hasn’t existed in centuries, despite many nutjobs claiming to have, or to “receive” it by other nutjobs’ proclamation (as in the case of the Mufti). Further, even Geller knows that not all Muslims take Koran as literally as they claim:
I believe in the idea of a moderate Muslim. I do not believe in the idea of a moderate Islam.”
— Pam Geller, The New York Times, Oct. 8, 2010
Lastly, Geller’s plea for all aid to Muslim majority countries to be stopped is not just cruel, it is counterproductive. Because the extremists cannot hope for a better recruitment tool than a hungry, uneducated Muslim public.
And yet, the evidence shows that even a racist and conspiracy nut like Geller cannot be dismissed out of hand just because of who she is. Which is precisely what we have to come to expect from defenders of Islam:
At American Muslims for Palestine, spokeswoman Kristin Szremski said: “We typically don’t react to Pamela Geller, because this is the kind of thing she does, countering political speech with racist, Islamophobic speech.”
Why, that is just one their logical fallacies, but certainly not the only one.
Here is a final word to the PC police: while you continue to accuse us “Islamophobes” of not being “nuanced”, you may want to lead by example, finding nuggets of truth in what we have to say before you brush us aside. And you’ll never know if there are any until you look.
