American Enterprise Institute

March 19, 2008

[Edited transcript from audio tapes]

1:45 p.m.	Registration
2:00	Panelists:	Matthias Küntzel, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
		Michael Novak, AEI
	Moderator:	Michael A. Ledeen, AEI
3:30	Adjournment

Proceedings:

Michael Ledeen [Moderator]:  Okay.  We have given the laggards their five minutes and so we are going to start.  I’m very happy today to have Matthias Küntzel and to have Michael Novak join us on the panel.  We will have Matthias talk until he is finished talking.  And then Michael and I will talk briefly and then it will be your turn, okay?  So with no further ado, Matthias Küntzel.  Welcome to AEI.  We are very happy to have you here.

Matthias Küntzel:  Thank you very much, Michael Ledeen, for this warm welcome.  It is for me a big pleasure and also a big honor to be in this distinguished house, institute, and I very much want to say thank you for this invitation. 

Well, earlier this month a gunman entered the library of a religious school in Jerusalem and murdered eight students.  Four of them were 15 and 16-years old.  They were shot in cold blood at close range.  Most world leaders condemned this terrorist attack in the strongest terms.  However, in other quarters a different response found expression in shouts of joy.  The perpetrator’s family’s home was decorated with flags of Hezbollah and Hamas, which issued a statement saying it blesses the operation.  Hamas’ radio called on all supporters to celebrate this victory.  Mahmoud Abbas’ official Palestinian Authority newspaper prominently placed a picture of the killer in the front page with the laudatory caption, “The Shahid Alaa Abu D’heim” and Gaza’s streets filled with joyous crowds of thousands firing guns in the air in celebration, passing out sweets to passersby and entering mosques to perform the prayer of thanksgiving. 

The shocking malice of such celebrations leads many people to turn away their eyes while others tried to rationalize it.  The latter speak of understandable feelings of revenge for the Palestinians who died when Israel tried to stop the rocket fire from Gaza at the beginning of this month.  In this line of thought, the killer in the library only continued a spiral of violence someone else started. 

But I have a different explanation based on the argument in my book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism, and the Roots of 9/11.  The Islamists laugh and celebrate when they kill Jews because they really do like to see Jews butchered, because they are obsessed by genocidal anti-Semitism, and this murderous anti-Semitism has Nazi roots.  My book examines the relationship between early Islamism and late National Socialism during the 1930s and 1940s and shows that Islamism is not just connected to a hatred of Israel but to a hatred of Jews from the beginning. 

Let me please demonstrate this with two short excursions into history.  The first goes back to the time when Islamism was born.  In the year 1928, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood.  At that time - and you have him here - two competing versions of Islam struggled with each other.  On the one hand, there were the modernizers building on the legacies of Kemal Atatürk in Turkey and the Shah Reza Khan in Iran; on the other hand, there were the opponents of modernization, including the Mufti of Jerusalem, al-Husseini, and the Muslim Brotherhood. 

For them, Jerusalem was a focal point of the rebirth of Islam in its relatively pure version and Palestine was a center from which the struggle against modernity, which for them was equivalent to struggling against Jews, was to start.  But there was a third player in this game.  In this decisive confrontation over the future of Islam, Nazi Germany placed in the Arab countries its weight on the side of the anti-modernists, the Mufti and the Brotherhood. 

By the year 1937 the Nazis were systematically fomenting Jew hatred in the Islamic world, building on traditional elements of anti-Judaism by radicalizing it into an exterminationist ideology.  Thus, the Nazis provided the Mufti with funding and weapons.  The Muslim Brotherhood received for their entire Jewish campaigns subsidies from the German government representative in Cairo on a scale considerably larger than the resources offered to any other anti-British activists. 

The most effective vehicle of Nazi influence was, however, an extremely popular Arabic language radio station called Radio Zeesen.  You see here some pictures of Radio Zeesen, which is a little village located next to Berlin.  And it was Mussolini who invented this kind of Arabic broadcast propaganda in the year 1934.  Mussolini was quite clever in that he donated radio receivers to the coffee shops.  Before, the people only had gramophones; always the same.  But now a radio came in.  This was great.  But this special radio donated by Mussolini had only one station.  So with every sip of black coffee, the guys sipped a bit of precious propaganda and the Nazis were able to build upon this experience. 

Between April 1939 and April 1945, six years long, Radio Zeesen reached the illiterate Muslim masses through daily Arabic programs.  In October 1939, a British informant reported that he had passed a café in Jaffa, outside of which crowds had gathered to listen to the broadcast from Berlin.  In his words, “All around the café stood Arabs even on the nearby balconies listening to the broadcasts.” 

Radio Zeesen was a success not only in Jaffa; it made impact in Iran at that time as well.  You see here a young cleric, a regular listener to Radio Zeesen; this is Ruhollah Khomeini.  When in the winter of 1938, a 36-year-old Khomeini returned to the Iranian city of Qom from Iraq, he “had brought with him a radio receiver set made by the British company Pye.  The radio proved a good buy.  Many mullahs would gather at his home, often on the terrace, in the evenings to listen to Radio Berlin, which is the same as Radio Zeesen, and to BBC,” writes his biographer Amir Taheri. 

While Khomeini was surely not a follower of Hitler, those years may well have shaped his anti-Jewish attitudes and also that of his most ardent disciple Mahmoud Ahmadinejad because the bulk of the programming was devoted to whipping up anti-Semitic hatred.  For example, when the United Nations was formed during the Second World War, in Radio Zeesen it was never the United Nations; it was always the United Jewish Nations.  This was a joke from the [indiscernible] art.  There were some Arabs who like to talk with Zionists, like Emir Abdullah, the king of Jordanians at the time.  But in Radio Zeesen, he was not Emir Abdullah; he was always coined “Rabbi Abdullah” and, again, a big laughter.  So this kind of anti-Semitism jokes made the radio so popular. 

But there was something new about this radicalized anti-Semitism.  While in early Islam, with some exceptions, everything Jewish was considered evil, now everything evil was deemed Jewish: capitalism, Communism, the Allied powers, moral decline, and so on and so forth.  Thus, the European anxiety that Jews are somehow superhuman was fused with the Islamic view that they are necessarily inferior.  And at the same time, we find Jews derided as pigs and apes while being demonized as puppet masters of world politics. 

The Hamas charter builds precisely on this mixture of old and new anti-Semitism.  The outcome was and is a genocidal Islamist ideology, which engenders genocidal programs and genocidal actions.  Let me quote just one short excerpt from the Arabic Nazi broadcast of the 7th of July 1942 when everybody thought that General Rommel appeared on the verge of capturing Cairo.  This quote is part of a collection of Radio Zeesen’s transcripts which Professor Herf from the University of Maryland, who is with us today - and I’m happy to have him here - discovered in the State Department’s archive only in the year 2006:

 “According to the Muslim religion, the defense of life is a duty which can only be fulfilled by annihilating the Jews.  Kill the Jews, burn their property, destroy their stores, annihilate these base supporters of British imperialism.  Your sole hope of salvation lies in annihilating the Jews before they annihilate you.”  This is just a very short quote, but it shows how deadly this kind of anti-Semitism was in Arabic language, published, and reported and broadcast during those years. 

In April 1945, the Nazi regime crumbled and Radio Zeesen ceased, of course, operation.  But it was only after that date that its frequencies of hate really began to reverberate in the Arab world.  This brings me to my second and last trip into history.  As of the 8th of May 1945, National Socialism ended, reviled everywhere, or almost everywhere.  The exception was the Arab world where former Nazis and their friends, including the Arab supporters of the Holocaust, could continue on as if nothing had changed. 

Although the Mufti of Jerusalem who had spent the war years in Berlin was recognized as a war criminal because he had founded the Muslim SS divisions - and you see here some pictures of the Bosnia SS division with the Mufti, and here we see him chatting with Heinrich Himmler - and because he was recognized as a war criminal, also, because he successfully intervened to prevent the rescue of thousands of Jewish children from the gas chambers, Britain and the United States chose to forego criminal prosecution in order to avoid spoiling their relations with the Arab world. 

In the year 1946, the Muslim Brothers organized his return to Egypt.  It was a heroic welcome.  As the Mufti played the role of spokesman for the Palestinian Arabs, his pro-Nazi past began now to become a source of pride, not of shame.  Yet in the year 1947, most nations considered the Shoah a tragedy and, therefore, argued for a partition of Palestine and the founding of two states.  At the time, the majority of Palestinian Arabs was prepared to accept the partition plan for pragmatic reasons.  Some Arab leaders even sympathized with it, albeit only in private, since they were afraid to openly contradict the Muslim Brotherhood, which at that time was able to muster one million people in Egypt alone.  In addition, they were afraid to openly contradict the former Mufti, yet again playing the role of spokesman for the Palestinian Arabs. 

The Mufti’s boundless anti-Semitism, which had caused thousands of Jews their lives in the year 1944, was directed only four years later when the gas chambers were no longer at work at Israel.  In essence, in his view the Arabs should jointly attack the Jews and destroy them as soon as the British forces have withdrawn from the Palestine-mandated territory.  It was thus, the cowardice of the Arab leaders and the cynicism of the West who let the Mufti escape that paved the way for one of the most fateful watersheds of the 20th century, the Arab military assault on Israel in the year 1948. 

Since then, anti-Semitism in the Arab world has continued to radicalize.  At first, it was Gamal Abdel Nasser who disseminated The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  Since 1967, it was Islamist anti-Semitism that has dominated, leading into the 1980s to the emergence of suicide bombings.  Now, the hatred of Jews has become greater than the fear of death.  Whenever the possibility of a peaceful solution appeared on the horizon it promptly drowned in the blood of suicidal mass murders, as you have seen just a few days ago. 

So please let me summarize.  The historical record disproves the argument that Islamic anti-Semitism is caused by Israeli policy.  It was not the escalation of the Middle East conflict that has caused anti-Semitism; it is rather anti-Semitism within the Arab and Islamic world that has caused the escalations in the Middle East again and again and, today, more than ever.  The seeds of the harvest now being reaped by Hezbollah and Hamas were sown 1,400 years ago by Muhammad and 70 years ago by a Nazi radio station. 

History also teaches us that only a particular faction among the Muslims made common cause with the Nazis.  There were also modernizers and reformers but during the ‘30s and ‘40s, the pro-Nazi wing gained the upper hand over their opponents through naked violence.  Long before Israel was founded, this wing had already succumbed to the demonizing illusions of the Nazis.  Since then, this wing, regardless of what Zionism has or has not done, has viewed the world through a lens with two superimposed distorting filters: early Islamic Jew hatred and modern anti-Semitism. 

There is no spiral of violence; Israel wants the violence to end.  But Islamic anti-Semitism, not Israeli policies, is the reason why Hamas, like Nazi Germany, wants to kill Jews indiscriminately, be it in the form of suicide bombings; be it with rockets, which randomly kill Jews; be it through the murder of students who happen to be in a library.  This hatred of Jews, combined with the cult [sounds like] of sacrifice has, indeed, extinguished some basic human instincts, hence the laughter and celebrations at the murder of Jewish children. 

Let me come now to the end.  How can we use our knowledge about the Nazi roots of Islamic anti-Semitism to strengthen the war on terror?  Three conclusions for our debate:  First, I think we have to confront the Arab world with it.  There is some debate among Muslims themselves: “We must discuss why we hate the Jews,” wrote a Saudi columnist in the newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat.  “Without confronting the ideological roots of radical Islam, it will be impossible to combat it,” adds Tawfik Hamid, a one-time member of an Islamist terror group.  I believe that discussing the evidence for a Nazi contribution to this Jew hatred will help the development of this as-yet incipient discussion. 

Second, most observers in the West still refuse to recognize the existence of Hezbollah’s and Hamas’ anti-Semitism.  But if you ignore this ideology, then you need another explanation for suicide bombings and the jihadists’ behavior.  That is why, again and again, Israeli policies and American policies are blamed to be the main cause for this kind of terror, an assumption which is obviously wrong.  In other words, if this anti-Semitism is ignored then the scale of Islamist terror becomes the new measure of Israelis’ guilt.  The principle is then the more barbarous the rocket terror or the suicide terror against Israel’s citizens becomes, the more guilty Israel is. 

Those who thus make Israel the scapegoat for Islamist violence are not only dancing on the Islamists’ tune; they are also subscribing to the latest version of the hoary old European anti-Semitic notion that the Jews are behind everything bad, even when they are themselves the victims.  Thus, in my opinion the absence of clarity is the beginning of complicity. 

Third, our knowledge about the Nazi root of Islamic anti-Semitism is important because we have to get to know our enemy.  During the Second World War, many scientists, also of this country, tried to learn as much as possible about the German mindset, about the ideology that triggered the war.  One result of these efforts was the refusal to negotiate with the Nazis and to demand unconditional surrender.  Today, I think we have a similar task with respect to the mindset of the Muslim Brotherhood and the worldview of Khomeinism.  We need scores of independent scientists from different fields of expertise to do this. 

Ladies and gentlemen, in this type of religious war we even perhaps need, again, something like the Manhattan Project.  This time, however, a Manhattan Project of the minds in order to launch our political, cultural, and ideological counterattack.  Thank you very much for your attention.

Michael Ledeen:  Thank you, Matthias.  Thanks for coming here on such an ugly day and for your excellent presentation.  I have a question that I would like to leave with you, and we will get back to it because it is such a hot topic these days in American politics. 

What happened to racism in all of this?  Because, okay, Jew hatred, anti-Semitism, et cetera, -- but the anti-Semitism and the Jew hatred that came from the Nazis was of a specific sort.  There has been, as we all know, lots of anti-Semitism; different versions, different varieties.  What distinguished the Nazi version from the others was that it was the only way to define Jews that gave Jews no hope of escape, right?  Christian anti-Semitism, you could always convert.  Traditional Islamic anti-Semitism, Islam or the sword is a famous choice. 

For the Nazis, once you are a Jew, you are doomed.  Although some of the more cynical ones -- I think it was Goebbels at one point who said, “I define who is a Jew.”  But, anyway, I mean there is that.  But, nonetheless, doctrinally, so to speak, did you find in the Muslim Brotherhood’s version of anti-Semitism and the stuff that says is that there?  Or does it drop out in the interest of Islamism because it seems to me that the two are somehow incompatible - racism and Islamism - because you cannot retain the possibility of conversion, in which Muslims are, of course, passionately interested, and the racial definition of the Jew.  It is why Pope Pious XI condemned racism as a heresy because it negated the validity of the sacrament of baptism.  I mean if racism were true, then baptism had no meaning.  And so, that is one question I would like to know about. 

The other is I really want to thank you and I want to emphasize some of the things that you have said because, as you know, I have spent half my life studying fascism in one of form or another.  And, of course, the reason why one studies things of this sort is to try to figure out, a) How could it possibly have happened, how could the Holocaust have happened; and b) what can one do to prevent it from happening again? 

I spent a lot of years in the Italian archives and some years studying Nazi documents.  And I always had to remind myself that when you were dealing with Italian fascism and German National Socialism you were dealing with mass movements in the most civilized, the most cultured, the most advanced, the most refined, the most elegant countries in what we call the civilized world.  So to permit oneself the comfortable belief, which a lot of people have, that, well, anti-Semites are some kind of barbarians -- what can you expect people from whatever country, whatever culture - put in your own favorite example - that that is nonsense?  Because the greatest killing came from the greatest countries, came from the most elegant countries, came from the countries which gave us Dante and Goethe and Verdi and Mozart and so forth.  Those were the countries that went that way.

So it is a kind of mass movement that is terribly infectious and it is not limited to some kind of barbarian land.  What Matthias says is also important because there is, as you know, a raging debate right now over, “Why do they hate us and what can we do about it?”  And Matthias alluded to a kind of intellectual Manhattan Project to combat Islamism in the world today.  But I mean, frankly, I do not think you do it intellectually. 

One of the lessons that I think I have learned from the study of mass movements and totalitarianism and evil in the 20th century is that very often we have these debates because they appeal to us as intellectuals.  But in reality it has something to do with the price of eggs.  As Machiavelli once said, “It is all about winning and losing.”  It is all about winning and losing.  Machiavelli once said - I mean, the ultimate cynical expression, but I think it is true - that if you are victorious, people will always judge the methods you have used to have been appropriate, right?  So that in the Cold War, for example, we had an endless debate:  What are we fighting?  Who is the enemy?  And we are repeating it now in the current unpleasantness.  Are we fighting a Russian empire supported with Russian armies and so forth?  Or are we fighting global Communism, some kind of infectious doctrine, mass movements, et cetera, et cetera? 

And there were very smart people on both sides of this debate, which was, in fact, a very interesting debate.  I do not think at the end of the day it was an important debate, I must tell you, because the way it turned out is that when the Soviet empire fell, Communism died right along with it, by and large.  Yes, there are a few left, some apparently preaching in churches in Chicago, to my surprise.  But, yes, I mean there are left here and there.  But I mean, basically, the success of the ideology - and this would not surprise Marx or Hegel - that the success of the ideology was linked and still is linked to the success of the state or whoever it is who is supporting them and so forth. 

So as I have been saying all these many years, if we are successful in bringing down the countries that support Islamism and Islamic terrorism, we will find that the appeal of this ideology diminishes exponentially and very quickly on the grounds that nobody wants to be with a loser.  Losers are not popular.  So I just want to file that away. 

I do not believe in a Manhattan Project to combat Islamism.  I mean, so you won another debate.  So what?  So you start the latest version of whatever encounter or something.  And let’s say 10,000 people actually read it every time it comes out.  And then, I mean, what we are dealing with in this case is hundreds of millions of basically uneducated people who listen to the contemporary version of Radio Zeesen, and they are indoctrinated with these various things.  And what will impress them at the end of the day is if they win or if they lose. 

And my suspicion - I do not have anywhere to document this, but I’m sure it is true - is that the terrorist movements right now in the Middle East are having a fall-off in recruitment; they are having trouble meeting their recruiting goals because everybody in the Middle East knows that al-Qaeda was defeated in Iraq.  I mean, no one here will say it.  Here we go into a spasm at the very idea that Senator McCain could say that Iran supports al-Qaeda. 

Imagine if any of these critics of his would just read the indictments of Osama bin Laden in 1998; they will see the United States Justice Department proclaim that then 10 years ago.  It was known already then even to an American government that was famously uninterested in digging into these connections.  So it is a crazy kind of universe to live in, but the followers, the potential recruits to al Qaeda -- they are not interested in signing up for a movement that is losing or for a terrorist organization that is being smashed and being driven out of Iraq across various borders. 

My favorite -- and I’ll stop with this -- my favorite example of this drop-off is there are two cases of Saudis who were recruited to jihad in Iraq.  And so they went through the usual: sneaked into Syria, got trained, had their documents taken away from them, driven across the border into Iraq.  And there were so many people who wanted to fight.  They were not suicide terrorists at all; they were fighters; they wanted to get in there.  So after a week or two their commander came and said - these are two separate cases - “Get in this truck.  Drive it across Baghdad.  Park it in front of the Jordanian embassy.  We will give you a Hertz GPS, or whatever, a map of the town.  The truck is loaded with explosives, but do not worry.  We do not want you to die in this thing; you are a soldier for us.  So park this thing in front of the embassy and we will wait until you are clear and then we will blow it up.”  So these guys got in their trucks and started driving across Baghdad and somewhere in the middle of Baghdad, ka-boom. 

And miraculously, they survived the explosion and, equally miraculously, the Iraqis in the hospital figured out who they were.  And so after a bit, the Saudis came to them and said, “How would you feel like going on Al Arabiya and talking about all this?”  And they were very enthusiastic and they all went on television and started saying, “Do not listen to these people.  Do not listen to them.  They just want to use you as cannon fire.  They tried to kill me.  It is a miracle I’m still alive,” holding up their hands with fingers missing and bandages all over them and so forth.

This kind of thing gets to be known.  And so with the business of debating the ideology with them, it would be nice if our leaders identified the components of the ideology that so entrap the people into these movements of hatred that, yes, a critique of the ideology, an explanation of what it is instead of always -- Stan Freberg once said the comic history of the United States in which he had a song which ran, “Take an Indian to lunch this week.”  And so we have the equivalent now, except instead of an Indian, it is a Muslim - take a Muslim to lunch this week, which is fine with me.  But the effort to somehow make nice in the face of a movement which is killing Americans every day if it can is terribly important.

Okay.  And last point is that, along with the Jews and hatred of the Jews, there are also modern equivalents of the Jews.  It is not just the Jews but it is their allies who are two big categories: one are the Americans and the other are the women because the women in many ways have turned into the Jews of the Arab world.  There are no Jews left in the Arab world; they are all gone.  But there are women and the women are subjected to exactly the same kind of treatment, pre-Holocaust treatment.  They are separated out; various professions are barred to them; they are dressed in a different way from the rest of the society; they are not permitted normal social intercourse with the rest of civil society and so forth.  And if their lives are at stake, nobody really cares.

And I give you the famous story of the Saudi religious school that caught on fire and the girls tried to run away and the religious police kept them inside to burn to death because they were not dressed properly.  And with that, I will stop.  Michael?

Michael Novak:  Thank you, Michael.  If it is all right, I’ll speak from here.  I would like to begin by commenting just briefly before laying out the short things I prepared.  I do agree with Michael Ledeen on Osama bin Laden’s point that there are weak horses and there are strong horses, and people always will love the strong horse and hate the weak horse.  And I think it looked for a while as if the United States was going to be proved the weak horse; you could see the long knives coming out.  But now, I think Michael is right since the surge.  It looks very clearly as if al Qaeda has been proved the weak horse, and that is a tremendous, tremendous fact of history, as Michael was saying.

On the other hand, I agree with Matthias that it is also useful to be ready to win the intellectual battle.  Actually, it may reach only 700 people but it is very important.  And that was going on in World War II; there were some magnificent studies of totalitarianism and so forth because Americans did not understand this way of thinking.  And then later there were wonderful studies of Communism and there were even little manuals prepared for people who went overseas, our military, particularly.  I do not think they reached the State Department but I’m not sure about that.

But I want instead to comment briefly on the fantastic article that Matthias had in The Weekly Standard of September 17th of last year.  It is not in your packet, is it?  You do have it?  Well, then I would just highlight a couple of points in it to begin my own remarks.

The opening scene is just stunning, which is recounted by Albert Speer: the image of Hitler telling him about his dream of small, lightweight bombers laden with explosives, crashing into the skyscrapers of New York City, burning torches following hither and thither.  They even designed, by 1944, an America bomber, which was a huge four-engine plane but within it, four very light planes released -- fly near the East Coast, released, and the light planes would go without landing gear and filled with explosives to bomb the buildings.  And one reason for this is Hitler was wowed with the idea that the U.S. is a Jewish state and that the headquarters of world Jewry is New York. 

I am no expert on Islam at all but I did have to begin some studying after September 1st, a little bit before that.  My brother and I had the idea back when we were in college.  My brother was studying in Bangladesh later - he is a priest, a missionary - but he was studying Arabic because he wanted to become a great Christian Arabic expert in their world.  So it is not as if the idea is entirely new. 

But, nonetheless, something puzzled me about what I was reading and it had to do with the image strongly in my mind of the number of Middle Eastern experts that are in Germany even today.  And I thought why that is.  It is because when they were young, Germany was occupying almost all of the Arab world.  And then I noticed in the rise of the Islamic brotherhood some ideas which were typically European: the small secretive cell, the emphasis on ideology and indoctrination and, above all, the emphasis on violence.  The real argument is violence.  Most people do not want to cause trouble; they do not want to fight and even intimidate them with violence.  These were Western ideas and they were well practiced in Europe, in the Soviet Union and in Germany and in Italy in the 1920s.

Well, I do not know enough to go into what Matthias has done but I want to just repeat a couple more things.  Three of the men piloting these planes of September 11th were studying in Hamburg [phonetic] in Germany, and they had a circle in which they read the Qur’an and took nourishment in its views of violence.  That is not the whole of the Qur’an but there are some texts there which they clung to.  But one participant in these meetings said at the trial for these men in Hamburg in October 2002 to the next February said Allah’s worldview was based on National Socialist ways of thinking.

And he, too, was convinced that New York City was the center of world Jewry.  And even before the flight, he kept telling his circle that some big things are going to happen and he was boasting.  And another thing one of the students later quoted him as saying, “The Jews will burn, and in the end we will dance on their graves.”  I did not know about that.  That trial was so badly reported here. 

And then, bin Laden himself had said in 1998, “The enmity between us and the Jews goes back far in time and is deep-rooted.”  And I’m not going to go on more on that front except this.  I want to comment briefly on the deep-rooted part of it.  There is something about “duty is [indiscernible] a religion” and with a Christianity that is in very deep conflict with the conception of God held by Muslims.  Now, there is a very beautiful conception of God about which I will talk in a couple of minutes in Islam, which is quite admirable and is consistent with the reflection of philosophers who had been Jewish and Christian in history. 

But there is another part that is radically different.  This part is the deep roots we are talking about.  The Jewish God understands everything that He makes and loves it; that is, it is good, Genesis begins by saying.  And the names of the Jewish God are Truth and Light, and the notion of using inquiry to try to understand things is the way in which that activity is the way in which human beings are images of God.  So it is a radically intellectual view of God.  God is Light, God is Truth, and the truth shall make you free; the freedoms come from this. 

And then there is a work on the theory of how can God know everything and yet not cause everything.  Where is the room for freedom?  Yet every story in the Bible is a story about how individuals use their freedom.  In one chapter, King David betrays his lord; in the next chapter, he serves Him admirably.  And the suspense is what is he going to do next, and that is what keeps you reading.  The axis of the Torah is again and again on what happens at the arena of the human will.  But is the will led by intellect?

Now, the Islamic view of God, or at least one aspect of it, is to identify God with will.  And so supreme and different is the will of Allah that He can contradict logical laws if He wants to and contradict Himself if He wants to.  It is the will that matters and therefore the submission to the will of God; everything to the will of God.  Now, Christians and Jews have that, too, but it is not infused by the same sense of intellect and judgment and decision of the individual. 

Again, with the Qur’an -- the Qur’an is the direct word of God, but the Bible is a series of different voices and genres, like an anthology; inspired word of God.  It is not direct; it is filtered through individual voices and ill-mixing -- I will not say ill-mixing but odd-mixing genres, which enhance the beauty of the whole but are different. 

And likewise then, Judaism’s vision of the relationship of God to man and to human freedom depended on later philosophers trying to express it in philosophical terms a little bit like this: that God actually operates in the world He created hardly ever directly but almost entirely by secondary causes and tertiary causes.  He made things as they are.  He comprehended and wanted their -- to practice their own autonomy, so to speak, even natural non-human things; follow their own laws and regularities or, as it may be, laws of probabilities and irregularity.  And in their multiple interaction there would be lots of room for freedom.

Islamic philosophers had much difficulty in dealing with that.  You can read this in the great debates of the late 1100s and first years of the 1200s where the texts of Aristotle lay only in the hands of Muslims, translated into Arabic.  The Greek texts had been lost; all his great texts were unknown in the West for a thousand years.  But when they were discovered in some pottery in Toledo [phonetic] probably brought back by crusaders or Muslim warriors who were settling into Spain, a little bit unclear -- no, they were found. 

And there began a great study of them, which the bishop of Toledo was wise enough to include Christian and Arab scholars.  And there was a fantastic debate, which you can see reflected in Maimonides and in young Thomas Aquinas in a different way over interpretations using [sounds like] these texts to interpret human freedom and so forth. 

And I’m not going to go longer into that but you can see the parting of the ways.  Islamic scholars went one way toward a zero-sum game between God and man.  If man does too much that takes away from the glory of God.  And the Jewish and Christian way is to say everything belongs to God and everything belongs to the humans and to find a language for expressing that.  God makes it all possible but humans are their own agents and as the image of God have their own responsibility for their own destiny.  I’m not going to go on; I’m trying to point how deeply this antagonism goes. 

Now, add in the next thing that the Jewish and Christian world from about that time - because Aristotle was so empirical - began to jump way ahead in experimentation and in discovery and in science and in technology, and became very powerful civilizations.  Whereas before that period, Islam had been the more beautiful, more accomplished, more developed civilization.  The cities of Baghdad and Damascus and other cities were magnificent, compared to Paris which was at this time still had muddy streets.  Even in Krakow -- they pointed out that Krakow was a civilized center when Paris had muddy streets, and also had its own university going.

But, anyway, imagine yourself a Muslim in the 20th century, seeing all around you modernity, a world of considerable power and intellect and influence growing, and to see the -- this was before the real rush of the oil money, before the -- such a less developed world, and struggling and suffering of the Islamic world.  How do you account for that?

It breeds in many people who do not see any way out a deep sense of resentment and the first revolution in human history that I am aware of whose aim is not to build a better society so much as to destroy the competitors; it is not arguing greater range of rights to those it wants to help; it is not even arguing for their greater dignity.  It is a revolution aimed to destroy as we saw in the destruction of the Buddhist monuments in Afghanistan, the wanton -- yet it does borrow a lot from various Western ideas.  Now, I do not want to go on here but I do want to turn to the other side of the story.

There is a certain hopefulness here, which is another theme of Matthias’s work.  There is vast struggle going on in the heart of Islam itself.  Many, many individuals - I have been in conversations with them overseas and here - have begun to see that they want to have the same dignity and freedom of movement of Christians and Jews and secular people, and they do not think Islam is against that.  There must be an interpretation of Islam which is consistent with human rights and human liberties and human development.  And they are struggling with it, and they will often ask you for help of how to articulate this.  And so there is a real competition going on.

There have been more articles and books written on democracy and the various ideas associated with it in the Islamic world in the last five years since the invasion of Iraq than in all of preceding history.  There is a real movement going on.  Plus we are very lucky that the Islamic brotherhood and its children and stepchildren like al Qaeda and so on have proved to be so violent and so inhuman in their tortures and beheadings that they have represented an image of Islam not at all pleasing even to Muslims.  I’m thinking the Taliban and the al Qaeda groups that in Anbar province the Sunnis cooperated with until the -- al Qaeda have killed too many Sunnis, including two brothers of a sheik and his son.  And he led the way of the awakening to turn against al Qaeda in Iraq.  That is one thing.

And the other thing I want to point out is that you go back to that positive image of God that so struck Christian and Jewish thinkers who encountered it.  The beautiful part of the notion is this:  Imagine yourself living in a desert environment, a harsh environment, in any case; heat and sand; really a shortage of water, even the shortage of shade.  As an image in history, poor as a Bedouin was about as poor as anybody could imagine.  And grasp the sense of the fragility of human life that you experience in that kind of setting.  Caught in the desert or in the sandstorm, you could be snuffed out like that, like the grass of the field turning brown in the day. 

And in this great sense of the fragility of life, there was also a powerful sense of the greatness of God - no comparison to Him; nothing compares to Him.  And it is really a very beautiful and inspiring conception in itself.  There are some practical fruits from that conception.  As Bernard Lewis points out, no leader in the Islamic world is ever going to measure up to Allah.  So they are all relativized in a certain way and that leaves a certain amount of historical room for different kind of regimes in different parts of the Islamic world, and different kinds of experiments.

Anyway, I’m trying to say there is some positive sides of fertile territory we can begin to explore, and I believe the events of history are pushing more and more Muslims in that direction.  So I do not think it is the time to give up on all this but it has been very ugly getting to where we are.  Thank you.

Michael Ledeen:  Thank you, Michael.  Matthias, would you like to -- have we stimulated you at all?

Matthias Küntzel:  Okay, yes, of course, to quite an extent.  Well, Machiavelli -- we will not give up.  Okay, yes, of course.  And Machiavelli -- he is great and he was right, I think -- winning or losing, of course.  But I cannot share your bright picture.  If you ask at the time being the Israeli government winning or losing, it would not be so optimistic.  If you ask at the time being the Hamas leadership winning or losing after they made this border things with Egypt and really were able to -- did an aggressive move into Egypt without getting punished, I think they would feel themselves on the winning side at the time being.  And if you ask Ahmadinejad is he on the losing side, I cannot see this.

So there are some -- the picture is not only dim.  We have some progress in Pakistan and we have a new debate about suicide bombing throughout the Islamic world.  So there are some pictures which are necessary to see, which gives you a bit hope. But on the other hand, the situation for Israel is still really terrible and there is no good way out because whatever Israel tries to do is seen in the framework of anti-Semitism by the Muslim [indiscernible].  They got brainwashed through television stations which even have their own children programs in order to brainwash -- no, you cannot brainwash a baby’s brain but to influence them.  And they even took Mickey Mouse -- the Hamas television took Mickey Mouse as a figure in order to incite hatred against Jews.  And then the Walt Disney family complained against it and then they had to take away Mickey Mouse, but it was shown in television how Mickey Mouse was beaten to death by Israeli soldiers. 

So it is incredible, this kind of hatred, and it is a real poison for the psyche of those kids and families who would see this in their living rooms.  And there is not enough attention paid to this kind of incitement by media and also in the United States.  I think in Europe -- not to speak about Europe.  And therefore, I think with my suggestion -- it is not a suggestion about to form and inform the intellectual elite and to have some playing with ideas, no.  We are at the beginning or in the middle of a global war, which is a religious war.  And if you read carefully the talks by Ahmadinejad, he talks about a war which is going on since hundreds of years, and it is a holy war; it is a jihad war.  And we are not accustomed to something like a holy war.

In continental Europe, the last holy war, the last religious war took place 350 years ago.  In America, you never faced this kind of war.  So we have to learn, we have to understand the very special particular hallmarks of a religious war, which is a new task.  It is not so easy to understand the mindset of Islamists who, for example, say reason is a sin.  And it took me for my book a long time to really understand the mindset of Islamists.  For example, there is a theoretical journal by Hamas, a monthly, and there was a debate about -- well, the academics of Hamas with a PhD title, they do not challenge the assumption that Jews had been changed into apes and pigs. 

Why not?  Because you can read it in the Qur’an and what the Qur’an says is given by God personally through His archangel, Gabriel, so you cannot doubt this.  If God is able to create human beings, He is also able to change human beings into apes and pigs.  So the only debate in the theoretical monthly was about what happened afterwards to those animals who used to have been Jews before.  Will they have offspring or will they die after three days?  You do not have an answer to this question, and therefore it is allowed to debate about this question.

And just to give you a little insight into this kind of mindset where reason is to be called a sin and if you, for example, really deal with the question of Holocaust denial of Iran, the first government, a mighty government which made Holocaust denial a central part of its foreign policies, most people think Holocaust denial, this is just a propaganda coup and they cannot believe in this.  But they do.  If you really study their ideology there is a very narrow connection between the denial of the Holocaust and the strong belief in the reappearance of the 12th imam.  So there was a connection, and it is not so easy to understand this connection.

So my suggestion is that, really, we need to educate the West - the Western elites and, also, the Western people - what this war is about, and this was my suggestion.  And if you see what is happening today -- well, if you read The New York Times from today, I saw that now they also -- the American administration seeks a kind of talk with Hamas without admitting that it wants to talk with Hamas.  And it was, of course, an underestimating of ideology that the Americans pushed Israel into letting Hamas take place in an election campaign against the Oslo talks because it was, of course, forbidden for a terrorist party to participate in any election campaign. 

But maybe Condoleezza Rice have not read the charter from us.  And I think there is an underestimation of ideology in Europe and also sometimes in this country.  And, therefore, this was my suggestion that we have to press this special point.  The danger is not the nuclear bomb of Iran; the danger is the ideological surrounding of it.  The danger is the 12th imam thinking - this apocalyptic thinking - which is connected to this nuclear option thing in Iran.

And the last question -- well, this was about racism, which is -- I appreciate very much this question.  There are two important parallels between Nazi anti-Semitism and this Islamic anti-Semitism which we are facing today.  First of all, what did the Nazis do?  They built their radicalization of anti-Semitism on a hundred years of grounded Christian anti-Semitism.  They had hundred of years Christian anti-Semitism; they took it and radicalized it.  Some years later they made the same with the Islamic world.  They built upon the hundred-years old religious anti-Judaism, I would call it, and then changed it into a very, very radical anti-Semitism.

 Nevertheless, we do not have the caption of racism in the Islamic world.  This is true.  Charles Darwin and Social Darwinism is something Islamists consider to be very Jewish because it is against the Holy Book, against the Holy Scriptures.  So, for example, as a student in an Islamist university, you have to be against Charles Darwin because this was a Jewish swindler [sounds like] in order to change what the Qur’an is saying is doing.  So we do not have this basis of racism which we find, of course, in the European culture and especially with the Nazi mindset. 

And therefore, we do not have a word like hälfte Jude [sounds like], half Jew.  This is racist and we do not have these kinds of words within the Islamist anti-Semitic mindset.  But there is a change going on since 50 years, and parts of racist thinking also conquered the Islamist mindset.  For example, if you read the most important article by Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim brother who wrote an essay about Our Struggle against the Jews, you will find there that he calls every Muslim who is not of his opinion to be a secret Jew.  To be a real Jew with a Jewish mother you can also be a hidden Jew, which is something we also found within the European ideology, for example. 

If you see some sermons MEMRI [sounds like] produced for the Internet, showed in the Internet - some sermons by Islamist preachers, imams - they call for the extermination of every Jew, and not only a dhimmi status for them.  The charter of Hamas, which is from the year 1988, calls for a dhimmi status for the Jews.  They hate self-independent Jews.  Only a dhimmi status and then you can survive, they promise. 

Today, they also preach to exterminate every Jew because of their history, and the history shows the Jews will always create wars and so on and so forth.  This kind of mindset, which has not been there in this part of the world, made some successful steps there.  And I think the main similarity between Islamic modern anti-Semitism and National Socialists modern anti-Semitism is what Saul Friedländer coined “redemptive anti-Semitism.”  They say everything evil is Jewish in the world.  And so, in order to liberate the world, we have to get rid of the Jews.  If you read carefully the writings of the Nazis, it was a kind of utopia which they had.  They wanted to create a kind of German peace and they wanted to make the world better than before, but this was only done if they get rid of all Jews.  This was their philosophy.  This was their thinking.  It was a kind of revolutionary movement in order to create a better world. 

The Islamists are really going into the same trick by saying -- if you read Ahmadinejad, he says, “Only if we eradicate Israel can we liberate mankind.”  In his last talk given in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations, he said, “Well, we will liberate the United States and the European countries from Zionism,” he always says.  He never used the word “Jew;” he always says “Zionism.”  But he says, “Well, the Zionists are responsible for the Muhammad cartoons in Denmark.  The Zionists are responsible for the crashing of the mosque in Iraq.  He uses the word Zionist as Hitler used the word Jew.  So there is no big difference. 

But this kind of redemptive anti-Semitism is very dangerous.  Always, there had been within anti-Semitism a kind of anti-hegemonic feeling, anti-imperialist feeling, anti-plutocratic feeling because the Jews are the big masters of the world, and so we little guys want to fight against the big masters of the world.  And, therefore, we have to get rid of them. 

This is the reason why when Ahmadinejad came to New York in the winter in September 2006 he wanted to talk with Michael Moore.  This is the reason why when Osama bin Laden made his last big video appearance, he quoted Chomsky.  They want to include in their revolutionary struggle, anti-Semitic struggle, part of the Left and also part of South American nationalists.  And so, they are trying to create a big alliance and that makes this whole movement so very, very dangerous.

 Michael Ledeen:  Okay, thank you.  We will take questions.  The person that you have to charm in order to get on the microphone is Charlie Gregor [phonetic]. Charlie has the microphone.  We have two mikes, but he also has a mike.  Okay.  We will start with the woman on the corner, please.  Here, right in front of me.  There you go.

 Juliana Pilon:  Thank you, Michael.  I’m Juliana Pilon.  Thank you very much for a timely and very important discussion.

At the very end, your last paragraph led to my question.  I was going to ask you to what extent do your studies -- in addition to looking at the Nazi background or Nazi relationship with this radical Islam, to what extent do you find it useful in the preparation of this Manhattan Project to also examine the Marxist background to anti-Semitism?  I wondered, too, perhaps, whether Michael Ledeen’s question related to the racist aspect is not, perhaps, addressed by the deterministic aspect of Marxist anti-Semitism.  “The god of the Jew is money,” as he says in his early manuscript.  I’m wondering to what extent you are including that part of Western anti-secular anti-Semitism in this religious --

 Matthias Küntzel:  Well, I think this is a very important point to include.  It has to be included.  The Socialist Worker Party in Great Britain, they went onto the streets during the last Lebanon war shouting, “We are all Hezbollah.  We are all Hezbollah.”  So there is already, today, this kind of connection, which goes back to a special brand of Marxism saying, “Well, anti-Semitism is something against the big capital, the big guys.  So we have to understand it and we have to join it in a way.”  So I think it is very important to include this, too.  Yes.

 Joseph Shackman [phonetic]:  I’m Joseph Shackman.  I’m with the Small Business Administration.  But about, I guess now, over 25 years ago I was with the State Department with the Human Rights Bureau.  And we used to prepare human rights reports.  Looking back on it, we had sections on torture and we had sections on denial of civil rights and the right to organize, but we never had a section on incitement; it just never came up.  I do not think even now when you read about the talks between the Israeli government and the Palestinians, with the various issues that are being discussed -- they are talking about Jerusalem and refugees and this and that but nobody talks about incitement.  I do not know how many books are being written on the subject; I do not think there are very many. 

The point is, simply, do you think there is some way when talking about human rights and violations of human rights and, possibly, Manhattan Projects or whatever that there might be some systematic examination of incitement and the relationship between incitement and all the genocidal crimes of Communists, Nazis of the 20th century?

 Matthias Küntzel:  Okay, thank you very much.  I think it is very necessary to press this point again and again.  For example, if a government is pouring money into the Palestinian Authority territories it has to check before how the textbooks in the schools are and what the Palestinian television is showing for the people; how their people are influenced. 

I think it is very, very important to deal also with the new techniques with Internet, with the satellite television.  And of course, if you see Al-Manar -- also in Germany, in Europe you can see Al-Manar and there are some quarters of the Muslim community who have Al-Manar in the living room all day and all night.  And those people go to school; those kids go to school and say, “We do not want to have lessons about the Holocaust” and “Jew is a word in order to defame other people,” and so on and so forth.  It influences, really, the mindsets.  Now, Ahmadinejad announced that he wants to set up and own Iranian television station for the whole of South America.  We have to be aware of this kind of incitement propaganda and it is the most worst enemy.

 Male Voice:  I read your book and I find it very persuasive, and I would just commend it to everybody.  It is very well written.  And I think it is particularly persuasive in the opening point you made that it is not a question of Israeli policy or U.S. policy, but this Jew hatred is deep-seated in the ideology. 

I guess the question I have is the relationship between what you call this redemptive anti-Semitism and the more classic anti-Semitism, which you were speaking of.  I’m still a bit confused about that.  I’m not persuaded that the kind of anti-Semitism or Jew hatred you get from Ahmadinejad and the Muslim Brotherhood today is something unique.  In other words, when you are talking about the Muslim brothers or Hamas leaders that are debating over what happens when their pigs and monkeys -- they do not need Nazis to instruct them on this. 

And as you know, after reading your book, I have read the debate that has erupted with Andrew Bostom, and he makes this point.  I wanted to give you a chance to, maybe, respond to that kind of question of whether your emphasis on the Nazi influence was, in fact, maybe, a cause or whether, in fact, it was merely a catalyst to more classic notions of Jew hatred in Islamic thought.

 Matthias Küntzel:  There were two very important differences between the old anti-Judaism and modern anti-Semitism because, of course, in the Christian anti-Judaism and the Muslim anti-Judaism it was possible for the Jews to survive by converting or by accepting the dhimmi status in the Islamic world. 

This is something else today in a way because now Jews are made responsible for all the evils of the modern world.  Therefore, I think we have to deal -- of course, we have to dig [sounds like] groundwork of Muslim anti-Semitism, which started with Muhammad in the city of Medina when he tried to get rid of the Jewish tribes and when he beheaded hundreds of male Jews at that time. 

In a way, the whole Muslim creed was created as an antagonism to the Jews of Medina.  So this is quite important.  We have some verses in the Qur’an in favor of Jews and there are some clerics even saying that the Qur’an predicts the creation of Israel.  We have a lot of brothers [sounds like] very much against the Jews.  How can this be?  Because during his lifetime, Muhammad had different experiences.  In the very first part when he was still in Mecca, he wanted to create a kind of Arabic Torah.  So he was very much in favor of the Jewish creed.  And then, later on, when all these fights at Medina came into existence, he changed his mind.  And so, we have both.  And the very early verses of the Qur’an are pro-Jewish, and the later verses in the Qur’an are anti-Jewish.  It is like with Martin Luther.  Martin Luther, the German reformist, he was very much in favor of the Jews at the beginning and then --

 Male Voice:  [Inaudible] he’s popular here.

 Matthias Küntzel:  Good.  Okay.  I think we have to see that during the ‘30s what Nazi Germany, together with the Mufti of Jerusalem, did was to mix both.  If you compare the legend of Christianity, there the Jews were very mighty; they were even able to kill God’s only son.  So they are mysterious, they are mighty, and they are able to create a black plague in the Middle Ages, and so on and so forth. 

In the Islamic world this was not the same picture because the Jews did not kill the prophet; the prophet killed the Jews.  Therefore, the Jews are shown as downgraded, as cowards, and so on and so forth.  So it took some time to change this mindset, this picture of the Jew, which was traditional, in order to show them they are the real monsters of the world and they are really rulers of the world, and so on and so forth.

  The Mufti of Jerusalem, who was a main speaker at Radio Zeesen, he managed to fuse both elements - European modern anti-Semitism with the old Islamic anti-Judaism.  And they were able to radicalize the centuries-old Jew hatred of the Islamic creed.

 Michael Ledeen:  Thank you.  Charlie, this guy behind you.  He has had his hand up.  And --

 Michael Allen:  Thank you.  Michael Allen, National Endowment for Democracy.  One of the trends that we are seeing in Europe at the moment as you say is that the flirtation between the far Left and radical Islamists.  But we are also seeing the emergence of what some people are describing as a [indiscernible] that failed generation of former radical Islamists; people like Ed Husain and Hassan Butt in Britain; people who have come out of radical groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the Brotherhood Muslim Association of Britain and the like. 

Do you think that this group can play an analogist role to the role that the former Communist intellectuals of the [indiscernible] failed generation played in the cultural Cold War?  Or do you think these groups and individuals are currently just too marginal and too few to have much impact?

 Matthias Küntzel:  Definitely.  Thank you for this contribution.  I think it is very important to see those guys and to talk and to write about their experiences.  And, really, my last book in German on the appendix of it only quotes Muslims who are against Islamic anti-Semitism.  There are only a few but they are very, very worthy to get their voice enhanced.  So I appreciate it.

 Michael Ledeen:  One thing that absolutely has to be done is that freedom of speech and freedom of expression has to be guaranteed to critics of anything.  And there is now a growing an impressive number of mostly European authors, playwrights, moviemakers, et cetera, who are under constant, around-the-clock physical protection, and who cannot walk the streets freely, who cannot appear in public freely, and so forth, because they are afraid they are going to be killed.  I mean, that obviously has to stop because it is meaningless to go around spouting platitudes about freedom of speech if, in reality, people cannot speak because they’ll be killed.  Okay.  Here, take Peter first and then Jeffrey and then this guy.

 Peter Range [phonetic]:  Thank you. Peter Range phonetic], journalist.  In your book and elsewhere you have talked about being more or less ostracized, especially as a person formerly from the Left, for your book and what you have said about all of these issues historically and otherwise and for your research. 

I’m curious, speaking of Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, to hear of more about the atmosphere in Europe today.  Michael alluded to it just now.  Have things begun to change at all since the murder of Theo Van Gogh and the Danish cartoons crisis, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, et cetera?  Or, in your view, is the European intellectual community still stuck in its anti-Israeli, anti-American past and unable to absorb even the warnings that come from uncovering terrorist plots, as in Germany and Denmark lately?

 Matthias Küntzel:  Well, it is a sad story.  Still, most people in Germany think the real danger is America, not Iran.  And that is the reason why it is not difficult, especially for the state department in Germany, the Foreign Ministry, to continue with doing some kind of business with Iran. 

It is sad to say but there are some changes in society after the murder of Theo Van Gogh.  Hirsi Ali, who was also at the American Enterprise Institute -- she is a bestseller in Germany.  So there are some signs of hope and people are much more aware than the time before about what Muslims want or should get or should not get in legal questions.  But the question of Israel and Hamas -- you have no idea how deep the gap is between the perception in America and in Europe concerning the Middle East.  And I try to figure out why is this.  And I think one of the reasons may be the psychological feeling of guilt beneath the surface, which says, at the same time, “Well, if there are Jewish criminals, it is not so bad for us.  So they are also criminals.”   So this is a kind of psychological explanation, which might in a way make this reasonable or understandable in a way. 

One other thing is when we read in the German or in the French - and French papers are even worse - if we read in these newspapers about Qassam rockets, there is no headline.  But if Israel reacts to it, we have a big headline.  So why is this?  And I think, also, the very, very old Middle Age mindset that you are able to punish a Jew and no one will say anything but if a Jew in the Middle Ages would try to defend himself, this was a big issue at that time.  I think we have a very, very long and old tradition of mindsets, which even survives the Second World War.

 Michael Ledeen:  If only the Jews owned the oil companies instead of the newspapers, right?  Okay, Jeff has a question.  And we are about out of time so we will take Jeff and we will take this gentleman back there by the window.  And Michael, yes.

 Jeffrey Herf:  I’m Jeffrey Herf and I’m proud to say I wrote the foreword to this very fine book.  Two comments more than questions:  The Nazis wanted to convince the Arabs that, contrary to the line propaganda coming from the United States and Britain, the Nazi regime was not a racist regime.  And the Nuremberg Race Laws did not make distinctions between Aryans and non-Aryans but, rather, the distinction was between Germans and Jews.  Therefore, the Egyptian Olympic team in 1936 should feel welcome to come to Berlin to participate in the Olympics and they would be most welcome.  This self-presentation of Nazism as an anti-racism, as an anti-imperialism, and as the force liberating the Arab world from, “Britain and the Jews” was a constant theme of its propaganda. 

The second point that Michael Ledeen raised about winners and losers raises this question:  Why would the Muslim Brothers -- why would any Arab radical in 1946, ’47, ‘48 want to identify with the losers of the Second World War?  The second question raised by a point that Matthias just made is how is Israel possible.  And that is where the contribution of radical anti-Semitism from Europe became so important.  It offered something that the Islamic tradition had not offered: an explanation of how the Jews were powerful.  Because according to radical anti-Semitism from Europe, the Jews had won the Second World War and Israel was possible because the international jury was possible.  And with the help of British imperialism and American imperialism and godless Communism from Moscow, the Jews were able to establish a state and defeat the Arabs.  So it is this perception of the Jews as overwhelmingly powerful because they are now allied with all these powers.

Last point:  Our German colleagues - I was going to say comrades - but our German colleagues are making, like Matthias and others, an invaluable contribution to our understanding of radical Islam.  Radical Islam is not the same thing as National Socialism but it should be understood as part of the modern history of the Radical Right, globally speaking.  And rhetorically -- and I say that as a historian because I think it is true.  But I also say it as a public intellectual because I think it is not well-understood in the United States.  When people do not want -- especially in the Democratic Party, it is very difficult for people to throw their hearts into the struggle against the radical Islam because there still is a lingering sense that this is part of the Third World and its struggle against oppression and suffering. 

In that sense, I think what Matthias has done in Jihad and Jew-Hatred, what other historians in Germany who are not as well known are doing in attempting to establish a plausible historical record, is of both historical importance, of scholarly significance, but it is also politically important today.  That is obviously a comment rather than --

Michael Ledeen:  Thanks.  But you must promise to keep coming back and keep us up-to-date on this stuff.  Do not just drop in occasionally.  Yes, okay.  So we have a final question there, and then Michael.

Jackie Gough [phonetic]:  I’m Jackie Gough.  I work for the Smithsonian.  I want to quickly explain where I’m coming from.  I grew up in Jordan and identified as a Palestinian-Jordanian, and recently found out that my grandmother on my mom’s side, who was Russian, is very likely to be Jewish.  So all of this is very interesting because I have to consider -- I mean, you have to consider all the possibilities.  I do not know if this brings any hope.  But there is, at least growing up in Jordan -- and this is still horrible, but I think there is hope in it is that there is a clear distinction on the street between the concept of Jewish person and Israel.  So even a lot of the most extremist views who call for the destruction of Israel do not necessarily talk about Jews outside of Israel. 

And what happens is that on all levels of education, when people migrate to Western European countries and the United States, through their daily interactions, their opinion a lot of times -- well, I mean some people’s opinions gets more extreme -- a majority I feel like their opinion gets less extreme and more understanding just through having Jewish friends, and you start realizing the wrong in your own way of thinking. 

From that what this leads me to is that there is a problem that if the anti-Semitism in the Arabic world comes from the Nazi ideology, if we still have a problem that every time Hamas or any extremist group sets a trap with the Qassam rockets and while it is justifiable that Israel wants to protect itself, it is harder to explain -- I mean, the relatives of the people that die in the rocket attacks, they are going to be more likely to buy into the propaganda that is being sold to them.  As hard as it is -- but since the Israeli side is not on the ignorant side, would it not be better if somehow - and I know this optimistic - we could basically show people that their -- dismantle their beliefs through maybe overtly generous gestures.  But I know this is very hopeful, but I just do not think the whole cycle of action and reaction, it just only helps increase the anti-Semitism among Arabs.

Michael Ledeen:  Okay.  I’m going to forbid Matthias to reply to that since it is worth two hours all by itself.  But thank you for your good question.  And we will get to it in time, but not today.  Michael, you want to wrap it up?

Michael Novak:  I do want to end with one comment but it is not unrelated to the young man’s comment [audio glitch] is a battle going in the souls of lots of people in the Muslim world.  I think it is very important to keep that in mind.  There are a lot of people who have moved, who have changed.  A lot of people are open to persuasion and there a lot of people who are very hardened. 

I think the future of this century depends very much on how that battle comes out in the soul of Muslim peoples.  But I wanted to say that I would advise Matthias not to describe it as a religious war.  In a way, I’m sorry I brought up a theological point at the beginning about the different natures of God and of liberty. 

It is not a good idea to talk about it as a religious war because of a practical reason than a reason of truth or theory, if you want.  Practically, it will drive away a great many people if you talk about it as a religious war.  Second, it will escalate passions to a point at which you cannot deal with the problem.  But the truth of the situation is also that what is going on since the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood is a political seizure of a religion and the singling out of those texts that best suit political purposes and those practices that best suit political purposes, and try to reinterpret Islam in that way. 

And as I say, it has created such an ugly image of Islam and it has caused so much suffering among Islamic peoples.  Al Qaeda, Hamas -- they do not hesitate to kill other Muslims who stand in their way.  They do not hesitate to bomb or destroy a mosque that stands in their way, or if destroying it could advance their purposes.  They are using whatever they want [indiscernible] for political purposes.  The motivation behind the whole movement is political.  And I think we should strike it as a political foe.  And I think that when a big response in the -- no, I cannot say that.  I think it is more likely to win a response in the hearts of many Muslims than -- if we say it is their religion, we are demanding that they give up something very dear to them and we make it impossible for many of them. 

More and more understand from what they see on television, from émigrés, from the rest, that other people in the world are living a life of greater dignity.  In the Arab world, there are police of all kinds; there is regular police and there is secret police and there is religious police.  And they are threatened from many different quarters.  And despite the oil -- the oil is a curse.  And because despite it there are still people living in great poverty and dependency, and there is not much future if you are a young male and, for other reasons, a young female. 

There has to be some way to break this cycle.  And I think more and more understand that.  And they also think, deep in their hearts, this is not inconsistent with Islam.  It is not possible that only Jews and Christians and secular people have a way of arguing about innate human dignity.  It is just not credible.  So I advise strongly against calling it a religious war.  There are religious elements in it.  They are very deep and they are very old.  But the essential struggle is a political grasping of power over one religion and using it against others.  So we must treat it as a political.  Thank you.

Michael Ledeen:  Thank you, Michael.  Thank you all.

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