[RC one]

and sometimes they do. Hassan al-Banna is the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and he did collaborate with Hitler. I think the article is probably right on target.

Hassan al-Banna - Hassan al-Banna (Arabic: حسن البنا) was born October 14, 1906 and died February 12, 1949. Al Banna was a radical Islamist and founder of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (Jamaat al-Ikhwan al-Muslimun). Al-Banna launched the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood in March of 1928. The brotherhood was extremist and violent from its inception. It's motto is, "God is our purpose, the Prophet our leader, the Qur'an our constitution, Jihad our way and dying for God's cause our supreme objective." Al-Banna was quite clear that his goal was not solely an anti-colonialist struggle in Egypt nor the refurbishment of Islam, but rather a world revolution that would establish Islam as the dominant religion of the entire world: The growth of the Muslim Brotherhood was accompanied or caused in part by the fact that Al-Banna associated it with the German Nazi party and the Third Reich. From the ideological point of view, the Jew hatred, authoritarianism, addiction to violence and desire to defeat the British of both the Muslim Brothers and the Nazis were quite enough to make the two movements find common cause. The Brotherhood’s political and military alliance with Nazi Germany blossomed into formal state visits, de facto ambassadors, and overt and covert joint ventures. The Muslim Brotherhood transformed Nazi anti-Semitism into a Muslim version, providing Arab translations of Mein Kampf (translated into Arabic as “My Jihad”) and other Nazi anti-Semitic works, including Der Sturmer hate-cartoons, adapted to portray the Jew as the demonic enemy of Allah rather than the German Volk.

[Sherman Logan]

Of course the MB allied itself with the Nazis. They were fighting for (what they saw as) their freedom from British occupation. When we did the same we allied ourselves with an absolutist monarchy, despite the fact we were fighting for republican ideals.

Where did you think Arab rebels would look for support? They looked to the enemies of their enemies, just as the Irish did.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m no fan of Islam or especially Islamists. But to try to say Islamism “is” fascism is I think a step too far. It’s certainly been influenced by it, as unfortunately has our own society. The most important roots of Islamism go far into their own history and culture. The various European ideological features are sort of tacked on for decoration.

Depending of course on your definition of fascism.

I’ve seen similar “explanations” for Japanese militarism of the 30s and 40s, as if Japan didn’t have sufficient militarism in its own history to explain things.

Other cultures are able to come up with bad things without necessarily copying them from western civ.