The American Muslim (TAM)

Muslims Who Fought Against the ‘Real’ Fascists & Nazis - updated 12/28/11

Sheila Musaji

Posted Dec 7, 2011 •Permalink • Printer-Friendly Version

Muslims Who Fought Against the ‘Real’ Fascists & Nazis

by Sheila Musaji

With the recent increase in the use of the misleading term Islamic Fascists it is important to point out a few facts. There may have been a few Muslims who cooperated with the Nazis/Fascists during the Second World War, but they were a small minority. Most Muslims followed the Qur’anic injunction:

“Oh you who believe, stand up firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even if it be against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be against rich or poor; for God can best protect both. Do not follow any passion, lest you not be just. And if you distort or decline to do justice, verily God is well-acquainted with all that you do” (Quran 4:135).

As Mas’ood Cajee points out

A growing chorus of voices which exploits the Holocaust for political gain has been trying to smear Muslims — and Arabs in particular — with grand accusations of complicity in the Holocaust and support for the Nazis. These voices serve hawkish interests in Israel and the United States who wish to justify and legitimize continued war, violence, and yes — even genocide — against Muslims and Arabs. Identifying Muslims with and as Nazis eases the task of selling continued bloodshed to war-weary publics. Reading the books and op-eds of the smearers, one could almost conclude absurdly that the Nazi holocaust was an Arab Muslim and not a European Christian project. As evidence, the smearers usually trot out the pro-German Mufti of Jerusalem Amin Al-Husayni and the Bosnian Muslim SS “Handschar” division.

What these smearing Islamophobes don’t like to tell you: the “Mufti” was actually an appointee of the Jewish administrator of British Palestine who completed one measly year at Al-Azhar and betrayed the Ottoman Sultan to join the British. The much-vaunted “Hanschar” SS division — disbanded after a few months due to mass desertions — was the only SS division ever to mutiny.

All too often the Muslim and Arab soldiers who fought with the Allies are the forgotten heroes. In the U.S. alone, over 15,000 Arab Americans served in WWII. You can see some photographs of Muslim soldiers buried in military cemeteries in Europe here. And, there are crescents among the crosses at Arlington military cemetery.

As I said in an article about the current common usage of the term “Islamic Fascists”

The actual Nazi party originated in Germany, a predominantly Christian country. The actual Facists came out of Italy, another predominantly Christian country. The Nazis and Fascists were predominantly Christians. Christianity had a role in the rise and fall of the Nazi’s. The Vatican signed a concordat with Hitler’s Reich. The Catholic responses to Hitler were ambiguous at least. There are numerous photographs of Hitler with various Christian clergy including Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, the papal nuncio in Berlin, and with a Catholic Cardinal, Spanish and German Bishops giving Nazi and Fascist salutes, Cardinal Michael Faulhaber marching in a Nazi parade, the Reich Bishop Ludwig Muller, and many more that are still available. There are also numerous photographs of Christian symbols in Nazi artifacts.

Hitler himself referred to Christianity as a foundation for his beliefs: “The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.” Source: My New World Order, Proclamation to the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933

The Christian connection with the Nazis and Fascists was widespread and well-documented. The Muslim connection was minimal. And, just as there were Christians who resisted and fought against the Nazi and Fascist regimes there were also many Muslims who fought against this evil worldview.

The holocaust was a terrible stain on humanity, and there were villains and heroes everywhere.

The bottom line is that all of those who participate in, cooperate with, or do not speak out against evil (no matter what their religion) bring shame on the human race, and all of those who stand for justice and compassion give us all hope.

Bulgarian Christians and Muslims protected Jews from the Nazis.

Albania was the only Muslim majority country in Europe. Albania not only saved Albanian Jews from the Nazis, but, in fact, Albania was the only country in Europe that had a larger Jewish population at the end of the war than before the war. Not one Albanian Jew or any other Jew who came to Albania for protection was turned over to the Nazis. There was a film called “The Optimists” which tells the virtually unknown story of how 50,000 Jews living in Bulgaria survived the Holocaust despite intensive Nazi efforts to deport them to death camps. Fifty thousand Jews didn’t die because Bulgarian Christians and Muslims found ways to protect Jews from their would-be murderers. - - The Albanian Refik Vesili who — as a 16-year-old — saved eight Jews by hiding them in his family’s mountain home. - The English-Albanian plaque in the Jewish Corner of Tirana’s National Museum lists the names of 33 Muslim Albanians who have been honored by Yad Vashem, and leaves space for other people “whose names remain unrecorded.”

300,000 Moroccan Jews in Israel mourned the death of King Hassan of Morocco in 1999. His father, Mohammed V, is widely credited with having saved Morocco’s Jews from deportation during World War II, and Hassan continued the philo-Semitic policies of his father. Although there was an outbreak of anti-Jewish incidents following the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, the Jewish community was generally safe under the protection of both Mohammed and Hassan, who proudly considered the Jews “Moroccans of Jewish origin.

The sons of World War II Jewish communal leaders, related stories of regional governors in Morocco who gave Jewish leaders matches and told them to burn the list of the names, addresses and assets of local Jews. Without lists, it was more difficult to deport the Jews and confiscate their assets.

Robert Satloff reported in a NYT article that ”Arabs welcomed Jews into their homes, guarded Jews’ valuables so Germans could not confiscate them, shared with Jews their meager rations and warned Jewish leaders of coming SS raids. The sultan of Morocco and the bey of Tunis provided moral support and, at times, practical help to Jewish subjects. In Vichy-controlled Algiers, mosque preachers gave Friday sermons forbidding believers from serving as conservators of confiscated Jewish property. In the words of Yaacov Zrivy, from a small town near Sfax, Tunisia, “The Arabs watched over the Jews.” I found remarkable stories of rescue, too. In the rolling hills west of Tunis, 60 Jewish internees escaped from an Axis labor camp and banged on the farm door of a man named Si Ali Sakkat, who courageously hid them until liberation by the Allies. In the Tunisian coastal town of Mahdia, a dashing local notable named Khaled Abdelwahhab scooped up several families in the middle of the night and whisked them to his countryside estate to protect one of the women from the predations of a German officer bent on rape.” He also tells the story of Yehuda Chachmon, a Libyan Jew interned in an Italian camp in Giado. “The Arab camp guards opted out of the sadistic torture inflicted on Jews and other prisoners by the Italians. Of the 2,600 Jews in the Giado camp 562 died in less than a year. The Italian guards treated the Jews with brutality; the attitude of the Arab guards under the Italians was excellent. They even found secret ways to ease our discomfort.”

Arabs and Jews once fought together under the British Flag against the Nazis in the Palestine Regiment.

Noor Inayat Khan fought against the Nazis and was killed at Dachau concentration camp. See Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan, d. Dachow, Poland, 1944

The stories of Muslim rescuers of Jews are largely unknown and unpublished. Only in the past fifteen years have Holocaust researchers brought a few to the public’s attention. Yad Vashem and other Holocaust memorial groups have honored several Muslims (whose courageous stories we have been able to confirm) as Righteous Gentiles. 70 Muslims are named by Yad Vashem as “Righteous Among the Nations” for aiding Jews in North Africa, Turkey and Albania during the Nazi era. The Muslim rescuers include:

The Tunisian Khaled Abdul-Wahab was nominated as the first Arab to be declared a Righteous among the Nations at the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem. But his efforts were rejected two years later on the grounds that Abdul-Wahab did not risk his life, as he did not act against Tunisian law while caring for two Jewish families when their house was confiscated during the German occupation. Whether or not he should be included is still in dispute. Also in Tunisia, in Tunisia, the wartime rulers Ahmed Pasha Bey and his cousin Moncef Bey offered vital public support for Jews facing Vichy persecution. “They regularly warned Jewish leaders of German plans, helped Jews avoid arrest orders, intervened to prevent deportations, and even hid Jews so they could evade the Germans. Moncef Bey is remembered fondly by Tunisian Jews. “He gave the Jews equal treatment,” declared Shlomo Barad. “He did not allow them to be discriminated.”

- The Bosnians - Not only did Dervis and Servet Korkut hide many Jews from the local pro-Nazi regime, including a young Jewish woman resistance fighter named Mira Bakovic, but Dervis Korkut saved the precious Sarajevo Haggadah, concealing it in his home and thus keeping the 14th-century volume, the best known illuminated Hebrew manuscript, intact.

Selahattin Ulkumen, the Turkish Consul at Rhodes, whose rescue of several dozen Jews from certain extermination at Auschwitz led to the death of his wife Mihrinissa when the Nazis retaliated against him. One example is that of Bernard Turiel was born in 1934 in Rhodes, an island off the coast of Turkey. Turiel, his father and his brother were in prison, awaiting transport to Auschwitz. They were saved by the courageous efforts of Selahattin Ulkumen, a Muslim, who insisted that due to the treaty between Germany and Turkey, Turkish citizens, including Jews, could not be deported. If not for the heroic measures of the Turks, none of this would have been possible. ”They were our saviors,” Turiel said. They met again in 1988, when the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai Brith presented Ulkumen it’s ”Courage to Care” award.”

Stanford Shaw, professor of Turkish History at UCLA, has written about the thousands of Jews saved by the Turkish government. “Turkish diplomats in France spent a good deal of time organizing ‘train caravans’ to take Turkish Jews back to Turkey… In addition to providing material assistance to Turkish Jews persecuted in France and other countries occupied by the Nazis in Western Europe, Turkey also helped East European Jews persecuted in countries such as Greece, Lithuania, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Right from the start of the war, the Turkish government permitted the Jewish Agency to maintain rescue offices at hotels in Istanbul.”

Republican Turkey due to its neutrality during most of World War II, and its unique geographical proximity to both Europe and the Middle East, Turkey and Turkish diplomats living abroad played an important role for European Jews in danger during World War II and the Holocaust, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Muslim-majority Turkey rescued over 15,000 Turkish Jews and over 100,000 European Jews.

The Central Mosque of Paris served as a shelter for hundreds of French Jewish children being rescued from deportation to death camps. This mosque was built in the 1920s, as an expression of gratitude from France for the over half-million Muslims from its African possessions who fought alongside the French in the 1914-1918 war. About 100,000 of them died in the trenches. A film has been made about this called Their Children Are Like Our Own Children. Another film “Free Man”, traces the heroism of the founder of the Grand Mosque of Paris in saving Jews from the Nazis. It tells the story of Algerian-born Kaddour Benghabrit who rescued Jews in France from the Nazi brutality. Benghabrit provided shelter and Muslim identification documents to scores of Jews to help them escape arrest by Nazi troops. He also used the Grand Mosque of Paris to shelter more than 100 Jews from persecution

The majority of Allied troops that landed on the beaches of Provence in August, 1944 were “Free French” Muslims from North and West Africa. Thousands of Moroccan and Indian Muslim troops voluntarily served in the liberation of Italy. They risked and gave their lives along with Polish freedom fighters and American GIs at Monte Cassino. Tens of thousands more Soviet Muslim troops bravely served at hellish Stalingrad and Leningrad. All of us should honor and be thankful for their sacrifice in helping end the scourge of Nazism.

The bottom line is that all of those who participate in, cooperate with, or do not speak out against evil (no matter what their religion) bring shame on the human race. As the Qur’an warns us all: “Oh you who believe, stand up firmly for justice, as witnesses to God, even if it be against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be against rich or poor; for God can best protect both. Do not follow any passion, lest you not be just. And if you distort or decline to do justice, verily God is well-acquainted with all that you do” (Quran 4:135).

In Algeria, pro-Jewish sympathy was led by religious scholars like Abdel Hamid Ben Badis, founder of the Algerian League of Muslims and Jews who was an “intensely devout man with a modern, open and tolerant view of the world.” Shaykh Taieb el Okbi was another leader who had close ties to the Jews. When French pro-fascist groups were urging Algerian Muslims to persecute the Jews, Shaykh Taieb issued a fatwa prohibiting that. And from pulpits of Algerian mosques imams issued instructions to their followers to defy the fascists and behave honourably towards the Jews. The Jewish resistance leader in Algiers, Jose Aboulker, testified how when “Jewish goods were put up for public auction, an instruction went round the mosques, ‘Our brothers are suffering misfortune. Do not take their goods.’

Egyptian intellectuals like Ahmad Hasan Al-Zayyat who was the owner and editor of the most important intellectual weekly in 1930s Egypt and the Arab world, Al-Risala. He expressed stands against Nazi Germany and Hitler in a most lucid manner, particularly on the eve of the war and its outbreak. Israel Gershoni, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, has researched a number of Egyptian cultural magazines from the inter-war period, including al-Hillal (The Crescent) and al-Risala (The Message). According to Gershoni, here the persecution of Jews in Germany was a central theme early on, and it was mostly critically reviewed.

HOLOCAUST DENIAL

It is also important to remember that after WWII, there have been some people who engage in a sick amnesia about history called “holocaust denial”. Sadly, there have been some Muslims who engaged in this despicable denial.

King Mohammed VI of Morocco, has issued a proclamation on the Holocaust, a specific and deliberate refutation of Holocaust denial. He said: “Amnesia has no effect on my understanding of the Holocaust or that of my people.” He proclaimed in 2009: “We must together endeavor to reassert reason and the values which underpin the legitimacy of a space of coexistence where the words of dignity, justice and freedom will express themselves in the same way and will coexist with the same requirements, regardless of our origins, cultures or spirituality. This is our interpretation in Morocco, of the duty of remembrance dictated by the Shoah.”

A Statement Of American Muslim Imams And Community Leaders On Holocaust Denial & anti-Semitism was issued in 2011.

UPDATE 12/7/2011

Sadly, there are some who just can’t stop themselves from exploiting and focusing on the villains in order to incite the same sort of hatred that led to the holocaust. Pamela Geller has just posted an article about a controversial statement by an American Ambassador and used this opportunity to once again bring up the Mufti of Jerusalem and what she calls the “vicious Islamic Antisemitism as commanded in the quran.” She claims that “The role of the Mufti and the Muslim world in World War II has been whitewashed from history. Why? So that they might rise again to commit the same unspeakable, horrific crimes againt humanity?”

Geller calls the Mufti “the leader of the Muslim world” which is nonsense. He was not the leader of the Muslim world any more than Geller is the leader of the Jewish world. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem is the title for the the Sunni Muslim cleric in charge of Jerusalem’s Islamic holy places, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque. There is a Grand Mufti of Jerusalem today, does anyone even know his name outside of Jerusalem?

Geller cannot see that all of the Muslim heroes who fought against anti-Semitism and genocide were inspired by the Qur’an, and that the Mufti was not representative of the “Muslim world”. This sort of hateful stereotyping of an entire religion is exactly what led to the holocaust during WWII, and which leads today to incidents such as the desecration of the graves of Muslim WWII Soldiers Graves Vandalized in France. Any time anyone talks about “all Muslims”, “all Jews”, “all any group”, we know we are dealing with bigotry.

I would remind her of the statement by American Muslim Imams and scholars which reads in part

We bear witness to the absolute horror and tragedy of the Holocaust where over twelve million human souls perished, including six million Jews.

We condemn any attempts to deny this historical reality and declare such denials or any justification of this tragedy as against the Islamic code of ethics.

We condemn anti-Semitism in any form. No creation of Almighty God should face discrimination based on his or her faith or religious conviction.

We stand united as Muslim American faith and community leaders and recognize that we have a shared responsibility to continue to work together with leaders of all faiths and their communities to fight the dehumanization of all peoples based on their religion, race or ethnicity. With the disturbing rise of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and other forms of hatred, rhetoric and bigotry, now more than ever, people of faith must stand together for truth.

Geller (who is Jewish) should understand why it is important for all good people to say “never again!”

UPDATE 12/28/2011

An important article by Eva Weisel, a Holocaust survivor was just published in the NY Times, Honoring all who saved Jews. She tells the story of Khaled Abdul Wahab of Tunisia who saved her family during the German occupation, and then says

During the horrors of the Holocaust, non-Jews saved many thousands of Jews from death and depravity at the hands of Germans and their allies. Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial museum, has recognized more than 23,000 of these brave men and women as “The Righteous Among the Nations.” Our family’s rescuer deserves to be among that number. And in his case, the impact of recognition would have powerful reverberations, striking a blow against Holocaust denial in a part of the world where such denial is widespread.

That is because my hometown is Mahdia, on the eastern shore of Tunisia, and our rescuer, Khaled Abdul Wahab, was an Arab Muslim. (He passed away in 1997.)

So far, however, Abdul Wahab has been denied the recognition he deserves. Nearly five years ago, in January 2007, the Department of the Righteous at Yad Vashem nominated him to be a “righteous,” the first Arab ever to be formally considered for this honor. This nomination was based on witness testimony from my late sister, Anny Boukris. In March of that year, however, the official Commission for the Designation of the Righteous, a body presided over by a retired Israeli judge and created by Israeli law to decide who merits recognition as a “righteous,” voted to reject the nomination. That decision was kept secret for two years.

In 2010, that same jurist, Justice Jacob Tuerkel, sent the Abdul Wahab file back to the commission for a second review. This time, the case was bolstered by two fresh testimonies — a video interview of my cousin Edmee Masliah, who was with me at the farm and now lives outside Paris, and a notarized letter I wrote recounting my own experience. Yad Vashem now had three firsthand accounts of the story. But to my complete dismay, the Commission for the Designation of the Righteous once again voted to reject the nomination. Abdul Wahab was a noble man, I was told by Yad Vashem, but his actions did not rise to the statutory level required to merit the “righteous” designation — that is, he didn’t “risk his life” to save Jewish lives.

While that may be the wording of the law, I am told by experts that Abdul Wahab would not be the first rescuer of Jews not to have suffered physical harm, let alone life-threatening danger. Many in France who have won that designation were honored because they acted to save Jews without knowing for sure what fate would await them if they were caught. In addition, some of the famous diplomats honored as righteous were never arrested, injured or threatened with death for aiding Jews.

I refuse to believe that Yad Vashem has one standard for “righteous” in Europe and another for “righteous” who performed their sacred duty on the other side of the Mediterranean, in an Arab country.

Sixty-nine years after pinning a yellow star to my chest in my native land, I know that I was able to enjoy a long, full life because Abdul Wahab confronted evil and saved me, as he saved other fortunate members of my family. I hope that Yad Vashem reconsiders his case before no one is left to tell his story.