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.

Also in Paris, Thousands of Iranian Jews and their descendants were saved by an Iranian Muslim diplomat. A new book. In The Lion’s Shadow tells how Abdol-Hossein Sardari risked everything to help fellow Iranians who were Jewish escape the Nazis.  Sardari used his influence and German contacts to gain exemptions from Nazi race laws for more than 2,000 Iranian Jews, and possibly others, arguing that they did not have blood ties to European Jewry.  He was also able to help many Iranians, including members of Jewish community, return to Tehran by issuing them with the new-style Iranian passports they needed to travel across Europe. 

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 2/8/2011

Pamela Geller has just published a truly vicious article defending Stalin’s attempt at genocide against Chechen Muslims.  In this article she falsely claims that the Chechens were allied with the Nazis.  Here is an article from Spencerwatch rebutting her false claims:

Recently Pamela Geller put up a post on her hate blog about the suicide bombing at  Moscow’s airport. Amidst her usual anti-Islam/Muslim diatribe Geller sided with Joseph Stalin’s genocidal policy after World War 2 in which he relocated the entire indigenous populations of Chechnya and Ingusethia to Siberia:

Islamic Terror Attack Homicide Bomber Kills At Least 31 Human Beings

UPDATE: Frank the Great:

“The Kremlin is struggling to contain an Islamist insurgency in the mainly Muslim North Caucasus, and rebels have repeatedly vowed they will take their battle to the Russian heartland.”-from the article

This region (North Caucasus) was a big source of the Muslim Waffen SS Divisions during World War II. The Waffen SS Divisions fought with the Nazis against the Russians on the eastern front during WW2. For that reason Stalin relocated most Muslims in the region to Siberia. Khrushchev brought them back in 1956. Khrushchev made a mistake in doing that.

Most people today don’t know that the Muslim world was allied with the Nazis, especially in the Middle East (Iraq e.g.-where the British invaded to overthrw a pro-Nazi govn’t) and the Caucasus. The Cold War hid all that till the collapse of the USSR in 1990.

As William Faulkner said: “The past is never really past.”

Geller updated her blog to include the above statement from someone named “Frank the Great” obviously she agrees with everything he says. Unfortunately what he says is a gross distortion of history, an approval of genocide and extremely disgusting.

It is true that Stalin blamed Chechens for aiding the Germans during the War and this is how he justified their transfer to Siberia. The real reason that Stalin transferred the Muslim populations of Chechnya and Ingusethia was due to a revolt led by Khasan Israilov from 1940-44 against the Soviet state for independence:

Khasan is regarded as the most influential Chechen guerrilla leader during the Second World War, and he is considered a national hero for many Chechens. He was infamous to the Soviets, and is to many Russians, for his 1940-1944 uprising, which many Russians connected to an abortive German plot to undermine Soviet control over the North Caucasus (in reality, however, relations between Israilov’s Chechen partisans and the Germans were tense at best, hostile at worse).

Khasan himself was a Communist, here is his letter to the Chechen Communist Party:

“I have decided to become the leader of a war of liberation of my own people. I understand all too well that not only in Checheno-Ingushetia, but in all nations of the Caucasus it will be difficult to win freedom from the heavy yoke of Red imperialism. But our fervent belief in justice and our faith in the support of the freedom-loving peoples of the Caucasus and of the entire world inspire me toward this deed, in your eyes impertinent and pointless, but in my conviction, the sole correct historical step. The valiant Finns are now proving that the Great Enslaver Empire is powerless against a small but freedom-loving people. In the Caucasus you will find your second Finland, and after us will follow other oppressed peoples.”

“For twenty years now, the Soviet authorities have been fighting my people, aiming to destroy them group by group: first the kulaks, then the mullahs and the ‘bandits’, then the bourgeois-nationalists. I am sure now that the real object of this war is the annihilation of our nation as a whole. That is why I have decided to assume the leadership of my people in their struggle for liberation.”

In reality the Chechens never fought for Hitler on the Eastern front, that is a BOLD-FACED LIE. Attempts at forming an alliance with Chechens floundered because of mutual distrusts, conflicting ideologies and Germany’s alliance with the Cossacks, who were the avowed enemies of Chechens.

In reality Chechens fought with the Red Army to liberate Russia and Eastern Europe but instead were treated like sub humans by the Soviets:

Stalin alleged that the peoples of the North Caucasus were responsible for mass collaboration with the Germans, despite the fact that an estimated 157,000 Chechen and Ingush conscripts had fought in the Red Army against Nazi Germany, and many had fought all the way to the liberation of Berlin. On the night of February 23, 1944 Lavrentiy Beria personally carried out the Chechevitsa, the forced deportation of the Chechens and Ingush to Central Asia. Beria went on to issue a verbal order that any Chechen or Ingush found ‘untransportable should be liquidated’ on the spot, and under this pretext thousands were summarily executed. Victims of typhus, which had reached epidemic proportions, were immediately executed, as were pregnant women and the elderly; another example of Soviet excesses came in the Chechen village of Khaibakh, where more than 700 Chechens were locked in a stable and burnt alive. Chechen literature and manuscripts were also burned by the Soviets, and food and water supplies were poisoned to eliminate any that stayed behind.

The tragedy of this transfer of Chechens from their ancestral home is mocked by Geller and her friends, and why should we be surprised as Geller supports the same thing for Palestinians. The transfer of Chechens led to over a quarter of the population dying. That Geller would side with Stalin only confirms her long list of not only anti-Freedom beliefs but also support for murder and genocide.