Jihad and Jew-Hatred:

Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11

by Matthias Küntzel
Translated by Colin Meade

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Jihad and Jew-Hatred makes a major contribution to the understanding of radical Islamism by tracing the impact of European fascism on the Arab and Islamic world. Drawing extensively on German-language sources, Matthias Küntzel analyzes the close relationship that began in the 1930s between Nazi leaders and Muslim extremists, especially the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Mufti of Jerusalem. This path-breaking book provides compelling documentation of the Nazi roots of what became Islamo-fascism and jihadist terror.

This study demonstrates in historical detail how the Muslim Brotherhood has consistently placed the hatred of Jews at the center of its ideology and policies through an incendiary rhetoric that interweaves passages from the Koran hostile to Jews with elements of Nazi-style world-conspiracy theories. Ancient prejudice and modern fantasies have become a deadly combination.

Jihad and Jew-Hatred also explains how the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 led to the shift of the center of global antisemitism to the Arab world, laying the foundation for radical Islamist currents in and around the Muslim Brotherhood and more recent terrorist organizations.

Küntzel convincingly shows that antisemitism is no mere supplementary feature of modern jihadism, and certainly no afterthought but its defining ideological core. This hatred also goes far beyond questions of Zionism and Israel. For Islamism, not only is everything Jewish evil, but every evil is Jewish, as the writings of Sayyid Qutb and the Charter of Hamas clearly explain to anyone willing to read them. It was this Jew-hatred that fueled the Jihad of the 9/11 terrorists.

Reviews

From the New York Times Sunday Book Review:
"The German scholar Matthias Küntzel . . . takes anti-Semitism, and in particular its most potent current strain, Muslim anti-Semitism, very seriously indeed. His bracing, even startling, book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred (translated by Colin Meade), reminds us that it is perilous to ignore idiotic ideas if these idiotic ideas are broadly, and fervently, believed. . . . Küntzel is right to state that we are witnessing a terrible explosion of anti-Jewish hatred in the Middle East, and he is right to be shocked. His invaluable contribution, in fact, is his capacity to be shocked, by the rhetoric of hate and by its consequences. The former Hamas leader Abdel Aziz Rantisi once told me that 'the question is not what the Germans did to the Jews, but what the Jews did to the Germans.' The Jews, he said, deserved their punishment. Küntzel argues that we should see men like Rantisi for what they are: heirs to the mufti, and heirs to the Nazis."

From the Haaretz Books Supplement:
"Küntzel's method is a dialectical masterpiece; he is a social scientist who pursues connections. The suicide attacks of the intifada in Israel are, for Küntzel, inherently linked to the attacks in America on September 11. That explains his remedy for fighting anti-Semitism: 'Whoever does not want to combat anti-Semitism . . . hasn't the slightest chance of beating Islamism.' Küntzel is in many ways the modern successor to Paul Merker, a rare voice in Germany, who, like Merker's view of Arab princes as embodying 'reactionary interests,' shifts the terms of the discussion to anti-Jewish ideology as the sine qua non of understanding radical political Islam, its destructive energy and its social and political violence."

From American Foreign Policy Interests:
"The pundits in particular would benefit immensely from reading Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11 by Matthias Küntzel. . . . The book definitely dispels the myth that Arab/Muslim anti-Semitism is purely a consequence of the current Middle East conflict with its recounting of the career of Amin al-Husseini, the British appointed grand mufti of Jerusalem. . . . Küntzel's book makes a powerful case that irrespective of whatever anger might be justifiable provoked by any specific Israeli (or American) action, it is not the particular instance of 'escalation' that gives rise to anti-Semitism but a preexistent, virulent anti-Semitic ideology that repeatedly escalates the conflict. . . . Küntzel's Jihad and Jew-Hatred is a salutary reminder that policymakers and analysts alike would do well to discard any illusions they may have that, by themselves, the right mix of political concessions negotiated by presumably rational statesmen will extinguish the fires of anti-Semitism that have been stoked for so long in certain quarters of the Arab-Muslim world. Only when the full implications of the ideological dimensions of Islamism, including its congenital anti-Semitism, are acknowledged and confronted can one even begin to sketch out a 'road map for peace' that would be realistic in any meaningful way."

From City Journal:
"The small, independent Telos Press deserves kudos for publishing this book by a German historian little known in America. Küntzel takes Islamic theology seriously, which is why his book is so deeply informative. His Jihad and Jew-Hatred is a compelling historical account of how modern Islamic extremism has been informed by the anti-Semitism of the Third Reich. Better than anyone before him, Küntzel makes sense the deep and entangling historical ties between European National Socialism and the Muslim Brotherhood."

From Jewish Political Studies Review:
"Küntzel presents an interpretation of events that differs from the conventional wisdom. His view seems to be the correct one. As opposed to the illusion of the Israeli establishment, which maintains that the 9/11 attack brought about greater understanding of Israel's problems and raised international awareness of terrorism, Küntzel argues that 9/11 fostered a tsunami of Jew-hatred. . . . Jihad and Jew-Hatred is perhaps the most important work written in the wake of 9/11. One would have expected similar books to appear in Israel, but this did not happen. Therefore, it is imperative that Küntzel's book be translated into Hebrew and widely distributed as soon as possible so as to extricate Israelis from the collective amnesia regarding both Egypt since the signing of the peace treaties nearly thirty years ago and the PLO and the Palestinians since the Oslo accords of 1993. . . . Whoever wishes to know the future should learn about the past the Küntzel exposes in Jihad and Jew-Hatred. This book challenges the views of the Western and Israeli elites who are in charge of thought control and molding public opinion."

From Il Sole 24 Ore:
"Matthew Küntzel, a German researcher, tries in Jihad and Jew-Hatred to trace the lineage of current Muslim anti-Semitism and to assess its place in the weltanschauung of contemporary global jihadists. And while a bit thin and sloppy in his research, Küntzel is grimly illuminating. What he argues is this: To the pristine layer of Muslim anti-Semitism that sprang from the rejection of Muhammad by the Jewish tribes in 7th century Arabia . . . was added, during the 1930s and the 1940s, a new layer of Jew-hatred rooted in Nazism. . . . Subsequently, there was anti-Semitic cross-fertilization between the Islamists and nationalists. . . . Israel has for years been at pains to dismiss the 'Palestine' (and anti-Semitic) motivations of global jihadists. But Küntzel argues that al-Qaida's assault on the West, first announced in 1998, was and is primarily driven by anti-Semitism. Bin Laden identifies the West/America with 'the Jews' and postulates that 'the Jews are determined to achieve world domination'."