The fanatical hordes of Hamas who carried out the attacks on 7 October have inherited an obsessive Judeophobia that has marked the history of the Muslim Brotherhood since it was founded in 1928.

D.R

The beginnings of this hatred of Jews appeared with the creation of the Islamist Brotherhood, on the banks of the Suez Canal, at the end of the 1920s. However, it only openly manifests itself and began to gain momentum at the time of the great Palestinian revolt, from 1936 to 1939, against British domination and the massive arrival of Jews in Palestine. Prior to this, in 1935, Hassan al-Banna had established the first contacts with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Amin al-Husseini, who was then already in contact with the Abwehr, the intelligence service of the German army (see article opposite).

In their book “The crescent and the swastika”¹, Roger Faligot and Rémi Kauffer describe how the Arab political leaders of the time were fascinated “by the totalitarian methods of the fascist movements of Europe”, whether the Italian fascist model or German Nazism. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem moved to Germany in 1941 and remained there until 1945. One photograph immortalised him in animated conversation with Adolf Hitler.

This photo illustrates the cover of the book “Jihad and hatred of the Jews”, by the German essayist and political scientist Matthias Küntzel². From his meeting with Hitler, Amin al-Husseini recalls: “the precise condition of our collaboration with Germany was complete freedom to eliminate the Jews, every last one of them, from Palestine and the Arab world. I asked Hitler for his explicit agreement to allow us to solve the Jewish problem in a way that would be beneficial to our racial and national aspirations and in accordance with the scientific methods that Germany had invented for dealing with its Jews. The answer I received was: the Jews are yours”.

In his university thesis entitled “The Sources of Muslim Renewal”, Tariq Ramadan devoted just two lines to the links between his grandfather, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, and the Grand Mufti Sheikh Amin al-Husseini: “Hassan al-Banna prepared and organised his political exile in Egypt in 1946”, he wrote³.

In fact, when he returned from Germany, the Grand Mufti did indeed contaminate Hassan al-Banna. From then on, the latter – who was predisposed to it – no longer hid his admiration for Nazism. Inspired by the Hitler Youth, he had already created in 1940 “Young Muslims”, nicknamed the “Khaki Shirts”, who marched through the streets of Cairo at night with torches. “These young Brotherhood militants were also responsible for attacks on Jewish shops and properties”⁴. The khaki shirts chanted “Egypt above all”, imitating the Nazi “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” (Germany must dominate the world). In his book “Muslim Brotherhood. Investigation into the latest totalitarian ideology”, Michaël Prazan points out that the Muslim Brotherhood’s motto, “Action, obedience and silence”, echoes the Italian fascists’ “Believe, obey and fight”⁵.

Likewise, according to one of the main inspirations of Hamas, the spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi – known for his numerous anti-Semitic excesses, notably in his program ”Sharia and life” on Al Jazeera TV -, quoted in “The Secret History of the Muslim Brotherhood”⁶ by Chérif Amir, “the ideology of the German Reich is virtually similar to Hassan al-Banna’s vision and political project for the Islamic ummah”. As proof of this, he points out that just as the Third German Reich claimed to be the defender of the Aryan race, “Islam obliges every Muslim to consider himself the protector of anyone who respects the prescriptions of the Koran”!

1. Roger Faligot and Rémi Kauffer, Albin Michel, March 1990, p. 58.

2. Matthias Küntzel, Jihad et haine des juifs. Le lien troublant entre islamisme et nazisme à la racine du terrorisme international, éditions du Toucan, August 2015.

3. Tariq Ramadan, Editions Tawhid, 2002, p. 206.

4. Chérif Amir, Histoire secrète des Frères musulmans, ellipses, February 2015, p. 29.

5. Michaël Prazan, Frères musulmans. Enquête sur la dernière idéologie totalitaire, Grasset, January 2014, p. 41.

6. Chérif Amir, op. cit., p. 34.