So extensive is current misuse of English that even George Orwell, I think, would be flabbergasted by its prevalence—and its chief source: not the government, after all, but pseudo scholars and unprincipled journalists who might as well contend the moon is made of green cheese, and have all but convinced the world with their reams of false propaganda.

To sensible critics, these malfeasants can only respond with scurrilous, vindictive personal attacks—and never facts—since they apparently have none at their disposal.

Take the verbal assault on Dr. Andrew Bostom by Trans-Atlantic “Un-Intelligencer” journalist John Rosenthal in his “review” of a book on the Mufti of Jerusalem and Nazism.

Remarkably, Rosenthal actually libels Bostom—twice: First, he falsely and maliciously accuses certain “self-professed Islamophobes,” by which he clearly means Bostom, of writing that Islam “was…the source or inspiration of the anti-Semitism of the National Socialists!” Secondly, he falsely and maliciously states that Bostom suppressed a quotation from Adolph Hitler concerning Arabs—simply to lambaste Matthias Kuntzel’s Jihad and Jew-Hatred thesis—when Bostom did no such thing.

Having read both of Bostom’s books in their entirety, and all of his essays, I can attest that he has never suggested Islam as “the source or inspiration of the anti-Semitism of the National Socialists!”

What’s more astounding: Rosenthal subsequently added a footnote to his second libelous passage—admitting that Bostom after all hadn’t omitted Hitler’s quotation on Arabs, concerning their “racial inferiority.” As Bostom has explained, it was irrelevant to his essay’s point on Hitler’s effusive, alternative praise for Islamic aggression, and his profound dual regrets: that Islam had neither prevailed at the 8th century Battle of Tours, nor had “Islamized Germans” stood “at the head of this Mohammedan Empire.” Moreover, Bostom included the full quotation in his forthcoming Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, as I do below, with notes. [1] Yet, Rosenthal neither corrects his two libels in his text—nor troubles to properly apologize in print.

One leading intellectual replies, Rosenthal attributes to Bostom a thesis he never put forth, and then ridicules him for publishing it. He tries to make people think that Bostom attacked Matthias Kuntzel’s Jihad and Jew-Hatred thesis, and then made

the ‘extravagant proposition’ that the Nazis discovered anti-Semitism by perusing the Koran or by exchanging letters with the mufti.

I have read two of [Bostom’s] books, and most of [his] articles, and nowhere do I remember [him] trying to blame Nazi anti-Semitism on Islam, which would be clearly absurd. …

Rosenthal … implies that the attack on Kuntzel … could not have been motivated by the fact that it is glaringly wrong. You do not have to be a ‘self styled expert in Islam’ to see the fallacy in Kuntzel’s thesis any more than you have to be a self-styled expert in astronomy to know that the moon is not made of green cheese.

There is a concept in economics called anti-work. That happens when people who pretend to be doing productive labor are in fact doing destructive labor—an auto mechanic who, upon examining someone’s car, breaks a part in order that he can charge for fixing it. Kuntzel represents anti-scholarship. He spends a great deal of intellectual labor in order to argue a thesis that no one thought of before. Then he gets a great deal of attention to his thesis, and soon people are wasting their intellectual energies debating it over and over. …

I heartily recommend Bostom’s own rebuttal to Rosenthal’s convoluted and idiotic attack. Read, and learn.

NOTE:
[1] Albert Speer,

who was Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, wrote a contrite 808 memoir of his World War II experiences while serving a 20-year prison sentence imposed by the Nuremberg tribunal. 808a Speer’s narrative includes this discussion which captures Hitler’s racist views of Arabs on the one hand, and his effusive praise for Islam on the other: 809

Hitler had been much impressed by a scrap of history he had learned from a delegation of distinguished Arabs. When the Mohammedans attempted to penetrate beyond France into Central Europe during the eighth century, his visitors had told him, they had been driven back at the Battle of Tours. Had the Arabs won this battle, the world would be Mohammedan today. 810 For theirs was a religion that believed in spreading the faith by the sword and subjugating all nations to that faith. Such a creed was perfectly suited to the Germanic temperament. [emphasis added] Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire. [emphasis added] Hitler usually concluded this historical speculation by remarking, “You see, it’s been our misfortune to have the wrong religion. Why didn’t we have the religion of the Japanese, who regard sacrifice for the Fatherland as the highest good? The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?”

A similar ambivalence characterized Nazi Germany’s support for Arab Muslim causes in the World War II era. 811 Hitler for example, in December 1937, even proposed omitting his “racial ladder” theory—which denigrated the Arabs—from a forthcoming Arabic translation of Mein Kampf. 811a Moreover, it is a tragic irony that despite the “very low rung” occupied by Arabs in Hitler’s racial ladder design, 812 the convergence between Nazi racist antisemitism and theological Muslim Jew hatred 813 still resonates across the Arab Muslim, and larger non-Arab Muslim world, to this day.

NOTES:
808. A recently discovered letter, however (Kate Connolly. “Letter Proves Speer Knew of Holocaust Plan,” The Guardian, March 13, 2007), indicates that despite repeated claims he was unaware of Nazi plans to exterminate the Jews, Speer attended a conference in 1943 where Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS and Gestapo, made clear the Nazi regimes genocidal program during what has become known as the Posen speech. Writing in 1971 to Helen Jeanty, widow of a Belgian resistance leader, Speer admitted, “There is no doubt—I was present as Himmler announced on October 6, 1943 that all Jews would be killed….” Who would believe me that I suppressed this, that it would have been easier to have written all of this in my memoirs?
808a. Albert Speer. Inside the Third Reich. 1970, New York, p. 96
809. Ibid.
810. Charles Emmanuel Dufourcq, however, recounts how the Arab jihad ravages of Western Europe continued apace after their defeat at Tours. The Arab invaders found the Mediterranean regions of France, Italy, and Sicily, “more attractive” prey, in particular the churches and monasteries. Dufourcq wrote, (from Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad, pp. 421-422: Around 734-735 they stormed and took Arles and Avignon. From the coast of Provence and in Italy, their sailors preceded the cavalry or substituted for them. In 846 they disembarked at the mouth of the Tiber, seized Ostia, went up the river, refrained from attacking the wall of Rome, but pillaged the Basilicas of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, which at that time were both outside the walls. This alarm prompted, as a counter-measure, the construction of a new Roman enclosure encompassing Saint Peter’s and rejoining the old one at the Castello Santangelo, the old mausoleum of the Emperor Hadrian. In 849 the Moslems attempted a new landing at Ostia; then, every year from around 857 on, they threatened the Roman seaboard. In order to get rid of them, Pope John VIII decided in 878 to promise them an annual payment of several thousand gold pieces; but this tribute of the Holy See to Islam seems to have been paid for only two years; and from time to time until the beginning of the tenth century, the Moslems reappeared at the mouth of the Tiber or along the coast nearby. Marseilles, for its part, was also hit: in 838 the Arabs landed there and devastated it; St. Victor’s Abbey, outside the walls, was destroyed, and many inhabitants of the city were carried off in captivity; ten years later a new raid occurred, the Old Port was again sacked. And this perhaps was repeated once more around the year 920. The whole Italian peninsula was similarly exposed: around 840 Moslem ships followed the Adriatic coasts as far as the Dalmatian archipelago and the mouth of the Po River. Then, returning South, they dared to attack a city, Ancona, some two hundred kilometers northwest of Rome; a sort of commando dashed ashore: the city was devastated and set on fire. During their conquest of Sicily, when they took Syracuse in 878, after a deadly attack, they were exasperated by the resistance that they met with. When they rushed into the city, they found along their way the Church of the Holy Savior, filled with women and children, the elderly and the sick, clerics and slaves, and they massacred them all. Then, spreading out through the city, they continued the slaughter and the pillage, had the treasure of the cathedral handed over to them; they also took many prisoners and gathered separately those who were armed. One week later all of the captives who had dared to fight against them were butchered (four thousand in number, according to the chronicle al-Bayyan). In 934 or 935, they landed at the other end of Italy, at Genoa, killed “all the men” they found there, and then left again, loading onto their ships “the treasures of the city and of its churches”. A few years later they settled for a time, it seems, in Nice, Fréjus, Toulon… One could list many other similar facts. Generally speaking, in these Arab raids carried out by a cavalcade or after a landing, the churches were especially targeted, because the assailants knew that they would find there articles used in worship that were made of gold or silver, sometimes studded with precious stones, as well as costly fabrics. And because the churches were considered to be an offense against God, the One God, given that they were consecrated to the “polytheistic” belief in the Trinity, they were then burned down. The bells were the object of particular animosity, because they dared to amplify the call to infidel prayer by resounding through the skies, towards heaven; therefore they were always broken.
811. Lukasz Hirsczowicz. The Third Reich and the Arab East, 1966, London, pp. 315-316.
811a. Ibid., p. 46
812. Ibid., p. 315.
813. The fourth conference of the Academy of Islamic Research; D.F. Green. Arab Theologians on Jews and Israel; Bat Ye’or. Chapter XXI “The New Egyptian Jew Hatred—Local Elements and External Influences” in Jews in Egypt (Hebrew), 1974, Jerusalem. Full English translation of the original French by Susan Emanuel is presented herein; Tantawi. Banu Isra’il fi al-Qur’an wa al-Sunna [Jews in the Qur’an and the Traditions]