Letters | 24 January 2009

Islam and the Nazis

Sir: Charles Moore touches on an important point when he ascribes a Nazi–Hamas continuum of interests (The Spectator’s Notes, 17 January). While helping Europe Minister Denis MacShane write his recently published book, Globalising Hatred — The New Anti-Semitism, I was numbed by the depths of the relationship between radical Islam and the Nazis, an association that, inexplicably, has been hugely under-reported.

Arguably the most important source material I came across was a slim volume entitled Icon of Evil which, complete with official documents and photos, charts the mutual regard, indeed affection, between the two creeds, never so clearly underscored as in the correspondence between Hitler and the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

What particularly shocked me was how Husseini, a guest of Hitler in Berlin from 1941 to 1945, sometimes out-Nazied the Nazis. On one occasion he directly intervened to block a desperate swap of trucks for Hungarian Jews earmarked for the death camps.