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. His efforts bore fruit, the deal was aborted and the Jews shipped straight to the gas chambers. Husseini was a relative of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who, as late as 2002, was still calling the Mufti his ‘hero’.
The key agency that facilitated the Nazi–Islamist alliance was the Muslim Brotherhood which today thrives and threatens Western democracy, boasting Hamas and al-Qa’eda among its many ideological offshoots while bolstering the Holocaust-denying, genocidal rhetoric of Iran and its proxies on Israel’s borders. It seems Hitler is still a work in progress.
Maurice Jones
Rossendale Valley, Lancashire
Justice is the only hope
Sir: Douglas Davis states that ‘moderate Arab states need Israel to succeed’ (‘The Middle East needs Israel to win’, 10 January). He went on to blame Hamas for all the ills suffered by the Palestinians. Nothing could be further from the truth. On the contrary, the grisly images of dead children and women, their clothes and toys torn apart; the utter desolation of places of worship and education and civic infrastructure; the crippling economic blockade and the flagrant violations of international humanitarian law by Israeli troops; are all bound to guarantee further bloodshed and stoke the embers of enmity and indignation in the Arab and Muslim world. Palestinians have endured Israel’s state-sponsored terrorism, abuse, torture and humiliation for over five decades, long before Hamas was elected in fair, free and democratic elections. There are no lasting military solutions to the intractable Arab–Israeli conflict. Justice offers the only hope for Arabs and Jews to drain the swamps of terrorism and bury their old antagonisms and live side by side in peace and harmony.
Dr Munjed Farid Al Qutob
London SW5
Capital idea
Sir: You are right in your leading article (17 January) to be sceptical of the ability of either governments or banks to provide capital on a commercial basis to businesses, but there is a third way. In 1945 the government persuaded the clearing banks, with the encouragement and participation of the Bank of England (which finished with a 15 per cent shareholding), to establish an institution which would provide both share and loan capital to small and medium-sized businesses. It was called the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation (ICFC) and, until its flotation as 3i in 1994, it survived and flourished quite independently without any form of government guarantee or shareholder support, other than its subscribed capital. Over nearly 50 years the £115 million subscribed capital was turned into some £3 billion at flotation. Dividends were paid almost from the beginning. There seems no reason why the ICFC pattern should not be successfully repeated, with no external interference and every investment decision made on commercial grounds.
Donald R. Clarke
Barton St David, Somerton, Somerset
Self-correcting markets
Sir: Matt Ridley’s melding of the logic of economic liberalism and Darwinian genetic selection (‘Natural selection explains everything’, 10 January) is well argued. Only at the end does he make the mistake of saying ‘the market’s ability to build order cannot prevent crashes’. On the contrary, the capitalist market economy, based on entrepreneurial capital and personal spending, has all the self-correcting mechanisms of competition, prices and personal responsibilities needed to avoid crashes. Unlike the theory and procrustean reality of Marxist systems, capitalism really does have continuous (small) revolutions! And they prevent great collapses!
The entire social, legal and economic structures and ‘moral sentiments’ on which the capitalist market’s wealth creation and free trade is based (and the democratic freedoms and social and economic contracts on which our civilisation is based) depend on stable currencies and undistorted prices. Their present collapse is due not to a failure of capitalism but to the failure of the state and its debasement of money, the removal of natural constraints, the subsidy of the unsustainable and the immoral removal of funds from the bank accounts of the people through ‘money printing’.
Rodney Atkinson
Stocksfield, Northumberland
Wrong about evangelicals
Sir: Rod Liddle is ill-informed when he referred to ‘crazed quasi-fascist evangelicals in Britain…’ (‘Onward Christian Zionists’, 10 January). In his entire article he doesn’t name one single British evangelical organisation or theologian to back up his absurd point. As a leading charismatic evangelical in the UK, I don’t know of any prominent evangelical speaker, theologian or writer who believes what’s happening in Gaza is heralding the second coming of Christ.
Jesus makes it clear in Matthew 24:14 that it is the blossoming and spread of the good news of forgiveness and a brand new start he offers all humanity which is the key to the end. Not Israel, land or prejudicial politics.
America? Well that’s another story, but not one that we are a part of.
Gerald Coates
Pioneer Ministries, Leatherhead, Surrey
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