Islamic Jihad: An old political project supported by Germany

Ali Abdel-Al

These days, German newspapers and media outlets report many warnings to officials and commentators expressing their fear of the spread of terrorist ideas in society, as well as from the export of some German groups by jihadists to countries in the Middle East to support the organizations there.

100 years ago

However, researching the documents of not-so-distant history shows that the situation was different about a hundred years ago. Historical documents and events say that Germany has previously supported Islamic jihad, both financially and morally, and even issued a speech to the Islamic world that is completely similar to the current discourse of organizations hostile to Berlin, headed by al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Germany hosted camps on its soil to persuade Muslims of jihad, and provided full support, to persuade them to jihad and train in jihad operations before they were sent to combat zones.

Indeed, Berlin established the “East News Agency” to supervise the publication of a massive terrorist propaganda campaign to urge Muslims to what they called “jihad” by publishing newspapers and printing propaganda leaflets. The agency included a number of orientalists alongside Muslim thinkers and intellectuals, such as the Lebanese writer Shakib Arslan and Sheikh Abdel Aziz Gawish, one of the leaders of the National Historic Party in Egypt.

Trading in the name of jihad

As a result of this, Berlin hosted a newspaper called “Jihad”, which addressed the Islamic world with all the religious vocabulary that depicts Islam as a religion based on what is called “jihad against the infidels.”

Germany used the campaign to spread the claims of jihad with many prominent Orientalists and archaeologists, most notably “Max van Oppenheim”, which was considered by many observers as the “godfather” of the jihad campaign in World War I.

Here, specifically, is the reference to the rule of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who ruled Germany between 1888 and 1918, and achieved popularity among Muslims, as a result of the rapprochement that occurred during his reign between Germany and the Ottoman Empire, so that the man who was known in Arab sources as “Gallium II” was nicknamed some Muslims of “Haji Muhammad William II”.

At the end of the nineteenth century, Germany saw in its rapprochement with the Ottoman Empire an effective weapon in the conflict that was taking place over the colonies between it and other colonial powers, especially France and Britain.

Al-Wefaq camp

This German-Ottoman rapprochement achieved a lot of momentum with a visit by Kaiser Wilhelm II to the Middle East in 1898, where he stood at the grave of Salahuddin Al-Ayyubi in Damascus, and he continued to praise this famous Islamic leader.

Sheikh Al-Islam Mustafa Khairy Effendi issued several fatwas, urging Muslims to jihad against the camp of reconciliation, infidels, enemies of Islam, in reference to Britain, France and Russia.

As a result, the German authorities called on many Muslim thinkers and intellectuals to Berlin to deliver speeches and sermons urging Muslim prisoners to strive. At the head of these was Sheikh Muhammad al-Khidr Hussain, who became the sheikh of al-Azhar in the 1950s.