Karen Blixon
(1885-1962)
I just finished a book entitled, "Travels in the Reich 1933-1945" (edited by Oliver Lubrich, University of Chicago Press, 2010, pp 225-6), which is a collection of writings by foreigners who spent time in Nazi Germany. One of the authors included is the Danish writer Karen Blixen, most noted for her 1937 work, "Out of Africa". Blixen spent time in Germany in 1940. Her contribution to this book is taken from "Letters From a Land at War", which was published in the Danish journal, Heretica. Among her observations of Germany, she makes a fascinating comparison between Nazism and Islam, which caught my eye. As far as Islam is concerned, 1940 was a different time. Or was it? I am quoting the part of her remarks below that describe Islam as she perceived it in 1940.
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"I wonder if there has ever been anything comparable to the Third Reich? Of all the phenomena which I have known personally during my life, the one that approaches it most closely is Islam, the Mohammedan world and its view of life. The world Islam means submission, which is the same thing that the Third Reich expresses with its upraised arm. Yours in life and death.
Of the two, Islam is the most elevated ideal because it is better to serve God than to serve a country or a race. The cry from the minaret, "There is but one God, and Mohammed is His prophet", is more nearly eternal than any watchword about a chosen people. The half-moon is a nobler symbol than the swastika (which, for me in any cases, possessed something restless and broken, spasmodic, in its movement, unless, as on the towers on that the entrance to the stadium, the hooks are bent so that they create pieces of a periphery, so they unite the figure and bring it to rest).
The two worlds have many things in common. But we must not think of senescent Islam, as we know it today, long after it found a modus vivendi with the other religions of the world. One must go back eleven or twelve centuries to the young Mohammedan movement when it arose and expanded like a flag and went forth to conquer the world. Then the clouds must have been full of lightning and thunder and the neighboring kingdoms must have felt ill at ease. Whence did the people of the desert acquire such power?
The Mohammedan view of the world, like Nazism, generates tremendous pride: the true believer confronts all disbelief; the soul of the true believer is worth more than all the gold in the world. It is intinsically without a class system, like the Third Reich; one Mohammedan, whether he be a water-carrier or emir, is just as good as any other. Islam possesses a mighty solidarity and great helpfulness among its believers-ten per cent of your assets you must give to the needy of Islam, and this is not alms but a debt which you pay. In its rituals, Islam resembles the Third Reich: The true believers do not have an opportunity to become strangers toward one another. Some things in Mein Kampf resemble chapters in the Koran.
Islam was propagated by the sword; this is a charge leveled against it by other religions, though in this manner they do not themselves all have the cleanest conscience. I shall quote, insofar, as I can remember it, since one cannot buy English books here in Berlin to look something up, what Carlyle said in his book Heroes and Hero-Worship, which, incidentally, shares much of the outlook of the Third Reich: "of the sword", he writes. "Indeed, but where did the prophet get his swords? Every new religion begins as a minority of a single man-he is on one side, all the others are on the other side. It would not help him much to disseminate his faith by his own sword alone. Let him acquire his swords."
Even Islam's representation of Paradise was created as a warrior's fantasy; it is ideal for an army on the march. "As long as you are marching, you must accept all hardships and maintain yourselves by abstinence, having been tested and made ready for battle. But when the city is taken and we have left our camp, then it will be something quite different. That is a 5-year-plan of monumental dimensions.
Islam bears the imprint of its desert origins; it has its sandstorms and great mirages. In contrast, I think, the Third Reich has a quite ecstatic respectability, honnete ambition, as a matter of life and death, in Heaven as on Earth. Which of the two mentalities is the more dangerous, it is not easy to know.
Verily, as they say in the Koran. Mohammed uses the word as a sentence in itself: Verily. But Islam was a believer in God. It could both give and take away; with all its power it would save the entire world, if the world would only receive it. The conquered peoples who accepted Islam became one with it. Through this, Islam went forward, carrying and bestowing greater human rights than any other victorious race; through it, Islam and the surrounding world came more easily to terms with one another than the Third Reich and the surrounding world seem able to do."
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A very interesting perspective from Nazi Germany in 1940. Of course, we don't have Blixon's perspective of that era, and she doesn't have our perspective now.
Very Interesting. I have noticed that there are images of Hizbollah
ReplyDelete"troops" lined up doing the Nazi salute. It is also interesting that Himmler was enamored with Muslims and allowed to be created a couple of mainly Islamic divisions for the SS. Handschar and Kama I believe they were called. They proved of little account when faced with conventional combat apparently and were used as anti partisan troops for the most part.
Yes, indded. With the help of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a vicious anti-Semite , who lived in berlin during the war and made broadcasts to the ME from Berlin urging his listeners to rise up against the Jews, a Bosnian SS division was formed, which made its own little contribution to the Holocaust. After WW II, the Allies chose to release The Mufti rather than try him for war crimes so as not to offend the Muslim world.
ReplyDeleteOn the whole, I think this is worthy of the same kind of parody you just spun about the author of Meine Arse.
ReplyDeleteI was particularly taken with her reference to the Nazis, or their beloved Aryan ideal, as a "chosen people." One could quickly draw analogies between Nazis and Jews from that - but of course, Hitler hated Jews, so it couldn't be that he was... umm... trying to create the same paradigm with a different race as the chosen??? I don't entirely buy that, but its in the same spirit as this woman's random musings of a deranged mind.
Then there is her denigration of the swastika... it was a widely used symbol long before Hitler appropriate it. If I remember correctly, an Indian version, traditional to Hindus, decorates the tomb of Mahatma Gandhi.
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But in the end, she explains how very different Islam is from the Third Reich: "The conquered peoples who accepted Islam became one with it. Through this, Islam went forward, carrying and bestowing greater human rights than any other victorious race; through it, Islam and the surrounding world came more easily to terms with one another than the Third Reich and the surrounding world seem able to do."
You are right about the Grand Mufti. I suspect the reason the allies released him is that the British were pursuing a policy of obstructing Jewish immigration, more than anything else. Its a wonder we made it through WW II without going to war with the Brits. Read Stilwell and the American Experience in China. When Stilwell got a Chinese and Burmese army moving against the Japanese, he wrote "Will this burn the limies!"