The belief that we live in Enlightened times, that the prevailing cosmovision is scientific and rational, is itself a component of an irrational and violent ideology. We do not live in such a time, and the intelligentsia do not produce work reflecting such commitments. Rather, the great bulk of intellectual production is a labour of fabulation. Histories are aesthetic products, stimulating narratives for those bored with the novel, morality tales for those disenchanted with religion, improving sentiments and axioms for those who don't want to spend their tube journey deflecting anxiety about work with a copy of the Metro. The efficacy of these works as aesthetic productions, dealing in irony, allusion and juxtaposition, and using tragic, romantic or comedic modes of emplotment, is part of their proof, part of their ability to persuade.

So, in the interminable era of the 'war on terror', we have been fed a slurry of literature rehearsing the apocalyptic dramaturgy of Oswald Spengler and his epigones. The key actor, the hero, is the corporative entity known as 'The West'. It is locked in a mortal combat, a fight to the death, with the villain, a relentless and tyrannical opponent, known as 'radical Islam' or 'Islamo-fascism' or 'totalitarianism', tout court. The ideas of 'totalitarianism' constitute the deux ex machina, the animating spirit that subjectivates an otherwise inert substrata of humanity, and sends it rushing, ululating, en masse, toward Jerusalem or New York.

The latest installment of this narrative is provided by the American Eustonite, Jeffrey Herf (criticised by Richard Wolin here, resulting in a debate here). Disinterring, once again, the collusion between Haj Amin al-Husseini, the British-imposed Mufti of Jerusalem, and Adolf Hitler, Herf sets out make the case that 'radical Islam' constitutes the third wave of 'totalitarianism' in the world, following communism and fascism. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Can a gripping narrative be concocted from such hackneyed materials? Not by Herf, it can't. His efforts to add panache and colour to an utterly forlorn parable revolve around the single narrative conceit of 'Hate Radio', in which pro-Nazi broadcasts in Arab countries during WWII, to some extent facilitated by al-Husseini, are 'hate radio with a vengeance'. The sparsity of evidence for the larger case he wants to make is compensated for with tenuous extrapolations and sensational quotations. The denouement involves one particularly bestial broadcast, inciting the massacre of the Jews in the Arab countries, just as the Nazis were embarking on the final solution. Such viciousness, Herf maintains, found a receptive audience. His evidence doesn't permit too much extrapolation - he can refer to 'elements' in the Egyptian officer corps and the Muslim Brothers whom Berlin thought might be willing to act on such ideas. Herf writes:

Two German historians, Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers, recently uncovered evidence that German intelligence agents were reporting back to Berlin that if Rommel succeeded in reaching Cairo and Palestine, the Axis powers could count on support from some elements in the Egyptian officer corps as well as the Muslim Brotherhood. Mallmann and Cüppers also show that an SS division was preparing to fly to Egypt to extend the Final Solution to the Middle East. The British and Australian defeat of Rommel at the Battle of El 'Alamein prevented that from happening.

I assume that Herf is referring to an article by Mallmann and Cüppers in the journal Yad Vashem Studies, vol 36, in which the two historians outline a plan to send a unit under SS-Obsturmbannfuhrer Walter Rauth to conquer Egypt, and then proceed to Palestine where, the authors write, "it undoubtedly would see action directed primarily against the Jewish population there". This 'undoubtedly' is not warranted by any evidence cited, but even if it were, I am not persuaded that this amounts to evidence of a plan to "extend the Final Solution to the Middle East". Nor is it obvious that the "elements" identified by the Nazis would have proven amenable to such a programme.

For, as Herf's case proceeds, the connections become all the more tenuous. He asks: "How was Nazi propaganda received by Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East?" He cites an evaluation from the OSS referring to 'apathy' in the Middle East regarding the trial of Nazis, and 'sympathy' for those who aided the Axis due to their hostility to the imperialists. This isn't particularly compelling as evidence, nor would it be surprising if it contained some truth, given the jackbooted behaviour of the colonial powers. It explains and demonstrates precious little. An interesting question would be, how did Arab public opinion receive the vicious exterminationist broadcast inciting genocide against the Jews, the one that Herf is at pains to quote at length? Did anyone actually carry out this genocide, or attempt to? Herf demonstrates no such conspiracy. Nor does he demonstrate that antisemitic ideas had much popular traction.

Instead, what he does is show that Hassan al-Banna of the Muslim Brothers celebrated al-Husseini as a "hero" who "challenged an empire and fought Zionism" through his alliance with the Nazis. Now, al-Banna was both an antisemite and and anti-Zionist. His analysis, in common with many variants of Islamism, was that Western imperialism had destroyed and dislocated Islamic forms of sociability, and that this was being driven by a disintegrative Jewish minority. This has to be registered. But in Herf's polemic, anti-Zionism is uncomplicatedly conflated with antisemitism. Obviously, the two are related, but Herf wants to assert a unidirectional causality: Islamists were anti-Zionist because they were antisemitic - not the other way around, and not because Zionism was itself a colonizing movement that posed a grave menace not just to Palestinians but to other Arab countries in their struggle against colonialism.

As Herf indicates in his debate with Wolin, he considers the 'totalitarian' ideas of 'radical Islam' to be responsible for the majority of problems in the Middle East, denying that it is in any sense a response to external aggression. Here, he relies on a red herring, pointing out that Western interventions since 1945 cannot have substantially caused the rise of Islamism, whose key doctrines were in place before that point. As if 'Western interventions' did not include the construction of the Suez canal, the subsequent colonization of Egypt, the scramble for Africa, the Mandates, etc etc. Might it not be of some interest that Mawdudi and al-Banna, two key figures in the founding of modern Islamism, operated in two countries (India and Egypt) which experienced a particularly savage form of colonial domination from quite early on? Does the doctrine of Islamic restoration espoused by Mawdudi have anything to do with the seige mentality created by British rule and its impact on traditional forms of life? Does his success in attracting post-Partition migrants to the Jamaat-e-Islami have anything to do with a cynical 'divide and quit' policy pursued by the British? If one wants to discuss and anatomise the ideas of these movements, it is not possible to do so without discussing the colonial labyrinth in which they fermented, not to mention the post-colonial systems of domination in which they expanded.

But that is not the kind of history that Herf is interested in. He wants to establish a precarious genealogy of ideas, no matter how tenuous and slender the interconnecting branches are. Thus, he notes that Qutb, an intellectual source for that brand of salafism purveyed by 'Al Qaeda', was an antisemite who claimed that Hitler had been sent by Allah to punish the Jews. This stands as one, utterly frail, limb connecting the Third Reich to the 9/11 attacks. He then recites the antisemitism of the Hamas 'charter', having also previously reminded readers of Ahmadinejad's Holocaust-denial, noting that these are forms of antisemitism which originate in Europe. This is, of course, true, but it does not establish a direct channel from the Third Reich to the Islamic Republic of Iran, or the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Yet this is how, through a series of metonymic substitutions, we get from Nazi broadcasts and al-Husseini to Qutb and Banna, to the Islamic revolution in Iran, to Hamas and, ultimately, to Al Qaeda - an extremely diverse range of groups, movements and individuals, who appear to share nothing more than that they have espoused antisemitism and that they want to establish some form of Islamic polity. This isn't so much a narrative as a montage of fragments, quotes, anecdotes, particles of forensic evidence, and extravagant claims.

In fact, this kind of allusion and juxtaposition is central to the case. As Wolin points out, the vectors of 'totalitarian' influence allegedly extend not just through 'radical Islamists', but also through the "Arab radicals" referred to in the original article. Thus, it is pointed out that Nasser recruited a former Nazi to work for his information ministry. This is, Wolin adds, not much of a case for anything given that the CIA recruited many, many Nazis for its global counterrevolutionary programmes. It isn't even particularly germane to the case. A secular anticolonial nationalist who tortured his Islamist opponents, Nasser can neither be considered a promulgator of Nazism or of any variant of 'political Islam'. But, as with previous incarnations of 'antitotalitarian' history, notably that vulgar treatise by Paul Berman written to justify the Iraq war, the point about 'totalitarianism' is that 'Arab radicals', 'Islamists', communists and fascists are all fungible. Or rather, in the puree of 'totalitarianism', they are indistinguishable. Thus, Berman had no scruple about describing Ba'athism as a variant of 'Muslim' or 'Islamic' 'totalitarianism'. Only through such pedestrian narrative devices is it possible to assert that there is at this time a movement against 'the West' that is comparable in its ideas, its coherency, scope and threat, to the Third Reich.

In an era in which the topic of Islam and associated political movements are subject to unprecedented scrutiny, with as many books, monographs, articles and polemics on the subject as there was on communism following the Russian revolution, it is striking what is omitted. The accent of most research and exposition is on those ideas that are held to have contributed to the 'Al Qaeda' brand, with Sayyid Qutb usually cited as the doyen: 'the philosopher of terror', as Paul Berman branded him. (This in an unimaginative article which apparently arose from an afternoon's tour of New York's Islamic bookshops, and in which Berman distinguishes himself by referring to the Israel-Palestine conflict as a 'border dispute'). It is unfortunate that this interesting but thoroughly excavated seam continues to be mined at the expense of other backgrounds and contexts, but then it has to be this way: an appropriate moral framework for the 'war on terror' cannot begin with colonial oppression and anti-colonial revolt. Among the figures I would wish for more discussion of would be Abd-el-Krim, Mir Said Sultan-Galiev (Mirsäyet Soltanğäliev) and Jamāl-al-dīn Asadābādī "al-Afghani". Krim, as regular readers know, is the old Rifian anticolonial rebel who inspired Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara (recent correspondence has brought my attention to material that suggests he had contact with both), and who had offered his services to the Spanish Republic during the civil war. Galiev, a far more neglected figure and every bit as interesting, is the Tatar communist whose thought on Muslim National Communism was in many ways a precursor to what would become known as 'Third Worldism', and whose attempts to synthesise Islam, nationalism and communism met with Stalin's disapproval. (See Maxime Rodinson's appraisal here.) Sadly, there's not much literature available about Galiev in English beyond an inaccuracy-laden book - which at least contains some translated writings - by Alexandre Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslim National Communism in the Soviet Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World.

Al-Afghani has had a mountainous reputation in Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Iran. He was once a bit more prominently discussed in Anglophone writing about Political Islam, both because of his influence on conservative revivalist strains of Islamist thinking via Rashid Rida, and because he was seen as an example of a sophisticated Islamic reformer with liberal sensibilities. Albert Hourani's classic Arabic thought in the liberal age: 1798-1939 dealt at some length with the mysterious anti-imperialist. Nikki Keddie's now out-of-print work, An Islamic Response to Imperialism: Political and Religious Writings of Sayyid Jamal ad-Din "al-Afghani", is one of the few English language sources that contains a selection of his writings. And to give you an idea what that means, the book was first published in 1968 (it was reprinted during the Khomeini era). Though al-Afghani is generally referenced in books on 'Political Islam', the treatment is usually tentative and unenlightening. Perhaps this is because his legacy is a difficult one to assess. As Keddie points out, a certain amount of dissimulation was part of his persona. The very name "al-Afghani" results from his claim to have been born and raised an Afghan Sunni (it is no longer a controversial matter that he was an Iranian Shi'ite). In fact, while in Afghanistan, he professed to be a Turk. While in Turkey, he claimed he was Afghan. And the British thought he was a Russian agent, becxause of his attempt to persuade the Amir to side with Russia against the British Empire.

Though he was in some ways the first Pan-Islamist, there has always been some controversy over what he really believed. While some of his writing is concerned with refuting materialism, his 'Answer to Renan', written in 1883, indicates profound scepticism about religion, and he had earlier incurred the Ottomans' wrath for heretical speechifying. His vocal orthodoxy seems incongruent with the heterodox sources of his thinking. His modernism is curiously commingled with an idealized appreciation of the early years of Islam, the age of the Prophet and the first four caliphs. As a religious reformer and a defender of science and rationalism, he was also a vocal defender of traditionalism and orthodoxy, especially in his later years during which he shed his reputation as an apostate. Keddie, who treats al-Afghani's thought as a kind of proto-nationalism (see 'Pan-Islamism as Proto-Nationalism', The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 41, No. 1 March, 1969), resolves this by suggesting that al-Afghani evinced religious orthodoxy and traditionalism only when he was addressing the masses, whom he distrusted yet wanted to unite. The project of unity inhibited the project of reform. For, though al-Afghani wished to reform Islam in order to help meet the challenge of imperialism, he could offer no consistent programme without alienating a conservative constituency whom he needed to win over. His arguments against a certain kind of materialism, Keddie maintains, emphasised the practical virtues of religion, and were probably intended to bolster the cohesion of Islam vis-a-vis the West. Such a treatment, if decidedly vexatious for both his conservative and liberal admirers, seems to be consistent with al-Afghani's career.

One aspect of his life that there is no mystery about, however, is his hatred for imperialism, and particularly for the British. He opposed the British in India, in Ireland, and in Egypt. He participated in the Urabist revolt, although his role has been grossly exaggerated by his admirers. And it was his response to imperialism, particularly during his eight years in Egypt, that defined him. Here, the Indian background is essential for three reasons. First, it was in his contacts with Indian Muslims that he first became apprised of the discrimination they faced under British rule. Secondly, because it was in this context that he was immersed in an emerging pan-Islamist sentiment that British imperialism was arousing across south Asia. Thirdly, it was during his stay in India in the early 1880s that he noticed that those most explicitly embracing 'Westernisation' (an anachronistic term, but I don't know of a better substitute) were also the worst collaborators. His attacks on 'materialism' were really directed at the comprador followers of Sayyid Ahmad Khan. It shouldn't be assumed that Afghani was in some sense a supporter of 'communalism'. His Indian articles defended nationalism, and unity between Hindus and Muslims. This is not strictly congruent with his Pan-Islamism, but then Afghani was nothing if not inconsistent, and his modus operandi was to tailor what might seem to be abstract polemics over Islam, philosophy, the socio-linguistic basis of nationalism, etc., to whatever was best suited to the local situation, or to whatever would most advance the struggle against imperialism. Just as he mobilised Egypt's era of pre-Islamic greatness, so he appealed to a proud Hindu past when addressing Indian Hindus. Equally, when arguing with the Orientalist writer Ernest Renan, he mobilised his grounding in liberal rationalism, and his immense philosophical knowledge, and explicated an evolutionist view of religion that he would in obscure in other contexts.

Is it just an irony of history that a religious progressive should have inspired Rashid Rida and, later, Hassan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood? I don't think so. Their dilemma was much the same as his, even if they were devout where he was an occult atheist. They shared his hatred of the British, who had exploited Egypt ferociously before grinding its revolts with an iron fist. They agreed with him that a renewed Caliphate was the best defence of the Muslim world against colonial incursions. And they shared the elitist thrust of his thinking. Afghani's legacy is summed up by Keddie as a kind of proto-nationalism. This implies a natural progression in which religious identifications generally proceed toward national ones, but such a progression can no longer be relied upon. I would simply describe Afghani as a conservative anti-colonial nationalist. I have quoted Partha Chatterjee here before, but these quotes seem apt again:

'Nationalist thought is “born out of the encounter of a patriotic consciousness with the framework of knowledge imposted on it by colonialism. It leads inevitably to an elitism of the intelligentsia, rooted in a vision of radical regeneration of national culture”. This elite either pursues ‘modernisation’ through a period of tutelage until such time as its institutions and social bases allow for independence; or it takes a more uncompromising position against colonialism, and accentuates what is different, unique, non-Western – this movement is often behind chauvinist or fundamentalist cultural currents. For this elite to stand any chance against the colonists, it has to mobilise the peasantry (in an agrarian economy) – and since it does not intend to revolutionise their social conditions, it must appropriate their power and their consent.' (See Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World, 1986)

'Indeed, both of these tendencies in the bourgeois-national elite are caught between on the one hand the desire to replicate the material modes of organisation that has made the West so effective, and on the other the desire to reinforce the national spiritual identity. Materially, the West has better means and methods; spiritually, the East is superior. In this, the justification resides for the selective appropriation of Western "modernity".' (Chatterjee quoted in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s Critique of Postcolonial Reason, 1999)