16. Hitler’s Mufti

Muslim Brotherhood

 

The breakthrough year for Mufti al-Husseini’s ambitions was 1931, when he organized the World Islamic Congress in Jerusalem with Shaukat Ali.[1] Many of the key people in al-Husseini’s expanded network were veterans of von Oppenheim’s operation, including the European-based Jawish, Shalabi, Arslan, and Abbas II, who would bring al-Husseini together with the Nazis. Al-Husseini later referred to all these powerful connections in letters to Hitler and other Nazi officials, to portray himself as head of the world’s Muslims and Arabs.[2] Much of his time was spent attempting to convince the German Foreign Office that he exercised greater influence than other Arab exiles in Berlin, leading Fritz Grobba (1886 – 1973), who was appointed as the German ambassador to the Kingdom of Iraq, to remark:

 

There is a supranational association, the “Muslim Congress,” under his—the Grand Mufti’s—leadership. Delegates of all Muslim countries belong to this congress. The congress, he said, still exists and functions today. The political possibilities for Germany which might stem from cooperation with the congress are, he says, undoubtedly significant. The Grand Mufti repeatedly expressed his regret that the existing possibilities for working together are not being fully exploited. He and his collaborators could do much more for the German cause if closer cooperation could exist between the German authorities and himself.[3]

 

From afar as Morocco in the west and India in the east, al-Husseini built the foundation for a widespread Islamist movement. In Geneva, he worked with another former agent of Max von Oppenheim’s Jihad plan, Shakib Arslan, to build his European base. al-Husseini went to India to see Shaukat Ali of the Khilafat Movement and raise funds from Indian Muslims. In 1924 and 1933, he was in Iran, where he gained support from both Islamist activists and the government. Al-Husseini’s home base of Jerusalem became a hub for visiting Muslims who recognized his leadership and made alliances with him. Among them were Pakistan’s future founder, Muhammad Iqbal; Egyptian Prince Muhammad Ali Aluba (1875/1878 – 1956), a sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood; and al-Husseini’s old mentor, Rashid Rida. One of al-Husseini’s most important links was with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928, with Muhammad Mustafa al-Maraghi, al-Azhar University’s rector, who would attend the World Congress of Faiths in 1936, being his primary contact with the organization.[4]

In effect, the Brotherhood would form an international financial network, closely tied to Western intelligence agencies, through which to finance acts terrorism falsely characterized as “Jihad,” perpetrated by agent-provocateurs, to serve as false-flag operations and to provide pretexts for expanded colonization of subject territories. Banna’s Brotherhood was also established with a grant from England’s Suez Canal Company in 1928, and over the following quarter century would be at the disposal of British diplomats and MI6 as a tool of British policy.[5] To get the Brotherhood started, the Suez Canal Company helped Banna build a mosque in Ismaillia, where the company’s head office was located, to serve as its headquarters and base of operations, according to Richard Mitchell’s The Society of the Muslim Brothers. As discovered by John Loftus, former US government prosecutor and former Army intelligence officer, when he was allowed to peruse CIA archives, al Banna had been recruited in the 1930s by Hitler to establish an arm of German intelligence in Egypt.[6]

The Muslim Brotherhood was among the many groups in the Middle East with which al-Husseini established contact.[7] By 1932, after Ibn Saud was able to effectively suppress all rebellions and establish unchallenged authority in most regions of the Peninsula, such as Hejaz, Nejd and Asir, he issued the decree “On the merger of the parts of the Arabian kingdom,” which announced the establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the fourth and current iteration of the Third Saudi State. The following year, the first Rockefeller oil wells in the country were drilled, which would provide the wealth to finance the Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al Muslimeen) in its proxy terrorism on behalf of American imperialism. The organization primarily responsible for the perpetration of most acts of terrorism in the name of Islam in the twentieth century, the Muslim Brotherhood, was created in 1928 by Hassan al Banna (1906 – 1949), in reaction to the 1924 abolition of the caliphate. Banna’s father had been a student of Mohammad Abduh, and he himself was greatly influenced by Rashid Rida.[8] Al Banna defined his movement as “a Salafiyya message, a Sunni way and a Sufi truth.”[9]

The Muslim Brotherhood, who consider their movement to be an extension of the pan-Islamism championed by Afghani, Abduh, and Rida, sought the re-establishment of a World Islamic Caliphate, which was envisaged to come through several Islamic national states, united in a league, and appointing a single leader to rule over them after Shura (consultation). The Brothers felt a special kinship towards Afghani, revering him as the “spiritual father” of the movement, with whom Banna was most often compared.[10] Afghani is regarded as the “caller” or “announcer” (Mu’adhdhin or Sarkha), Rida as the “archivist” or “historian” (Sijal or Mu’arrikh), while Banna was seen as the “builder” (Bani) of the Islamic Renaissance.[11] Afghani was considered as the spiritual father of the movement and as a fierce defender of the faith against both internal corruption and external encroachment. Abduh, on the other hand, was viewed as “a well-meaning shaykh who inspired reforms in the Azhar.”[12] Like Rida, Banna advocated a conservative revival to values of the Salaf and viewed Islam as “a faith and a ritual, a nation (Watan) and a nationality, a religion and a state, spirit and deed, holy text and sword.”[13]

Rida’s doctrines also deeply impacted Islamist ideologues as Sayyid Qutb (1906 – 1966), who shared his admiration for Ibn Taymiyyah and Muhammad Abduh in almost all his books.[14] Qutb was also heavily influenced by Abd al-Wahhab and thus reflected a Salafi creed.[15] Qutb was the primary architect of the militant philosophy of the Muslim Brotherhood, and nearly all terrorism in the name of Islam, as a bastardization of the concept of “Jihad,” creating the pretext it employed to carry out acts of terror in the service of Western imperial objectives. Like Abdul Wahhab, Qutb regarded the Ummah as having fallen into Jahiliyya (paganism), which must be reconquered for Islam. Hakimiyya involved regarding it a tenet of Islamic belief that God alone is the final legal authority, and therefore that only Sharia can be adopted as the basis of a state governing Muslims. Few Muslims would reject that notion. But for Qutb, the adoption of any non-Islamic law represented an act of apostasy, and therefore sanction the killing or overthrow of the errant leader.

In 1930, René Guénon moved to Egypt permanently, where, other than al Kabir, he had contact with Abdel Halim Mahmoud (1901 – 1978, who eventually served as Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, and who became an important source of inspiration for members of the Muslim Brotherhood, and his articles were published in their magazines. Mahmoud met Guénon in 1940 and wrote, much later described him as “He who knows through God.”[16] Mahmoud taught Guénon’s work at Al-Azhar University and attended his funeral ceremony in 1951. Having also been a disciple of the Shadhili, and a devotee of Ibn Arabi, Mahmoud is remembered for reviving Sufism through his prolific writings and lectures on the subject. Mahmoud is referred to by an honorific title of “al-Ghazali, in 14th Century AH,” accorded to him because of his purported attempt, mirroring the teachings of Guénon, to integrate the exoteric and esoteric dimensions of Islam.[17]

 

World Islamic Congress

 

Rida was also a committed participant in the first World Islamic Congress, held in Jerusalem in December 1931, as a show of solidarity with the Palestinians and the fate of al-Aqsa. The goal of the congress—convened under the leadership of Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini—was to challenge the League of Nations mandate in Palestine and the projected establishment of a Jewish national home. The Palestinian Arab initiative for a general Muslim congress dated from the dispatch of an Islamic mission to the Hijaz in 1922. Large Palestinian Muslim delegations also figured in the subsequent congress of 1926, organized by Ibn Saud. At these encounters, personal ties were forged with the Indian Khilafat Committee leaders Mohammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali. Disappointment with Ibn Saud’s policies, the brothers were in search of an alternative Arab alliance, and in early 1929 Jauhar first suggested the creation of a Supreme Islamic Council in Jerusalem composed of representatives from throughout the Islamic world. From the interaction on this occasion between Shaukat and Amin al Husseini, the idea of a general Muslim congress in Jerusalem was reborn.[18]

Because of the widespread interest in the conflict in Palestine, the congress won more extensive coverage than its predecessors. The congress was of course covered by Rida’s al-Manar. Because Palestine was then under British mandate, it was first necessary to secure British permission. The Foreign Office was much concerned about the congress’ possible effects on British relations with certain states. In particular, Italy was apprehensive due to its recent conquests in Libya in September 1931. Additionally, there was the worry any step taken by the Colonial Office to ban the congress “might be so much resented [within Palestine] as to precipitate disorder possibly even on the scale of an Arab rebellion.”[19] However, various assurances that issues that may embarrass Britain would not be raised at the congress were provided by Amin al-Husseini to the new British High Commissioner in Palestine, Sir Arthur Wauchope, who wrote to advise that “prohibition of the congress should not be contemplated.”[20] The Zionists first had hoped that the congress would be banned outright. But, in a letter from Chaim Arlosoroff—the former lover of Goebbels’ wife Magda, and an attendee at meetings at the house Yisrael Dov Frumkin, who was in contact with Hitler’s Mufti al-Husseini and headed the Haavara Agreement—to Selig Brodetsky (1888 – 1954), a member of the World Zionist Executive, the Jewish Agency decided on a policy of “absolute silence,” claiming that “Any interference on our part would have immensely strengthened the Mufti’s position both in Palestine and abroad.’’[21]

The congress went ahead as planned, despite the vocal protests by the Nashashibi and Khalidi families of Jerusalem, who were not invited, and claimed that the congress was not representative of the Palestinian Muslims without their participation, and that it was rather a publicity stunt designed to raise al-Husseini’s public profile.[22] The opposition went so far as to convene a counter-congress, attended by about a thousand local notables and shaykhs, under the presidency of Raghib al-Nashashibi. The presence of so vocal an opposition also split Shaukat Ali and Abd al-Hamid Said, the president of the Young Men’s Muslim Association in Egypt, from Amin al-Husayni. Shaukat Ali caused some disruption when he spoke openly of his continued allegiance to the deposed Abdulmejid II, then in exile in France.[23] Abdulmejid II apparently believed that as Caliphate he would figure in the congress agenda, and through his secretary he reminded the Muslim world and the planned congress that the allegiance pledged to him upon his ascension in 1922 was still binding.[24]

Al-Husseini assured the Egyptian authorities that the Caliphate was not planned for discussion, and maintained that the rumors were fabrications manufactured by the Zionists.[25] The ostensible aim of the congress was to consider a proposal to establish a University at Al-Aqsa in Jerusalem as a center of Islamic scholarship, an idea, which because of resistance from the leaders of Al-Azhar in Cairo, which never came to fruition. Attended by 130 delegates from 22 Muslim countries, including King Faisal of Iraq, the congress resolved that “Zionism is ipso facto an aggression detrimental to Muslim well-being, and that it is directly or indirectly ousting Moslems from the control of Muslim land and Muslim Holy Places.”[26] It was also resolved that the congress should meet at intervals of two or three years and that resolutions should be enacted by an Executive Committee chaired by al-Husseini. In 1937, with al-Husseini’s flight from Palestine to an exile in Europe, the organization finally ceased to function, although the network of political and personal ties which it created continued for years afterward to work on behalf of the Palestinian Arab cause.[27]

 

Round Table Conference

 

Despite the failure of the 1931 conference, in October of that year, Shawkat Ali and Marmaduke Pickthall successfully brokered a marriage between Abdulmejid II’s daughter Princess Durrushehvar and Prince Azam Jah (1907 – 1970), the eldest son and heir apparent of Nizam Osman Ali Khan (1886 – 1967).[28] Nizam was the last of the Asaf Jahi dynasty who began under the under the Mughal emperors from 1713 to 1721, and declared itself an independent monarchy during the final years of the British Raj, remaining the only independent state in Indian subcontinent. Styled as His Exalted Highness (H.E.H) the Nizam of Hyderabad, the Nizam was widely considered one of the world’s wealthiest people of all time.[29] The major source of his wealth was the Golconda mines, the only supplier of diamonds in the world at that time. Among them was the Jacob Diamond, which he used as a paperweight.[30] Also a Freemason, in 1933 the Nizam donated a former administrative building in 1682 that originally served as a palace during the Qutb Shahi dynasty which became the Baradari Freemasons Lodge of Hyderabad.[31] In the period from 1931 onwards, Hyderabad became the intellectual center for Muslims and Muslim internationalism, with a focus was on reviving the Caliphate.[32]

After leaving the Bombay Chronicle in 1924, Pickthall moved to Hyderabad, where he eventually completed an English edition of the Quran and in 1926 he was appointed Principal at Chadarghat High School at the behest of the Nizam. Pickthall became editor of the monthly Islamic Culture, a scholarly journal produced under the patronage of the Nizam.[33] The journal was a venture launched by Akbar Hydari (1869 – 1941), who would become Pickthall’s close ally and later Prime Minister of Hyderabad State. As Finance Minister, Hydari allocated funds for the Osmania University, which was lauded by Nobel Prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore.[34] Describing Pickthall and Hydari as his agents, a report from the Political Resident stated, “He [the Nizam] was attempting through propaganda to obtain the support of the Muslims of British India, the Indian Princes and also certain persons in England against the Government of India’s intervention policy.”[35]

In November 1930, Pickthall was invited to serve as secretary to Hyderabad’s delegation led by Hydari to the First Round Table Conference in London. The three Round Table Conferences of 1930–1932 were a series of peace conferences, organized by the British Government and Indian political personalities to discuss constitutional reforms in India. They were conducted according to the recommendation of Muhammad Ali Jinnah to Viceroy Lord Irwin and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald.[36] Jinnah was representing the All-India Muslim League, with Aga Khan III, Fazlul Huq, President of the AIML and general secretary of the Indian National Congress (INC), and Mohammad Ali Jauhar, the brother of Shaukat Ali. However, the INC, along with Indian business leaders, kept away from the conference. Many of them, including Gandhi, were in jail for their participation in Civil Disobedience Movement, dooming the conference to failure.[37] During his stay in London, Pickthall resumed contact with the Muslim community as well as providing advice on the mosque projects. In the 1930s, the Trustees of the London Mosque Fund sought patronage from the Nizam, who had then employed Pickthall, for the building of a mosque and religious school in the East End, to be named after Syed Ameer Ali.[38] Although he resided in India, Pickthall became Hon. Secretary to the Board of Management of the Amir Ali Mosque in 1931.[39]

Pickthall’s second trip to England, accompanied Hydari and Shaukat Ali, was to broker the marriage proposal with Abdulmejid II’s representatives in London.[40] Sir Terence Keyes, the Political Resident in Hyderabad, indicated that:

 

I believe that Pickthall and Shaukat Ali were actually working for the Nizam to become Khalifa of Islam, on the ex-Khalifa’s death; and hoped to make it certain by the Turkish marriages.[41]

 

Nizam had become a benefactor to the deposed Caliph, who settled with his family in a seafront villa on the French Riviera.[42] Before the wedding, Time magazine reported that “Should these young people wed and have a man child, temporal and spiritual strains would richly blend in him. He could be proclaimed ‘the True Caliph’.”[43] Abdulmejid II himself announced that the wedding would “unite two Muslim dynasties by the intimate ties of family love; an event which cannot fail to have a very happy repercussion on the whole Muslim world.”[44] Days after the marriage, based on briefings from Shaukat Ali, Urdu papers of Bombay announced that the union foreshadowed the restoration of the Caliphate. The resulting furore led to the government of the British Raj forcing the Nizam to cancel a plan to have the Caliph visit Hyderabad. The alliance between the Ottoman and Asaf Jahi dynasties also helped establish Hyderabad’s status as a “sort of capital city for all Muslims,” according to Pickthall.[45] The marriage took place in Nice on November 12, 1931. Azam’s younger brother Moazzam Jah (1907 – 1987) married Dürrüşehvar’s cousin Nilufer Hanımsultan. On December 12, the couples set sail for Hyderabab from Venice on the ocean liner Pilsna, where they were introduced to Gandhi, who was returning from the Second Round Table Conference in London in 1931. Gandhi was keen to recruit the princesses for work towards women’s empowerment in their state.[46]

In the course of the Second Round Table Conference in 1931, also held in London, Aga Khan III had lengthy discussion sessions with Gandhi who was then the sole representative of the Congress Party.[47] Aga Khan III was nominated to represent India at the League of Nations in 1932 and served as President of the 18th Assembly of The League of Nations (1937–1938). In 1951, he was initiated into Freemasonry.[48] Jinnah, who had been so far fighting for ideals in the tradition of Syed Ahmad Khan, came increasingly under the influence of the famous poet Sir Muhammed Iqbal, a protégée of Cambridge Apostle T.W. Arnold and a friend of Hans-Hasso von Veltheim, the occultist and Theosophist associated with the George Kreis and Cosmic Circle, and member of Keyserling’s School of Wisdom and the Eranos Conferences.[49] Iqbal was elected to the Punjab Legislative Council in 1927 and held several positions in the AIML. Iqbal supported the constitutional proposals presented by Jinnah for the Indian National Congress, and worked with Aga Khan III and other Muslim leaders to remove the divide between the members of All-India Muslim League (AIML).[50] Iqbal believed that, “however the theological interpretation of the Ismailis may err,” the Aga Khan III “represents the solidarity of Islam.”[51] Abdullah Yusuf Ali of the Woking Mosque was twice principal of Islamia College, Lahore, between 1925-27 and 1934-36, on the express recommendation of Iqbal. Ali’s classic translation of the Qur’an was published during his second tenure at Islamia College, founded as part of the Aligarh Movement.[52] In his Allahabad Address, during the 21st annual session of the annual assembly of the AIML, on December 29, 1930, Iqbal formulated a political framework for the Muslim-majority regions spanning northwestern India, spurring the League’s pursuit of the two-nation theory.

 

Indian Independence Act

 

The Aga Khan III was a key contact for Hitler with Shiah Muslims in India and Iran. He visited the Hitler for a cup of tea at Hitler’s vacation home near Berchtesgaden in 1937. The Aga Khan III liked him very much Hitler, who was equally impressed with his visitor.[53] Hitler and the German Foreign Ministry maintained links with the Aga Khan, not only with regards to their plans to gain influence in India, but also as a possible source of intelligence through his acquaintance with Churchill and many other British leaders.[54] Through one of his German friends, Prince Max Hohenlohe, with whom he met frequently in Switzerland, the Aga Khan III passed to Hitler his views on what was happening in Britain. He told Hitler that the British were not his enemies but were fighting only because Churchill was in the employ of the Jews.[55] Although annoyed at the German confiscation of some of his French racehorses, the Aga Khan III offered Hitler his services in the case of Germany conquering India, while urging him in 1940 to place a higher priority on conquering Egypt and the Middle East. If Hitler ever did succeed in taking London, the Aga Khan III offered to share a bottle of champagne with the two pro-Nazi Egyptian royals, the exiled Abbas III and King Faruq.[56]

During the period of rapid German advances inside the USSR, the Germans hoped that supporting independence could persuade many Indians in the British army and Indian prisoners of war to desert to join the Axis forces. A key agent in this strategy, as usual, was Mufti al-Husseini. The Nazis reported that he controlled seventy-two revolutionary cells in India.[57] One of al-Husseini’s most important contacts was his counterpart, India’s Grand Mufti, Kifayatullah Dehlavi (c. 1875 – 1952), a supporter of the Caliphate, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Husseini’s Palestine Arab movement.[58] Dehlavi, who studied at Darul Uloom Deoband, was appointed as an interim president of the Jamiat Ulama-e-Hind on its foundation, and as its second president following the death of Mahmud Hasan Deobandi. To block al-Husseini’s influence, the British Indian government arrested Dehlavi’s aide and intermediary with al-Husseini, Muttahida at-Tarrazi. They also refused an entry visa in 1943 to al-Husseini’s own emissary, Salih Mustafa Ashmawi, editor of a Muslim Brotherhood publication.[59]

Theo Habicht (1898 – 1944), an agent of von Oppenheim, along with Erwin Ettel (1895 – 1971), German intelligence’s Istanbul-based coordinator for Asian issues, backed al-Husseini’s effort to encourage a Jihad against the British Raj.[60] Rubin and Schwanitz propose that the man to serve this project was Subhas Chandra Bose (1897 – 1945), an Indian nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among many Indians.[61] At the Presidency College in Calcutta, Bose studied philosophy, his readings including Kant, Hegel, Bergson and other Western philosophers, and was inspired by the universalist teachings of Swami Vivekananda.[62] After studying in England, Bose returned to India in 1921, where joined Gandhi’s nationalist movement and the Indian National Congress (INC), and followed Jawaharlal Nehru to leadership in a group within the congress.[63]

With the outbreak of World War II, Bose advocated a campaign of mass civil disobedience to protest against Viceroy Lord Linlithgow’s decision to declare war on India's behalf without consulting the INC.[64] Bose was thrown in jail by the British, but was released following a seven-day hunger strike. With the help of the Abwehr and supporters of the Aga Khan III, Bose escape to Nazi Germany, through Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.[65] Bose was flown on to Berlin in a special courier aircraft at the beginning of April where he was received by Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Foreign Ministry officials at the Wilhelmstrasse.[66] In Germany, Bose was attached to the Special Bureau for India under Adam von Trott zu Solz which was responsible for broadcasting on the German-sponsored Azad Hind Radio, to encourage Indians to fight against the British. He founded the Free India Center in Berlin and created the Indian Legion, consisting of some 4500 soldiers. out of Indian prisoners of war who had previously fought for the British in North Africa prior to their capture by Axis forces. The Indian Legion was attached to the Wehrmacht, and later transferred to the Waffen SS.[67]

Bose met Hitler on May 27, 1942, and offered to recruit an Indian Tiger Legion from prisoners of war. Friendly toward al-Husseini, Bose proposed a joint Arab-Indian Committee to incite uprisings. In addition to Bose, it would include the Abwehr, al-Husaini, and Rashid Ali al-Gaylani (1892 – 1965), who was living in exile in Berlin after his failed coup in Iraq, which lead to the Anglo-Iraqi War and the British capture of the country in 1941.[68] To Admiral Canaris, Germany’s military intelligence chief, Bose confided that he believed Germany would lose the war but that his movement’s collaboration would nevertheless pressure the British to keep their promise of granting full independence.[69] In 1943, Bose formed a Provisional Indian Government in exile in Japanese-occupied Singapore and named himself its head of state. Bose proposed to base the operation in Basra, southern Iraq’s port which had close trade ties with India, dependant on the Germans first capturing Iraq.[70]

As summarized by Rubin and Schwanitz, “The German assessment proven correct just two years after the war—was that they would ultimately rebel against Hindu rule, seize the country’s northwestern part, and create a Muslim state.”[71] In 1942, Gandhi initiated the civil disobedience movement to force the British to withdraw from India in the Aga Khan Palace, built by Aga Khan III. Gandhi’s leadership of the Indian National Congress culminated in the Indian Independence Act 1947, which ended Crown suzerainty and partitioned British India into the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. Gandhi insisted on a united religiously plural and independent India which included Muslims and non-Muslims of the Indian subcontinent coexisting. Jinnah, however, rejected this proposal and insisted instead for partitioning the subcontinent on religious lines to create a separate Muslim homeland. Jinnah and the AIML then played a decisive role in the 1940s, becoming a driving force behind the division of India along religious lines and the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim state in 1947, with Jinnah serving as Pakistan’s first governor-general until his death in the following year.

Abdulmejid II died in 1944 in wartime Paris, in almost total obscurity. Confidential messages sent between British officials and politicians, including the Viceroy of India, as well as the writings of Hyderabad’s Prime Minister, revealed that, writing his will in Paris, Abdulmejid had intended for the Caliphal title to pass through the Asaf Jahi dynasty. As long as this was kept a secret, the British concluded, they had no need to intervene. Nevertheless, they would soon leave the country as India gained independence in 1947. Nizam attempted to declare his sovereignty over the state of Hyderabad, but in 1948, India invaded and ended his rule. Plans to fly Abdulmejid II’s body over and bury him in the mausoleum that had been built for him were abandoned.[72] His body was subsequently buried in Medina. The Kemalists, Atatürk and then Ismet İnönü, who became the second President of Turkey, had prohibited the former Caliph from being buried in Turkey.[73]

 


[1] Rubin & Schwanitz. Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, p. 89.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Fritz Grobba. Manner und Machte im Orient, p. 273; cited in Kramer. Muslims Assembled, p. 141.

[4] Rubin & Schwanitz. Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, p. 88.

[5] Dreyfuss. Devil’s Game, p. 49 and 51.

[6] “Islamic Terrorism’s Links To Nazi Fascism.” AINA, July 5, 2007. Retrieved from http://www.aina.org/news/2007070595517.htm

[7] “Hajj Amin al-Husayni: Arab Nationalist and Muslim Leader.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/hajj-amin-al-husayni-arab-nationalist-and-muslim-leader

[8] “Historical Development of the Methodologies of al-Ikhwaan al-Muslimeen And Their Effect and Influence Upon Contemporary Salafee Dawah.” Salafi Publications (March 2003). Retrieved from https://www.salafipublications.com/sps/downloads/pdf/MNJ180008.pdf

[9] Richard Paul Mitchell. The Society of the Muslim Brothers (Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 14.

[10] Ibid., pp. 321.

[11] Ibid., pp. 321–322, 325.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid., pp. 233.

[14] M. Siddik Gumus. Islam’s Reformers (Istanbul, Turkey: Hakikat Kitabevi Publications, 2017), p. 183.

[15] Quintan Wiktorowicz. “Anatomy of the Salafi Movement.” Studies in Conflict & Terrorism 29:3 (2006), p. 222.

[16] Paolo Urizzi. Présence du soufisme dans l'œuvre de René Guénon, p. 410.

[17] Paper originally prepared by Hatsuki Aishima for an international conference “Sufism, Culture, Music” held from 12 to 15th November 2005 in Tlemcen, Algeria, Retrieved from http://islam-field.hp.infoseek.co.jp/aishima.htm

[18] Kramer. Islam Assembled, p. 124–125.

[19] Note by O. G. R. Williams (Colonial Office) on his meeting with Foreign Office and India Office representatives, November 17, 1931, CO732/51, file 89205, part 1. Minutes of the meeting on November 16, 1931, in FO371/15282, E5711/1205/65; cited in Kramer. Muslims Assembled, p. 125.

[20] Text in FO371/15283, E6087/1205/65; cited in Kramer. Muslims Assembled, p. 126.

[21] Arlosorov to Brodetsky, November 13, 1931, CZA, Z4/10042; Kramer. Muslims Assembled, p. 126.

[22] Kramer. Muslims Assembled, p. 127.

[23] Ibid.

[24] Ibid., p. 128.

[25] Copy of proclamation of October 27, 1931, MR/, file 1935. Text also published in al-Jami‘a al-arabiyya, October 29, 1931; cited in Kramer. Muslims Assembled, p. 128.

[26] Arutz Sheva Staff. “Pictorial History: King Faisal Comes to Je-m 1931.” Israel National News (June 3, 2013). Retrieved from https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/168573

[27] Kramer. Muslims Assembled, p. 123.

[28] Imran Mulla. “The Conspiracy to Save the Ottoman Caliphate in India.” Kasurian (March 23, 2025). Retrieved from https://kasurian.com/p/caliphate-conspiracy-india

[29] M.A. Zupan. Inside Job: How Government Insiders Subvert the Public Interest (Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 10–115.

[30] Tahir Shah. “Alan the Red, the Brit who makes Bill Gates a pauper.” The Sunday Times (October 7, 2007). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20081014090016/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2603983.ece

[31] “Venerable lodge in for royal flushing.” The New Indian Express (May 15, 2012). Retrieved from https://www.newindianexpress.com/cities/hyderabad/2009/Nov/13/venerable-lodge-in-for-royal-flushing-103336.html

[32] Kaniza Garari. “Did Mahatma Gandhi meet Princess Niloufer on ship? Panel looks for clues.” Deccan Chronicle (September 29, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/300919/did-mahatma-gandhi-meet-princess-niloufer-on-ship-panel-looks-for-clu.html

[33] Jamie Gilham. “Marmaduke Pickthall and the British Muslim Convert Community.” In: Geoffrey Nash (ed). Marmaduke Pickthall Islam and the Modern World (Leiden: Brill, 2017), p. 65.

[34] Tenzin Zompa. “Mir Osman Ali Khan, Hyderabad Nizam who wore cotton pyjamas & used a diamond as paper weight.” The Print (April 6, 2021). Retrieved from https://theprint.in/theprint-profile/mir-osman-ali-khan-hyderabad-nizam-who-wore-cotton-pyjamas-used-a-diamond-as-paper-weight/634761/

[35] IOR, R/1/5/66, Hyderabad Political Notebook 1919–1945, 15; cited in Sherif. “Pickthall’s Islamic Politics,” p. 119.

[36] Stanley Wolpert. Jinnah of Pakistan, 15 ed. (Karachi, Pakistan: University Press, 2013), p. 107.

[37] Indian Round Table Conference Proceedings (Government of India, 1931).

[38] Gilham. “Marmaduke Pickthall and the British Muslim Convert Community,” p. 59.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Sherif. “Pickthall’s Islamic Politics,” p. 129.

[41] IOR, Hyderabad Political Notebook, Volume ii, (1919–1945), p 125; cited in Sherif. “Pickthall’s Islamic Politics,” p. 132.

[42] Mulla. “The Conspiracy to Save the Ottoman Caliphate in India.”

[43] Ibid.

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Kaniza Garari. “Hyderabad: Mahatma Gandhi did meet Niloufer, Durrushehvar on ship.” Deccan Chronicle (September 30, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/011019/hyderabad-mahatma-gandhi-did-meet-niloufer-durrushehvar-on-ship.html

[47] Daftary. The Ismailis, p. 483.

[48] William R Denslow. 10,000 Famous Freemasons (Missouri: 1957).

[49] Ahmad. “Sayyid Aḥmad Khān, Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī and Muslim India,” p. 77.

[50] Allama Iqbal.” BrightPk.com (February 15, 2012). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20120604013142/http://www.brightpk.com/personalities/allama-iqbal/

[51] Teena Purohit. “Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy and Transgression: A Response to Nehru.” ReOrient 1, no. 1 (2015), p. 81.

[52] "Abdullah Yusuf Ali.” Biographical Dictionary. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20030317161627/http://www.salaam.co.uk/knowledge/biography/viewentry.php?id=1777

[53] Rubin & Schwanitz. Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, p. 170.

[54] Ibid., p. 171.

[55] Ibid., p. 172.

[56] Ibid., p. 171.

[57] Ibid., p. 168.

[58] Ibid., p. 169.

[59] Ibid.

[60] Ibid.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Leonard A. Gordon. Brothers against the Raj: a biography of Indian nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 37.

[63] Burton Stein. A History of India (John Wiley & Sons, 2010), pp. 305, 325.

[64] Satadru Sen. Subhas Chandra Bose 1897–1945 (1999). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20050305012751/http://www.andaman.org/book/app-m/textm.htm

[65] Bhagat Ram Talwar. The Talwars of Pathan Land and Subhas Chandra's Great Escape (People’s Publishing House, 1976).

[66] F. Kurowski. The Brandenburgers: Global Mission. trans. D. Johnston (Winnipeg: J.J. Fedorowicz, 1997), p. 136.

[67] David Littlejohn. Foreign Legions of the Third Reich, Vol. IV: Poland, the Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Free India, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Russia, 2nd ed. (San Jose, California: R. James Bender, 1994), p. 127.

[68] Rubin & Schwanitz. Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, p. 169.

[69] Ibid., p. 170.

[70] Rubin & Schwanitz. Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, p. 169.

[71] Ibid., p. 168.

[72] Mulla. “The Conspiracy to Save the Ottoman Caliphate in India.”

[73] Kemal H Karpat. “Inside the Seraglio: Private Lives of the Sultans in İstanbul.” International Journal of Turkish Studies, 23: 1/2 (2017), pp. 102–104.

Divide & Conquer