15. The Round Table Conferences

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 and neo-Caliphate agent, 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]

 

Nizam of Hyderabad 

Mustafa al-Maraghi met Marmaduke Pickthall, who hoped for his translation, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, to be authorized by the Al-Azhar.[28] 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).[29] 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.[30] 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.[31] 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.[32] In the period from 1931 onwards, Hyderabad became the intellectual center for Muslims and Muslim internationalism, with a focus was on reviving the Caliphate.[33]

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.[34] 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.[35] 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.”[36]

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.[37] Jinnah was representing the All-India Muslim League (AIML), 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.[38] 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.[39] Although he resided in India, Pickthall became Hon. Secretary to the Board of Management of the Amir Ali Mosque in 1931.[40]

Pickthall’s second trip to England, accompanied Hydari and Shaukat Ali, was to broker the marriage proposal with Abdulmejid II’s representatives in London.[41] 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.[42]

 

Nizam had become a benefactor to the deposed Caliph, who settled with his family in a seafront villa on the French Riviera.[43] 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’.”[44] 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.”[45] 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.[46] 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.[47]

 

Father of Pakistan

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.[48] 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.[49] 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 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.[50] 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.[51]

In 1922, Iqbal was knighted by the British Crown. 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 AIML.[52] In his Allahabad Address as President of the AIML, during the 21st annual session of the annual assembly, 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. In 1931 and 1932 Iqbal participated in the Round Table Conferences in London. He made his way home, first via Jerusalem, and the second time through France, where he met Henry Bergson and Louis Massignon, then Spain to meet Miguel Asin Palacios (1871 – 1944), a Spanish scholar of Islamic studies and the Arabic language, and a Roman Catholic priest, and to visit the Mosque of Cordova, which inspired one of his greatest Urdu poems, and, finally, Italy.[53] In 1932, Iqbal’s most important Persian poetic work was published: the Javid Nama (“Book of Eternity”), inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy. Iqbal depicts himself as Zinda Rud guided by the Sufi poet Rumi through various heavens and spheres and has the honor of approaching Divinity and coming in contact with divine illuminations and historical figures including Afghani, Said Halim Pasha, Mansur al-Hallaj, Mirza Ghalib and Nietzsche.

Iqbal delivered six English lectures at Madras, Hyderabad and Aligarh, that were published in Lahore in 1930, and then by the Oxford University Press in 1934, in the book The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam. Iqbal attempts to provide a corrective to Oswald Spengler’s most famous work, The Decline of the West (1918). Drawing on the influence of Nietzsche, but mostly Goethe, Spengler outlined the notion of societal decay that became commonplace in fascist thought. Spengler’s thesis was that all civilizations are subject to an organic cycle of birth, maturity, aging and death. All civilizations eventually reach an apex, followed by irreversible decadence, until the emergence of barbarism once again heralds the beginning of a new epoch. Spengler recognized three distinct civilizational tendencies, the Apollonian focused around Ancient Greece and Rome, the non-Babylonian Middle East, which he referred to as “Magian,” and Western or European, what he called “Faustian,” a reference to Goethe’s Faust. According to Iqbal, Spengler describes the culture of Islam as “thoroughly Magian in spirit and character,” which he describes as a synthesis of Judaism, ancient Chaldean religion, early Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Islam.”[54]

Although he had once spoken positively of the movement, and his former teacher, father, brother and nephew were members, Iqbal presented the Ahmadiyya as an example of the Magian trend in Islam, in contrast to the preferable unifying tendencies of Ismailism, as it no longer fit into his prescription for a united Islamic state.[55] In 1934, Iqbal wrote “Qadianis and Orthodox Muslims,” calling for the movement’s excommunication from the Muslim community:

 

The best course for the rulers of India is, in my opinion, to declare the Qadianis a separate community. This will be perfectly consistent with the policy of the Qadianis themselves, and the Indian Muslim will tolerate them just as he tolerates other religions.[56]

 

One year later, Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 – 1964), leader of the Indian National Congress (INC) responded to Iqbal through a series of pieces in the Modern Review of Calcutta. In Islam and Ahmadism, written in 1935 as a response to Nehru, Iqbal describes the “essence” of the Ahmadiyya movement as a religious tradition “in which pre-Islamic Magian ideas have, through the channels of Islamic mysticism, worked on the mind of its author.”[57] In The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam, Iqbal described Magianism as a culture associated with the religions of “Judaism, ancient Chaldean religion, early Christianity, Zorastrianism, and Islam”[58] Iqbal further argues that, “a Magian crust has grown over Islam, I do not deny. Indeed my main purpose in these lectures has been to secure a vision of the spirit of Islam as emancipated from its Magian overlayings…”[59] According to Iqbal, Bahaism is another for of Magnianism, but it does not pose a direct problem because it “openly departs from Islam.”[60]

Nehru’s response to Iqbal’s piece described the Aga Khan as “modern of moderns highly cultured in western ways, a prince of the turf, most at home in London and Paris on the one hand, and on the other hand, a divine leader who grants his devotees ‘spiritual favors’ and indulgences.”[61] Nevertheless, Nehru, who was suspicious of what he saw as the Aga Khan’s “double life,” questioned how exactly Iqbal could see him as someone who could represent the unity of Islam.[62] Iqbal’s response to Nehru was that, “however the theological interpretation of the Ismailis may err, they believe in the basic principles of Islam.”[63] Summarizing Iqbal’s position, Teena Purohit explained, “The Aga Khan and the Ismailis represent the uniformity of Islam: they are part of the Indian Muslim community, in a way that the Ahmadis are not, because they adhere to the same religious beliefs and practices of the five pillars.”[64]

 

Aga Khan III

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.[65] 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.[66] 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.[67] 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.[68]

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.[69] 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.[70] 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.[71]

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.[72] 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.[73] 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.[74] 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.[75]

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.[76] 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 escaped to Nazi Germany, through Afghanistan and the Soviet Union.[77] 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.[78] 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.[79]

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.[80] 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.[81] 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.[82]

 

India and Pakistan

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.”[83] 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. 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. Joining the organization in the 1920s, Nehru rose to become the leader of a progressive faction of the Indian National Congress (INC), receiving the support of Gandhi, who designated him as his political heir. As INC president in 1929, Nehru called for complete independence from the British Raj. Nehru and the Congress dominated Indian politics during the 1930s. 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.

After the All India Congress Committee’s Quit India Resolution of 1942, senior INC leaders were imprisoned, and for a time, the organization was suppressed. Under Jinnah, the AIML had come to dominate Muslim politics in the interim. In the 1946 provincial elections, the INC won the elections, but the AIML won all the seats reserved for Muslims, which the British interpreted as a clear mandate for an independent Pakistan. Nehru became the interim Prime Minister of India in September 1946 and the AIML joined his government. Nehru and the INC dominated Indian politics during the 1930s. Nehru promoted the idea of the secular nation-state in the 1937 provincial elections, allowing the Congress to sweep the elections and form governments in several provinces. Upon India’s independence in 1947, Nehru was sworn in as the Dominion of India’s Prime Minister. Jinnah and the AIML had been the 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. In August 1947, nine years after his death, with the establishment of Pakistan, a newly independent Islamic state in which Iqbal was honored as the national poet.

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.[84] 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.[85]

 

Leopold of Arabia

Playing an influential role in the newly independent Pakistan was a close friend of Muhammad Iqbal, Leopold Weiss (1900 – 1992), an Austro-Hungarian Jew who converted to Islam and took the name Muhammad Asad. Weiss was a descendant of a long line of Jewish rabbis. However, his father, Akiva Weiss, broke from tradition and became a lawyer. Leopold nevertheless received a religious education, and became proficient in Hebrew and familiar with Aramaic. After completing school, Weiss went to Vienna to study psychoanalysis. “In actual fact Freud’s ideas intoxicated my young mind like strong wine,” he wrote.[86] He spent many evenings in Vienna coffee houses, listening to the discussions of Alfred Adler and other intellectuals.[87] After abandoning university in Vienna, Weiss drifted aimlessly around 1920s Germany, working briefly for the Austrian-born expressionist film director Fritz Lang (1890 – 1976). By 1922, Weis had become a foreign correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung, one of the foremost newspapers of the Europe of the time, leading him to Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Persia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan.[88]

In 1922, Weiss moved to the British Mandate of Palestine, staying in Jerusalem with his uncle Dorian Feigenbaum (1887 – 1937), a disciple of Freud who later founded the Psychoanalytic Quarterly. In Palestine, Weiss engaged in debates with Menachem Ussishkin, Chaim Weizmann and Arthur Ruppin.[89] Although he was impressed by Weizmann’s intellect and charisma, Weiss claims he voiced his concerns about the Zionist movement’s lack of consideration for the existing Arab population.[90] In Jerusalem, Weiss also befriended Jacob Israël de Haan (1881 – 1924), a Dutch Jewish anti-Zionist and author of homo-erotic novels, who immigrated to Palestine in 1919. De Haan was himself a life-long friend of Forte Kreis founder Frederik van Eeden, and of Arnold Aletrino (1858 – 1916), a Dutch Jew and criminal anthropologist who published works on homosexuality.[91] In 1912, de Haan participated in founding the Dutch branch of the Scientific Humanitarian Committee, which was first founded in Germany in 1897 by Magnus Hirschfeld.[92]

In Palestine, de Haan became the confidante and the right-hand man of  Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld (1848 – 1932), the leader of the anti-Zionist haredi community in pre-state Jerusalem and a close friend and main rival of Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, the founder of Religious Zionism. In 1920, de Haan was elected to the Haredi community’s governing body, the City Council for the Ashkenazi Community, with the expectation that he would lead it into confrontation with the Zionists. He wrote letters to Winston Churchill, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, as well as to the Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour himself, to assure them of his community’s readiness to make common cause with the Arabs, and to welcome the Britain’s continued sovereignty.[93] Serving as Sonnenfeld’s top diplomat, de Haan offered to King Hussein that he and his fellow anti-Zionist Jews would be his loyal subjects should he establish his kingdom and rule the Promised Land. In June 1924, de Haan was assassinated by the Haganah after having conveyed his proposals to Hussein and his sons, Faisal and Abdullah.[94] However, de Haan’s potential reputation as a martyr was sullied when his new book was published, which featured 900 short poems about his love for young Arab boys.[95]

Due to his activities in the Middle East, Haaretz dubbed Weiss “Leopold of Arabia.”[96] As his interest to learn about Islam grew, Weiss went to Egypt and met Mustafa al-Maraghi, who was then involved in negotiations between Ibn Saud Ali bin Hussein related to the Cairo Caliphate Congress.[97] After traveling across the Arab world as a journalist, traversing Syria, Transjordan, Persia, Afghanistan, and Central Asian states, Weiss converted to Islam in 1926, and adopted the name Muhammad Asad, as Asad is the Arabic rendition of his name Leo, meaning Lion. After his conversion, Asad moved to Saudi Arabia making the journey by camel across the Arabian Desert, from Tayma to Mecca, and started writing essays for the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung. After his Hajj to Mecca in 1927, Asad met Prince Faisal who introduced him to Ibn Saud, who appreciated Asad’s knowledge. In his company, Ibn Saud allowed Asad to visit the Najd region, which at that time was forbidden to foreigners.[98] Asad obtained news from Ibn Saud, especially his Shaykh Yusuf Yasin, editor of the official newspaper Umm al-Qura, to write flattering articles about him for various German and Austrian newspapers in continental Europe.[99]

In 1928, an Iraqi named Abdallah Damluji, who had been an adviser to Ibn Saud, submitted a report to the British on “Bolshevik and Soviet penetration” of the Hijaz, which alleged that Asad had connections with Bolsheviks.[100] Ibn Saud sent Asad on a secret mission to Kuwait in 1929, to trace the sources of financial and military assistance being provided to Ikhwan who were rebelling against Ibn Saud’s rule. Asad concluded that the Ikhwan were being supported by the British to supposedly weaken Ibn Saud for the purpose of securing a “land route to India,” a railway from Haifa to Basra ultimately connecting the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian subcontinent.[101]

It was during Asad’s stay in Mecca and Medina that he began ascribing to the Ahl-i-Hadith school of thought.[102] Asad had been greatly influenced by Muhammad Abduh and his disciple, Rashid Rida.[103] He drew on the anti-Sufism of Ibn Taymiyyah and the legal theory of Ibn Hazm (994 – 1064), codifier of the Zahiri school, an extinct Madhab which has been excluded from Sunni legal consensus since at least the fourteenth century.[104] Asad spent the major part of the years 1927–1932  in Arabia with missions in between to Egypt and Libya in support of the Sanussi Brotherhood who had been fighting Italian fascists. In 1930, Asad was smuggling arms to the  mujahideen, alongside Muhammad Idris bin Muhammad al-Mahdi as-Senussi (1890 – 1983), who succeeded his cousin Ahmed Sharif as-Senussi as leader of the Sanussi Brotherhood, and who was later to become King Idris I of Libya.[105] However, the Italian forces crushed the Sanusi resistance the following year.

Asad left Arabia and went to British India in 1932 at the invitation of Muhammad Iqbal, who convinced him him to remain in India and work “to elucidate the intellectual premises of the future Islamic state.”[106] Asad later republished some of his earlier writings on this subject in The Principles of State and Government in Islam and This Law of Ours and Other Essays. In the first work, he wrote:

 

An Islamic state is not a goal or an end in itself but only a means: the goal being the growth of a community of people who stand up for equity and justice, for right and against wrong—or, to put it more precisely, a community of people who work for the creation and maintenance of such social conditions as would enable the greatest possible number of human beings to live, morally as well as physically, in accordance with the natural Law of God, Islam.[107]

 

After his second book, Islam at the Cross Roads, was published in 1934, which proved to be extremely popular and was translated in several languages. Asad put it, the book was a case of “Islam versus Western civilization.”[108] Using Freudian terms, Asad explained that the “psychological background” of the West’s enmity towards Islam could be traced back to the Crusades, and he blamed Western orientalists for distortions of Islam. “Here,” explains Martin Kramer, “Asad developed themes which would become widespread later in Islamic fundamentalist thought.”[109] Asad also won the admiration of leading Muslim figures such as Sayyid Qutb and scholar Abul Ala Maududi (1903 – 1979), who influenced Qutb and the Muslim Brotherhood.[110] Qutb, who drew from Asad’s work to shape his own views on political Islam, developing the idea of “Crusaderism,” named a chapter in his famous book The Social Justice in Islam as “At the Crossroads.”[111]

Iqbal encouraged Asad to translate the Hadith compilation of Sahih Al-Bukhari in English for the first time in history. To work on his translation, Asad moved to Kashmir during the summer of 1934. There, he met Mirwaiz Muhammad Yusuf (1894 – 1968), the Imam of the Jama Masjid in Srinagar, who became his close friend.[112] In 1925, Shah had started his education with Darul Uloom Deoband, where he was taught Hadith by Anwar Shah Kashmiri (1875 – 1933). In Kashmir, Asad delivered lectures at the Islamia High School in Srinagar. In 1931, Kashmiri Muslims in Punjab agitated in support of the Muslims in Kashmir. While the exact nature of Asad’s involvement was unclear, the British, on being informed of Asad’s presence in Kashmir, promptly requested having him “externed.”[113]

Iqbal introduced Asad to Chaudhry Niaz Ali Khan (1880 – 1976), a member of the AIML, who on Iqbal’s advice established the Dar-ul-Islam Trust Institutes in Pathankot, India and Jauharabad, Pakistan.[114] Iqbal nominated Ghulam Ahmed Pervez (1903 – 1985), an eminent civil servant and Islamic scholar. At the time, Pervez had been tasked by Jinnah, then leader of the AIML, to publish a monthly journal titled Tolu-e-Islam, founded by Iqbal to build the case for a separate Muslim state in India.[115] When Jinnah asked Pervez to nominate someone else to take his place at Dar ul Islam Trust, Pervez proposed Abul A’la Maududi, a decision that was approved by Iqbal.[116] Maududi arrived at Dar-ul-Islam in Pathankot in 1938, and remained there for some time under the patronage of Niaz Ali Khan before founding his own religious political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, in Lahore in 1941.[117] After the independence of Pakistan, Jamaat-e-Islami split into the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind in India and the Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan. Although it does not have a large popular following, Jamaat-e-Islami considered one of the major Islamic movements in Pakistan, along with Deobandi and Barelvi, represented by Jamiat Ulema-e Islam political party and Jamiat Ulema-e-Pakistan party respectively.[118]

In 1936, Asad found a new benefactor, the Nizam of Hyderabad. When Pickthall died in 1936, Asad assumed the editorship of the journal Islamic Culture.[119] By 1935, Asad resumed his relationship with his father, after he had come to “understand and appreciate the reasons for my conversion to Islam.”[120] While in India during World War II, Asad was among some 3,000 Europeans interned by the British as “enemy aliens.” Asad's camp, he wrote, included by “both Nazis and anti-Nazis as well as Fascists and anti-Fascists.”[121] Until his release from prison in 1945, Asad remained in touch with his uncle in Jerusalem, Aryeh Feigenbaum (1885 – 1981), who sent him food, clothes, and money.[122] However, Asad later conveniently omitted any mention of his uncle, a committed Zionist, from his autobiography The Road to Mecca.[123] By then, his family in Europe—his father, stepmother, and a sister—were deported from Vienna in 1942, and were murdered in the Nazi concentration camps.[124]

Upon his release in 1946, Asad dedicated his time to work on the contours of a future Islamic state and its constitution.[125] “Up till then, Muslims didn’t have any model of an Islamic state. Most of the books published before the 1940s focused on the caliphate. It was Asad who started the debate on what a governing system in a Muslim state should be like in a modern age,” explains Muhammad Arshad, a historian at the University of Punjab in Lahore.[126] Asad’s goal was, in his words, an attempt “to establish an Islamic state as a liberal, multiparty parliamentary democracy.”[127] Using Islamic texts to support his view, Asad adamantly supported democracy and the election of lawmakers.[128] Two months after Pakistan’s independence, Nawab of Mamdot (1906 – 1969), the first Chief Minister of West Punjab, contacted Asad to establish a special department to work out the ideological basis for the new state. Mamdot was President of a chapter of the All-India Muslim League (AIML), the Punjab Muslim League, where Muhammad Iqbal had been general secretary.[129]

Liaquat Ali Khan (1895 – 1951), the Prime Minister, asked Asad to leave the department to join the Foreign Service as Deputy Secretary in charge of the Middle East Division in 1949.[130] Khan was as pivotal to the consolidation of Pakistan as Ali Jinnah was to the creation of Pakistan. Khan was educated at the Aligarh Muslim University and University of Oxford. After first being invited to the Indian National Congress (INC), he later opted to join the AIML led by Jinnah, becoming his “right-hand man” in the Pakistan Movement.[131] Asad accepted Mamdot’s proposal and set forth his plans in a formal Memorandum, leading to the creation of the Department of Islamic Reconstruction, which aimed to ensure that government policies conformed to the principles of Islam.[132]

Active within the foreign ministry of Pakistan from 1949 to the early 1950s, Asad also played an instrumental role in the drafting Pakistan’s first Constitution.[133] In 1949, the Vice Chancellor University of the Punjab recommended Asad to head the newly-established Department of Islamic Studies. However, after eleven months of his appointment, he presented his resignation.[134] Asad went to Saudi Arabia as Pakistan’s delegate in 1951. It was because  of his personal relation with Ibn Saud that Pakistan was able to set up a diplomatic office in Jeddah.[135] In 1952, Asad was appointed as Pakistan’s Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Nations in New York.[136]

 


[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] Anne Fremantle. Loyal Enemy (Hutchinson & Company, Limited, 1938).

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

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

[31] 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

[32] “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

[33] 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

[34] 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.

[35] 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/

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

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

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

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

[40] Ibid.

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

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

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

[44] Ibid.

[45] Ibid.

[46] Ibid.

[47] 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

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

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

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

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

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

[53] Annemarie Schimmel. Gabriel’s Wing: a study of the religious ideas of Sir Muhammad Iqbal (Brill Archive, 1962), pp. 34–45.

[54] Muhammad Iqbal. The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2013), p. 114; cited in Teena Purohit. “Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy and Transgression: A Response to Nehru.” ReOrient, 1: 1 (2015), p. 87.

[55] Muhammad Iqbal. Islam and Ahmadism (Lahore: Ashraf Printing Press, 1980), pp. 53-54; cited in Teena. “Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy and Transgression,” p. 80.

[56] Iqbal. Islam and Ahmadism, p. 66; cited in Purohit. “Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy and Transgression,” p. 78.

[57] Ibid., p. 25; cited in Purohit. “Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy and Transgression,” p. 86.

[58] Ibid., p. 114; cited in Purohit. “Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy and Transgression: A Response to Nehru,” p. 86.

[59] Ibid., p. 25.

[60] Ibid.

[61] J. Nehru. “The Solidarity of Islam.” Modern Review of Calcutta. (November, 1935), pp. 504-506; cited in Purohit. “Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy and Transgression,” p. 83.

[62] Ibid.

[63] Iqbal. Islam and Ahmadism, p. 56-57.

[64] Purohit. “Muhammad Iqbal on Muslim Orthodoxy and Transgression,” p. 83.

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

[66] Ibid., p. 171.

[67] Ibid., p. 172.

[68] Ibid., p. 171.

[69] Ibid., p. 168.

[70] Ibid., p. 169.

[71] Ibid.

[72] Ibid.

[73] Ibid.

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

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

[76] 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

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

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

[79] 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.

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

[81] Ibid., p. 170.

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

[83] Rubin & Schwanitz. Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East, p. 168.

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

[85] 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.

[86] Lewis Gropp. “The remarkable story of a Jew on his road to Mecca.” Your Middle East (November 29, 2014). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20150104055807/http://www.yourmiddleeast.com/columns/article/muhammad-asad-a-jewish-lawrence-of-arabia_3382

[87] Ibid.

[88] “Muhammad Asad (1900-1992CE)” Islamic Encyclopedia (October 13, 2014). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20180213021656/http://islamicencyclopedia.org/islamic-pedia-topic.php?id=698

[89] Shalom Goldman. “Leopold Weiss, the Jew Who Helped Invent the Modern Islamic State.” Tablet (July 1, 2016). Retrieved from https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jew-helped-invent-islamic-state

[90] Amir Ben-David. “Leopold of Arabia.” Haaretz (November 15, 2001). Retrieved from https://www.haaretz.com/2001-11-15/ty-article/leopold-of-arabia/0000017f-e016-d804-ad7f-f1fe0f730000

[91] Liel Leibovitz. “Jacob de Haan, Israel’s Forgotten Gay Haredi Political Poet.” Tablet (October 01, 2014). Retrieved from https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jacob-de-haan-political-poet

[92] Warren Johansson. “Aletrino, Arnold.” In: Wayne R. Dynes (ed.). Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (Garland Publishing, 1990), p. 39.

[93] Leibovitz. “Jacob de Haan, Israel’s Forgotten Gay Haredi Political Poet.”

[94] Marshall J. Berger & Ora Ahimeir. Jerusalem: a city and its future (Syracuse University Press, 2002), p. 238.

[95] Leibovitz. “Jacob de Haan, Israel’s Forgotten Gay Haredi Political Poet.”

[96] Ben-David. “Leopold of Arabia.”

[97] “Leopold Weiss (Muhammad Asad).” Islamic Bulletin. Retrieved from https://islamicbulletin.org/?page_id=2349

[98] Gropp. “The remarkable story of a Jew on his road to Mecca.”

[99] Martin Kramer. “The Road from Mecca: Muhammad Asad (bom Leopold Weiss).” In: Martin Kramer (ed). The Jewish Discovery of Islam (Tel Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies Tel Aviv University, 1999), p. 232.

[100] Martin Kramer. “The Road from Mecca: Muhammad Asad.” Martin Kramer on the Middle East. Retrieved from https://martinkramer.org/reader/archives/the-road-from-mecca-muhammad-asad/

[101] Muhammad Asad. The Road to Mecca (Louisville, Kentucky: Fons Vitae, 2000), p. 228.

[102] Saad Hasan. “Muhammad Asad: a Jewish convert who devoted his life to serve Islam.” TRT World (2021). Retrieved from https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/muhammad-asad-a-jewish-convert-who-devoted-his-life-to-serve-islam-46155

[103] “From Leopold Weiss to Muhammad Asad.” Retrieved from https://rahyafteha.ir/7873/from-leopold-weiss-to-muhammad-asad/

[104] Josef Linnhoff. “Asad, The Neglected Thinker.” Critical Muslim (Autum 2021). Retrieved from https://criticalmuslim.com/explore/issues/biography/asad-neglected-thinker

[105] Gropp. “The remarkable story of a Jew on his road to Mecca.”

[106] Kramer. “The Road from Mecca,” p. 234.

[107] “Muhammad Asad (1900-1992CE)” Islamic Encyclopedia (October 13, 2014). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20180213021656/http://islamicencyclopedia.org/islamic-pedia-topic.php?id=698

[108] Kramer. “The Road from Mecca,” p. 235.

[109] Ibid.

[110] Saad Hasan. “Muhammad Asad: a Jewish convert who devoted his life to serve Islam.” TRT World (2021). Retrieved from https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/muhammad-asad-a-jewish-convert-who-devoted-his-life-to-serve-islam-46155

[111] Kramer. “The Road from Mecca,” p. 235.

[112] Muneeb Majid. “My Hero in my Homeland.” Greater Kashmir (May 9, 2015). Retrieved from http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/story/185901.html

[113] “Muhammad Asad (1900-1992CE)

[114] K.M. Azam. Hayat-I sadid: bani-yi Darulislam, Caudari Niyaz ‘Ali (Lahore: Nashriyat, 2010).

[115] G.A. Parwez. “The Man Behind The Tolu-e-Islam Movement.” Tolu-e-Islam Trust (June 2, 2001). Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20100524160337/http://www.tolueislam.com/Parwez/parwez.htm

[116] M. Yusuf. “Maudoodi: A Formative Phase.” Islamic Order, 1: 3 (1979), pp. 33–43); cited in Asaf Hussain. Islamic movements in Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran: an annotated bibliography (London: Mansell Publishing Limited, 1983).

[117] Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr. Mawdudi and the Making of Islamic Revivalism (Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 35.

[118] Olivier Roy. The Failure of Political Islam (Harvard University Press, 1994). p. 88.

[119] Kramer. “The Road from Mecca,” p. 235.

[120] Ibid., p. 235.

[121] Ibid., p. 236

[122] Ibid.

[123] Kramer. “The Road from Mecca: Muhammad Asad.”

[124] Kramer. “The Road from Mecca,” p. 236

[125] Hasan. “Muhammad Asad: a Jewish convert who devoted his life to serve Islam.”

[126] Ibid.

[127] Shalom Goldman. “Leopold Weiss, the Jew Who Helped Invent the Modern Islamic State.” Tablet (July 1, 2016). Retrieved from https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/jew-helped-invent-islamic-state

[128] Ibid.

[129] M. Rafique Afzal. “Origin of the Idea of a Separate Muslim State.” JRSP (1966).

[130] M. Ikram Chaghatai, “Muhammad Asad– The First Citizen of Pakistan.” Allama Iqbal. Retrieved from https://www.allamaiqbal.com/publications/journals/review/aproct09/9.htm

[131] “Liyakat ‘Ali Khan.” Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition Online, EI-2 English (Brill. 2012).

[132] “Muhammad Asad (1900-1992CE)”

[133] Ibid.

[134] Zahid Munir Amir. “Muhammad Asad and International Islamic Colloquium of 1957-58: A Forgotten Chapter from the History of the Punjab University” Journal of Research in Humanities, 52: 1 (2016). Retrieved from https://pu.edu.pk/images/journal/english/PDF/1.F.%20First%20Wind%20of%20Islamic_v_LII_jan_2016.pdf

[135] Hasan. “Muhammad Asad: a Jewish convert who devoted his life to serve Islam.”

[136] “Muhammad Asad (1900-1992CE).”

Divide & Conquer