Jeffrey Herf defends his analysis of "Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World'

In his essay"Hate Radio," Jeffrey Herf, a professor of modern European and German history at the University of Maryland at College Park and author of Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (Yale University Press, 2009), argues that collaboration between Arab political leaders and Nazi officials during World War II decisively influenced the development of radical Islam."The toxic mixture of religious and secular themes forged in Nazi-era Berlin, and disseminated to the Middle East, continues to shape the extreme politics of that region," Herf writes. In a response, Richard Wolin, a professor of history and political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, described the connection Herf draws between European fascism and contemporary political Islam as"both needlessly inflammatory and historically inaccurate."

The Chronicle Review asked Herf and Wolin to continue their debate online.

Jeffrey Herf: In my new book, I do not claim, as Richard Wolin writes, that"the World War II alliance between Nazi propagandists and Arab nationalists" is"the key to understanding contemporary political Islam." I do claim that a very important chapter in the latter's history was written and spoken in Berlin during the war. I did write that"the issue of the impact of fascism and Nazism on the Middle East and its aftereffects has become inseparable from contemporary political controversies about anti-Semitism, radical Islam, 'Islamo-fascism' and international terrorism since the attacks of September 11, 2001." I placed quotation marks around the term"Islamo-fascism" to indicate to the reader that I was referring to a term of contemporary political discourse. I am not using it as a core analytical concept. I did not, as Wolin alleges, suggest that"the term 'Islamo-fascism' best describes the combination of political authoritarianism and religious fundamentalism that suffuses the Arab world." I do offer abundant evidence that one key episode in the history of political Islam lay in its connections to fascist and Nazi ideology.

In addition, Wolin wrongly asserts that I use"the epithet Islamo-fascism" at"several pivotal junctures" in my book. I have done a search of the PDF of the manuscript. The above reference to the term's presence as a contemporary political controversy is the only time that it appears. I'm willing to defend my argument, but I am not responsible for arguments that I've not made.

That said, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World offers an unprecedented amount of documentation of the propaganda that resulted from the fusion of Nazi ideology with radical Arab nationalism and militant Islam. This accomplishment is not to be taken for granted. If examining this cultural fusion was easy, it would have been done a long time ago. The new evidence demonstrates a heretofore insufficiently appreciated connection between Nazism and the specifically religious roots of politicized Islam. It entailed a blend of radical European anti-Semitism with a selective reading of the traditions of Islam. Of particular importance was how a hatred of the Jews was fused with a hatred of Zionism. Nazi Arabic-language propaganda depicted both the Jews and the Zionists as parts of an international conspiracy whose purpose was to destroy Islam and dominate the Arab world. Politicized Islam is the product of indigenous radicalization and crises of modernization, as well as the Middle East's interaction with ideas, institutions, and policies coming from Europe, especially during World War II. Just as a key chapter in the history of Baathism in Iraq and Syria was written in fascist France, so a key chapter of political Islam was written in wartime Berlin....