The transcript of a lecture on the origins of anti-Semitism by the German academic, Dr. Matthias Kuentzel at Leeds University:

Despite common misconceptions, Islamism was born not during the 1960s but during the 1930s. Its rise was inspired not by the failure of Nasserism but by the rise of Fascism and of Nazism.

It was the Organization of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in 1928 in Egypt, that established Islamism as a mass movement. The significance of the Brotherhood to Islamism is comparable to that of the Bolshevik party to communism: It was and remains to this day the ideological reference point and organizational core for all later Islamist groups, including al-Qaeda and Hamas or the group around Sidique Khan.

It is true that British colonial policy produced Islamism, insofar as Islamism viewed itself as a resistance movement against “cultural modernity.” Their “liberation struggle”, however, had more in common with the “liberation struggle” of the Nazis than with any kind of progressive movement.
Thus, the Brotherhood advocated the replacement of Parliamentarianism by an “organic” state order based on the Caliphate. It demanded the abolition of interest and profit in favour of a forcibly imposed community of interests between capital and labour.

The whole thing is worth reading.

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