Die Welt interview: “Vor einer Schlacht mit apokalyptischer Dimension” Hamed Abdel-Samad is a Egyptian born political scientist, historian and author, now living in Germany. He is the son of a Sunni imam, but has dedicated the last many years of his life to warn against the political side of Islam. Via 10news.dk, translated by Sandra and Nicolai Sennels:
Maybe not with a third world war [released by islam] straightaway, but we will see a battle of apocalyptic dimension. The Islamists would lead a campaign of revenge against the infidels. On a small scale, you can observe this where Islamists take power in Syrian towns.
“He claims Islam to have “fascistic characteristics” – and is therefore under threat: The German-Egyptian journalist Hamed Abdel-Samad challenges a religion which he himself is a member of.
The author Hamed Abdel-Samad lives in Germany, but he is not safe here. The 42-year-old needs permanent police protection, as he has enemies. Violent, fanatical enemies who want him dead because in their view, he had insulted Islam and their Prophet Mohammed. The German-Egyptian states his opinion openly and criticizes those Muslims who put themselves above others and claim that their interpretation of Islam is the only true version.
With his book “Der Untergang der islamischen Welt” (Eng.: The Fall of the Islamic world, Droemer, 2010, 18 euros), he earned a lot of criticism. His new book will be out on 1st April and is entitled: “Der islamische Faschismus” (transl.: The Islamic fascism, Droemer, 18 euros). After publicly expressing his theses in Cairo, he got a fatwa on his head: “Wanted Dead” – not: “Wanted, dead or alive”, just “dead”. He had to go into hiding. But he was not silent and he does not intend to be intimidated in the future.
Die Welt: Lately, 529 Egyptian Muslim brothers have been sentenced to death by a court in Minia, Upper Egypt, in a legally very questionable fast track process. 683 further defendants face the same fate. What is your opinion on these processes?
Hamed Abdel-Samad: That is not the way to deter terrorists, as it will just create new martyrs, who will be models for a new generation of holy warriors! The Muslim Brotherhood will benefit most from this verdict, because suddenly the world is not talking anymore about their ongoing terrorist attacks, but about the injustice that befalls them. Such verdicts are symptomatic of the Egyptian state’s incompetence in dealing with terrorism. In this way, the violence is not stopped, and the division and polarization in the country are deepened.
Die Welt: So you think that such processes will create problems for the future of Egypt and thus probably also the next president, Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who has just announced his candidacy and is a clear favorite?
Abdel-Samad: Al-Sisi is considered the new savior by many Egyptians. The expectations on him are very high. But he himself knows that the country has serious problems he cannot solve. He also knows that the same crowds that are cheering him now frenetically, will be demonstrating against him, as they have demonstrated against Husni Mubarak and Mohammed Mursi, because they could not fulfill their desires for stability and prosperity. The era of dictatorship is over. But the absence of dictatorship does not automatically mean the arrival of democracy.
Die Welt: You are very pessimistic about the future of the Arab-Islamic world in general. You present a new book, your fourth one. It seems to me that you get more and more radical in your theses. Would you agree with that?
Abdel-Samad: No! I often hear that I was a radical thinker and a quarreler. I’m just a rational thinking person who calls a spade a spade. I have always been. I do not do it just to provoke when I say that Islam has fascist characteristics.
Die Welt: But that’s at least semantically sharper than anything you have written and said before. The term fascism in connection with political Islam is certainly new.
Abdel-Samad: For Germans this may sound bold and provocative. But what is fascism? It is a political religion, with truths, with prophets, with a charismatic leader who is equipped with a supposedly holy mission to unite the nation and defeat the enemies. That’s also exactly what Islam is. Fascism divides the world into friends and enemies. In Islam, there are believers and unbelievers. The conspiracy theories in fascism, the feeling of humiliation and having come off badly, this desire for revenge and the dehumanization of the enemy, are all found in Islam, especially in the language of political Islam. The mix of inferiority complex and striving for world domination, of impotence and omnipotence fantasies, links Islamism and fascism. In my book, I write on the 14 theses by Umberto Eco on Ur-Fascism. There, we find it all: the cult of tradition, the attitude to the modern age and the counter-revolution against Enlightenment, the conspiracy theories, the Machism. All that the Islamists are missing, is the machinery for mass-destruction that was available to the Stalinists and the National Socialists. Islamism suffered several defeats, but has never been trounced – unlike fascism in Germany and Italy. That is the reason why Islamic fascism drags on.
Die Welt: Would you go as far as to say that the political, fascist Islam would drag the world into a Third World War, if it had the opportunity to get its hands on such destructive machinery?
Abdel-Samad: Yes, maybe not with a world war straightaway, but we will see a battle of apocalyptic dimension. The Islamists would lead a campaign of revenge against the infidels. On a small scale, you can observe this where Islamists take power in Syrian towns. People are then killed just because they are Christians, even children. This is pure fascism, that people are executed only on the basis of their religious or national affiliation. We can watch that everywhere where Islamists take power, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria – no matter where.
Die Welt: And the so-called “moderate Islam”? Does it exist anyway?
Abdel-Samad: For a long time, we had this prime example of a supposedly moderate Islam in Turkey with Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the top. The political opportunism of the West has prevented this system from having to show its true face. Only now, in crisis, and under the real political and democratic test, we recognize fascist tendencies there as well.
Die Welt: A wolf in sheep’s clothing, then? Or as you call it in your book: democracy as a Trojan horse?
Abdel-Samad: Exactly. The Islamist who wants to come to power is not interested in democracy. He does not believe in it, he believes in the rule of God. He is not interested in fighting unemployment, but wants to enforce a particular moral order of society and then the rest of the world.
Die Welt: So a divine mandate?
Abdel-Samad: Yes. That’s the only thing that motivates him to engage in politics. He does not respect human-made structures such as parliaments and the judiciary, because God has set the law for him already 1400 years ago. It only needs to be applied.
Die Welt: That would mean that dialogue is not possible with these people…
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