Islam and Eastern Religions
Among eastern religions, Hitler described religious leaders such as "Confucius, Buddha, and Mohammed" as providers of "spiritual sustenance". In this context, Hitler's connection to Mohammad Amin al-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem — which included asylum in 1941, the honorary rank of an SS Major-General, and a "respected racial genealogy" — has been interpreted more as a sign of respect than political expedience. Hitler expressed admiration for the Muslim military tradition and directed Himmler to initiate Muslim SS Divisions as a matter of policy. However, Nazi-era Minister of Armaments and War Production Albert Speer acknowledged that Hitler was only cooperating with Muslim figures, such as al-Husseini, because he felt the antisemitic views they shared would eventually help him win power and influence over the Middle East in the long run. According to Speer, Hitler stated in private, "The Mohammedan religion too would have been much more compatible to us than Christianity. Why did it have to be Christianity with its meekness and flabbiness?" Speer also stated that when he was discussing with Hitler events which might have occurred had Islam absorbed Europe:
- "Hitler said that the conquering Arabs, because of their racial inferiority, would in the long run have been unable to contend with the harsher climate and conditions of the country. They could not have kept down the more vigorous natives, so that ultimately not Arabs but Islamized Germans could have stood at the head of this Mohammedan Empire."
Hitler's choice of the Hindu Swastika as the Nazis' main and official symbol, was linked to the belief in the Aryan cultural descent of the German people. They considered the early Aryans of India to be the prototypical white invaders and the sign as a symbol of the Aryan master race. The theory was inspired by the German archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna, who argued that the ancient Aryans were a superior Nordic race from northern Germany who expanded into the steppes of Eurasia, and from there into India, where they established the Vedic religion, the ancestor of Hindu and Buddhist faiths.
Read more about this topic: Adolf Hitler's Religious Views
Famous quotes containing the words islam and, islam, eastern and/or religions:
“During the first formative centuries of its existence, Christianity was separated from and indeed antagonistic to the state, with which it only later became involved. From the lifetime of its founder, Islam was the state, and the identity of religion and government is indelibly stamped on the memories and awareness of the faithful from their own sacred writings, history, and experience.”
—Bernard Lewis, U.S. Middle Eastern specialist. Islam and the West, ch. 8, Oxford University Press (1993)
“Sooner or later we must absorb Islam if our own culture is not to die of anemia.”
—Basil Bunting (1900–1985)
“From this elevation, just on the skirts of the clouds, we could overlook the country, west and south, for a hundred miles. There it was, the State of Maine, which we had seen on the map, but not much like that,—immeasurable forest for the sun to shine on, the eastern stuff we hear of in Massachusetts. No clearing, no house. It did not look as if a solitary traveler had cut so much as a walking-stick there.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is a quite remarkable fact that the great religions of the most civilized peoples are more deeply fraught with sadness than the simpler beliefs of earlier societies. This certainly does not mean that the current of pessimism is eventually to submerge the other, but it proves that it does not lose ground and that it does not seem destined to disappear.”
—Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)