The 21st-century Counterjihad movement came late to the game. The work that we do today was anticipated more than twenty years ago by Karl Binswanger, a German scholar and expert on the Ottoman Empire. In a ground-breaking essay published in 1990, Dr. Binswanger analyzed the parallel Turkish society that was then emerging in German cities.
Andrew Bostom has commissioned a translation of this important work. The full text is below, preceded by Dr. Bostom’s introduction.
An Introduction to Karl Binswanger
By Andrew G. BostomKarl Binswanger was born in 1947, and studied at the University of Munich where he received a Ph.D in 1977 for the thesis,
Investigations on the Status of Non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire of the 16th Century, With a New Definition of the Concept “Dhimma”, a pioneering analysis of dhimmitude under Ottoman rule. He was a research fellow at the Institut fur Geschichte und Kultur des Nahen Ostens, Munich, from 1978-1980, and subsequently analyzed Islamic fundamentalism in Iran, Syria, and within Germany itself.
Binswanger’s seminal 1977 study examined the discriminatory and degrading conditions imposed upon non-Muslim “dhimmis” — predominantly Christians — subjugated under the Ottoman Turkish sharia in the 16th century. His analysis elucidated the key role played by the creation of Muslim “satellite” colonies during the Islamization of these vanquished Christian societies:
Geographic integrity is shattered by implanting Islamic nuclei.; The sectarian reference point of Dhimmi communities is removed, and further sectarian pruning occurs according to Islamic standards. The autonomy of Dhimmis is reduced to an insubstantial thing… They are driven out the moment that Islamic nuclei appear in the area. Dhimmis’ possession of their churches is granted. These are closed or razed the as soon as a mosque is established in their neighborhood…Regulations in the social area…demoralize the individual: [they] are consciously instituted for their degradation. The social environment of the Dhimmis is characterized by fear, uncertainty and degradation.
During 1990, Binswanger published three remarkably prescient essays on the (primarily Turkish) Muslim immigrant community of Germany. Binswanger opens his 1990 essay, “Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic: Development, Inventory, Prospects,” with this ominous illustration:
”We reject reform and modernization. We will keep fighting until a godly order is established!” This quotation is not from Cemalettin Kaplan, the “Khomeini of Cologne”, but rather from Kadir Baran, the West German national vice-chairman of the “Idealist Associations” [“Idealistenvereine”], in other words, from a ‘Grey Wolf”. [u]ntil the Autumn of 1987 the federation’s ideology was purely nationalistic, chauvinistically Turkish. This is symptomatic of a development that one can observe among Turks in the Federal Republic of Germany, too, since Khomeini’s victory over the Shah: Islamic fundamentalism is on the march…
He then demonstrates how the strident re-affirmation of Islamic identity within Germany’s Turkish immigrant population engendered, “…an increasingly intense demonization of the culture, legal and social order of the host society: the image of Germans as enemies.” Central to this disturbing process was the inculcation of validating Islamic (i.e., Koranic) motifs which promote hostility to non-Muslims. Arguably the most accomplished (and easily the most unapologetic) scholar of how the Ottoman Turks progressively imposed the sharia on non-Muslims, Binswanger became alarmed by the obvious modern parallels to that phenomenon he observed in the behaviors of their contemporary Turkish descendants in Germany.
Twenty-one years later, the author and veteran television journalist Joachim Wagner published his analysis of the parallel Sharia-based Islamic “legal” system burgeoning in Germany, entitled
Richter ohne Gesetz (“Judges without Laws”). Wagner’s alarming investigation — summarized in English during a two-part Der Spiegel series — demonstrates how what he terms “Islamic shadow justice” undermines Germany’s Western constitutional legal system, ultimately abrogating even German criminal law. Joachim Wagner’s contemporary study has lead him to conclude that even the ostensibly limited application of Sharia arbitration within Germany’s Muslim community nullifies the state’s Western conception of legal justice.
The problem starts when the arbitrators force the justice system out of the picture, especially in the case of criminal offenses. At that point they undermine the state… Islamic conflict resolution in particular, as I’ve experienced it, is often achieved through violence and threats. It’s often a dictate of power on the part of the stronger family.
All of Wagner’s findings and conclusions were anticipated two decades earlier in Karl Binswanger’s remarkably prescient essay from 1990, “Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic: Development, Inventory, Prospects,” reproduced below.
“Islamischer Fundamentalismus in der Bundesrepublik. Entwicklung-Bestandsaufnahme-Ausblick” [“Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic: Development, Inventory, Prospects”], pp. 38-54, published in
Im Namen Allahs. Islamische Gruppen und der Fundamentalismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Koln, 1990
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic
Development — Inventory — Prospectsby Karl Binswanger“We reject reform and modernization. We will keep fighting until a godly order is established!”This quotation is not from Cemalettin Kaplan, the “Khomeini of Cologne”, but rather from Kadir Baran, the West German national vice-chairman of the “Idealist Associations” [
“Idealistenvereine”], in other words, from a “Grey Wolf”.
[1] This is symptomatic of a development that one can observe among Turks in the Federal Republic of Germany too since Khomeini’s victory over the Shah: Islamic fundamentalism is on the march — even among those who were once called “Fascists”.
Yet this phenomenon has not come about by chance. Starting in the 1970’s it was preceded by a trend toward self-organization of the Turkish migrant workers that had little to do with Islamic fundamentalism. After Khomeini’s victory this trend intensified, and the autonomous organizations discovered Islam as their true ideology. What is sociologically remarkable here is the fact that the penchant for self-organization increases with the duration of residence in the Federal Republic.
[2]Ever since the beginning of the workers’ migration into the Federal Republic, Turks have joined local associations here, which at first served to promote social life. At the street level they appeared as coffee houses in which board games (such as Tavla) and cards were played, and in addition most of them had a modest library at their disposal. Only a few of these associations ran a prayer room.
Since the early 1970’s a threefold metamorphosis of these recreational clubs can be observed:
- a substantial reorientation turning them into associations with a religious emphasis and an increase in mosque construction,
- their consolidation in umbrella groups, and
- the politicization of the latter (not least importantly as a repercussion of conditions in Turkey resembling civil war).
Essentially these are the points that make up fundamentalism of the Turks in Germany. This development accelerated and intensified in the 1980’s: an increase in the number of umbrella groups joined by the hitherto exclusively local associations — thus a consolidation process (
cf. the Chronology in Table 1), also in the way in which Islam increased in importance as a factor in the discovery and preservation of their identity. Several criteria indicate this:
- the rapidly increasing number of purely religious member-associations with a simultaneous dwindling of Nationalist member-groups,
- an ideological pivoting of the segment that split off from the Idealists and now preaches ideas that are more Islamic than Nationalist,
- the rapid construction at the federal level [staatlich] of the DITIB [acronym for the Turkish-Islamic Union of Institute for Religion], which “bought up” associations that previously had not yet belonged to one of the autonomous umbrella groups,
- the broadening of the spectrum of the activities of the associations to areas traditionally dealt with by social services for foreigners,
- radicalization, which can be proved at the organizational level for instance by the founding of the Union [the DITIB in 1984?] by Cemalettin Kaplan (“Khomeini of Cologne”), and the qualitative change from “everyday Islam” to letter-of-the-law fundamentalism,
- the increasing politicization of the work of these associations, which no longer has anything to do with the slogan “equality of religion and politics” but rather extends to associations presenting their own party tickets for German foreigners’ commissions, and even to public recommendations to cast votes for a party in the homeland, and thus is a clear acknowledgment of its affinity to a specific political party in Turkey,
- an increasingly intense demonization of the culture, legal and social order of the host society: the image of Germans as enemies.
Table I: Chronology of the founding of the most important associations
The Irish government has announced that it will hold a referendum on the new fiscal treaty proposed by the EU. Ireland is dependent on the Eurozone for bailouts, so a “no” vote on the treaty would have serious repercussions.
Paul Weston is the current chairman of the British Freedom Party. He identified himself as a “classical liberal” in an increasingly illiberal country. He resides in central London where he runs a property development/investment company. Weston stood for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2010 general election for the constituency of Cities of London & Westminster. He left the UKIP in 2011 due to the party’s failure to confront Islam. Weston assumed the chair of the British Freedom Party in Nov 2011 after ensuring that any founding officers with previous BNP connections stood down.
I can’t say that we’re as well off as Uncle Scrooge — no money bin for us! However, after our Winter Fundraiser we’re able to sit on that see-saw without dropping like a stone and whacking our butts on the cold hard ground.
For the last few years — beginning under the Bush administration, but continuing under Commander-in-Chief Barack Hussein Obama — the American military has been increasingly solicitous of and obsequious towards its Afghan “allies” and their thin-skinned Muslim sensibilities. Soldiers are advised in great detail on how to respect Islam. They have been prohibited from taking a leak in the direction of Mecca. They are trained to revere the Koran as if it were their very own holy book.
For us, having to buy something presents a problem. I mean, we’re not used to big purchases anymore. As one small example, I’ve been trying to find a reasonably priced bottom sheet for our bed because I have all these top sheets. The bottoms wear out because of the inordinate amount of time I spend there. And they don’t even mend well. However, the darn things only seem to come in sets — two sheets, two pillow cases — and those sets are waaay too much money. So I have all these flat sheets…and I’ve been thinking: people used to use flat sheets for top and bottom. So why not do the same thing? Simply go back to the ways they do it in hospitals. No contoured sheets there & Problem Solved.
I have become like Calvin when he found that catalogue full of cool stuff he didn’t know about but now can’t live without. I sympathize, Calvin. I mean, backlit keyboards! Who knew?? But WB says a little gooseneck attachable lamp works just as well. I have a feeling he’s right. My experience with “extras” is that they’re just something else that could break and I usually end up not using them.
