Site Map

A MOSQUE IN MUNICH: NAZIS, THE CIA, AND THE RISE OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN THE WEST

ONE DAY IN MARCH 1956, the law professor Gerhard Kegel was holding his weekly office hours at Cologne University when a short, trim man appeared at the door, seeking advice on his doctoral thesis. After learning about the mans education, Kegel agreed to take him on. The visitor was Said Ramadan. He presented himself as a lawyer from Cairo who had come to Europe to study law. Many professors might have been bewildered, but Kegel was a generous man, well known for accepting just about anyone, especially foreigners. He averaged seven doctoral students a year and over his long career would advise 450. German universities usually don't require course work for a doctorate so all one needs is the equivalent of a master's degree.

At first, Kegel didn't have much contact with Ramadan. Just a few weeks shy of his thirtieth birthday, Ramadan was more mature than most of Kegel's students and knew what he wanted to write about -- Islamic law. He set about doing so with energy and verve. "He made a good impression. He was respectable and intelligent."

Ramadan was often abroad. At first, Kegel thought he was just preparing his final move to Europe. But Ramadan kept his adviser well informed about his movements, sending letters and post cards from Geneva, Damascus, and Jerusalem. With time the affable professor began to understand his student's real calling. It wasn't law. It was revolution.

***

For virtually all of the non-Western world, the nineteenth century was a time of profound crisis. Powered by advanced economic and political systems, Western countries invaded and subjugated vast stretches of the world. Peoples who had considered themselves the most advanced or cultured in the world were quickly defeated by Western military might. From China to Morocco, vast lands were colonized, elites toppled, and peoples subjected to foreign rule. Few felt this humiliation as keenly as did the Muslim world, a great civilization stretching back to the seventh century. Inspired by Islam, Arab conquerors had fanned out across the globe. The new faith spread rapidly, contributing to the rise of kingdoms that nurtured great philosophers, scientists, and artists. But by the early twentieth century, no predominantly Muslim country remained under Muslim leadership; Christians ruled almost everyone, from the British in the Indian subcontinent to the Dutch in Indonesia and the French in North Africa. Only Turkey remained independent. But it had been drastically secularized, and the institution of the caliphate -- the formal head of state of the Muslim world -- was abolished. Islam had been divided and conquered.

As Muslims tried to grasp the reasons for this decline, only two conclusions seemed possible: Christians had discovered better political and economic systems than Muslims had, or true Islamic principles were not being followed. For many, only the latter made sense, and efforts were made to find out where the followers of Muhammad had gone astray. The West might have introduced some useful technologies, but its ideology was to be rejected, a view many Muslims shared with other peoples. In China, for example, the "self-strengthening movement" called for remaining loyal to Chinese systems of thought while adopting Western technology, especially weaponry. Left unexamined was the intellectual context in which this new technology was developed -- what sort of scientific process was at work and what it implied about the relationship between the individual and authority, be it political or religious.

The Muslim world began grappling with these ideas in the nineteenth century. In the early part of that century, scholars such as Egypt's Rifa'a el-Tahtawi grappled with Western ideas by translating books and pushing to create a national consciousness. This gave way to the more overt political and religious activism of figures such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Muhammad Abduh, who, for example, published a newspaper calling for a return to the original Islamic ideals. A generation later, these thoughts were taken up by men such as Rashid Rida, who blamed the Muslim world's weakness on the rigidity of the intellectual class and the failure of Muslims to adhere to Islam's true teachings. Rida published an influential magazine in the early twentieth century that inspired key political activists.

As the twentieth century progressed, more explicitly political programs sprang up. Some intellectual historians call this movement Islamism and its adherents Islamists. According to this school of thought, Islamists differ from traditional Muslims because they use their religion in pursuit of a political agenda, via either democracy or violence. Followers are mobilized by specific issues related to Islam -- such as the need to apply Islamic religious law, or sharia, in their societies. Implicit in Islamism is a rejection of Western society and its values, which are seen as incompatible with Islam. Some political analysts prefer to use "political Islam" to describe this movement.

But the concept of Islamism is controversial because it implies that earlier Islam was not political. In fact, from its start Islam was an all-encompassing faith that did not reject worldly power. The institution of the caliphate grew out of Muhammad's own life. He was intensely involved in daily political and military affairs, himself organizing a small state and launching campaigns against enemy tribes. Also, the term Islamist carries negative connotations because it was widely used after the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington as, in effect, a synonym for terrorist.

Yet in the twentieth century Islam was the wellspring of a remarkable amount of political activity. Transnational political activists claiming legitimacy as bearers of the true faith sought to impose their version of Islam -- usually the version that they imagined Muhammad practiced -- on Muslims with roots in a particular location, who over the centuries often had evolved distinct religious practices. Thus the spread of Arab robes and head coverings, bans on Western music, and restrictions on women's roles in society. These activists often interpreted the Koran literally, an approach that ignored the sophisticated legal arguments developed by Islamic scholars over the centuries. Instead, they advanced a very modern idea: anyone could understand the Koran, and the traditional caste of scholars was unnecessary, even detrimental. On the other hand, the movement rejected other modern ideas, such as taking historical context into consideration when interpreting ancient texts. Like many other literalists, the modern Islamic activists considered heretical the idea that certain rules might have made sense when the Koran came into existence but now were not important to its central message. Thus some modern Muslim activists successfully argued that high school girls should not be permitted to take a class trip because the distance involved was longer than a camel could travel in a day. Back in the Prophet's time, this was judged a safe distance for a woman to travel, but for the activists it became a hard-and-fast rule, for all times and places.

The most influential political movement to come out of this tradition was the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-ikhwan al-muslimun, more literally translated as the Society of Muslim Brothers (or Brethren), was founded in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna, a schoolteacher from a small town in the Nile Delta. At the time, Egypt was still under British colonial rule. It was also modernizing quickly, going through wrenching economic and social changes: Cairo was industrializing, the peasants were moving to cities, traditions were breaking up, and social mores were in flux. An avid reader of Rashid Rida's magazine, Banna was appalled by this combination of national oppression and rapid social change. He began to organize and do some writing of his own. Banna's works contained virulent attacks on the British but also on freethinking and immorality, especially the kinds that had arisen in the capital. Like Rida and the intellectuals before him, his answer was Islam. What made Banna unique was that he was a populist and political activist. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood did not aspire to become intellectuals like the old ulema, or community of Muslim scholars, and were more grassroots- oriented than the modern intellectuals Afghani, Abduh, and Rida. They usually adopted Western dress and modern rhetoric, spoke in simple sentences, and shunned the pseudo-classical phrases of traditional scholars. Most important, they built up Western- style organizations such as political parties, youth groups, women's groups, and paramilitary wings. They became an alternative state, able to provide what the government could not. This allowed them to appeal to the Muslim world's rising middle class. They vocalized the anger of the poor but always drew their leadership from the educated classes who were frustrated at their countries' impoverishment and humiliation at the hands of Western countries. Not limited by race or nationality, the Brotherhood would spread from North Africa to Southeast Asia.

"Sheikh al-Banna wasn't like other sheikhs." recalled Farid Abdel Khalek, a long-time member of the Brotherhood who lives in Cairo. "He described Islam as something new." Khalek used to attend Banna's rallies in small towns and, later, in Cairo. He joined the group early, headed the student division in 1942, and served on its shura, or guidance council, in 1944. He paid dearly for his activism, spending twelve years in Egyptian prisons. "The others said do good things and you'll go to heaven, do bad and you'll go to hell. He said you had to do something good for your country. It was something in this world, in this reality. It was Islam as we didn't know it before; it wasn't tradition."

Banna's method to win converts was to identify a problem in a community and then solve it. The group would help build a new mosque or school or develop a local industry. This would convince people that his movement was solution-oriented and its people sincere. New members were recruited directly in mosques and also in coffee shops and the market.

Then as now, politics was a sensitive subject in Egypt, so Banna was careful to call the Brotherhood a movement, not a political party. But Banna became intensely involved in politics, opposing the monarchy, which had colluded with the British. This interest caused the first split in the movement in 1931, when one group seceded. Its members thought the Brotherhood should be a traditional welfare group and objected to the politicization of Islam. Later, the Brotherhood backed Gamal Nasser, the Egyptian military officer who led a coup against the monarchy in 1952.

By the 1930s, the Brotherhood went so far as to accept money from Nazi agents. According to documents seized by the British at the start of World War II, the Brotherhood received significant funds from a German journalist affiliated with the German legation in Cairo. The Nazi money was used to establish the Brotherhood's quasi-military "Special Apparatus." For Banna, the idea of a religious group having a military wing was not at all strange. The Brotherhood conceived of itself initially as a populist party that could take to the street to protest or fight. Even today it has not renounced violence -- its leaders advocate terrorism against Israeli civilians and in certain other circumstances. But the Brotherhood has also positioned itself as pro-democracy. This allows the organization to be, at times, revolutionary and reformist in emphasis, depending on the circumstances. None of this political work violated Banna's sense of the religion. Muslims have always considered Islam a total package -- covering traditional "religious" spheres and the secular world as well. In essence they have tried to apply God's law in this world. For most of its history, Islam has accommodated secular rulers, but at its heart the religion accepts nothing like the idea of separation of church and state.

Banna subscribed to the Koran's message that there is no division between state and religion, which was expressed in the group's most famous slogan: THE KORAN IS OUR CONSTITUTION. JIHAD IS OUR WAY. MARTYRDOM IS OUR DESIRE. In one tract, he wrote, "If someone should say to you 'This is politics!' say: 'This is Islam and we do not recognize such divisions:" In another he said, "O ye Brethren! Tell me, if Islam is something else than politics, society, economy, law, and culture, what is it then? Is it only empty acts of prostration, devoid of a pulsating heart?"

As the Brotherhood grew, this heart focused on two national causes. One was anti-colonialism, something that all Egyptians could identify with. Another was opposition to Jewish immigration to Israel. The Brotherhood collected money for Arabs in Palestine, and in 1937 and 1938 the group attacked shops owned by Jews as well as other targets in Cairo. That was the start of one of the defining characteristics of Brotherhood thought: anti-Semitism.

***

The term "Muslim world" is misleading; from the start, Islam has never existed in a vacuum and always had to deal with other religions. When Islam was founded in the seventh century, its followers came into contact with Christians, Jews, and practitioners of a variety of other religions, including polytheists. Islam had no place for the latter, whom Muslims considered heathens, pagans, or idolaters. According to the Koran, their future was clear: "You and your idols shall be the fuel of Hell."

Unlike polytheists, Christians and Jews were respected by Muhammad. Like Muslims, they practiced "revealed religions" -- based on God's revealed word. In addition, Islam worships the same God and recognizes the same prophets as do Judaism and Christianity. In a way, they are seen as precursor religions to Islam. But the two were not viewed as equal; Judaism is clearly of a lower status. The classical Koran commentators agree on this. For example, the ninth-century writer Muhammad al-Tabari stated that Christians "are not like the Jews, who always scheme in order to murder the emissaries and the prophet, and who oppose God in his positive and negative commandments, and who corrupt His scripture which He revealed in His books."

There are several reasons why Islam is less accepting of Jews. Christians might not think of Muhammad as a prophet, but at least Christians recognize Jesus, who is also an important prophet in Islam. So in a way, Christians are a step farther along the path than Jews, who do not recognize Christ. Jews are also accused of murdering or ignoring prophets. Perhaps the most important issue, however, is that Muhammad himself had unhappy experiences with Jews. When he fled Mecca to found the first Islamic society in Medina, he had hoped that the Jewish tribes there would welcome him. He was bitterly disappointed when they rejected his revelations and kept their own faith. When they allied themselves with his enemies, he launched a preemptive strike, massacring hundreds. The verses in the Koran describing this are bitter and angry -- and have been used to justify attacks on Jews.

Many scholars rightly point out that despite all this, Islam provided protection for Jews and Christians. In theory, they were afforded a minority rank called dhimmi, which exempted them from many Islamic laws. For its time, dhimmi status was progressive, especially when contrasted with the treatment of Jews in medieval Christian Europe, with its ghettos and pogroms, not to mention the Holocaust in recent times. But it is also true that dhimmi status did not prevent mistreatment of minorities, especially Jews, in the Muslim world.

With the rise of modern Islamism, especially the Muslim Brotherhood' anti-Semitism was taken to a new level. Just as the Brotherhood made use of modern political structures, such as the fascist-style political party, the group also adopted Western anti-Semitic stereotypes and arguments, the principal one being that Jews are to blame for key problems in society. During the war, Nazi propaganda added fuel to this idea; German radio regularly beamed gross anti-Semitic slurs into the Middle East. Cairo, which once boasted a vibrant Jewish community and actually staged anti-Nazi demonstrations in 1933, was by 1945 a haven for ex-Nazis fleeing justice.

The Muslim Brotherhood was at the forefront of this rising anti- Semitism. Banna could not accept all Nazi ideas, especially not the concept that the Germans were a master race. But Nazi agents supported him, and anti-Semitism formed a key part of his political activity, which crystallized in the Brotherhood's close association with one of the more controversial figures in twentieth-century Arab history, Amin al-Hussaini. Better known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hussaini was a popular leader in Palestine but also a rabid anti-Semite. He was the same figure who worked with von Mende on the possibility of setting up a religious hierarchy in the Crimea and who inspected Muslim troops fighting for the Nazis.

Hussaini was not a casual associate of the Nazis. Some biographers have glossed over his career in the 1930S and' 40S, saying he acted at worst out of ill-advised opportunism. But he contacted the Nazis early -- in 1933 -- and specifically mentioned the need to get rid of Jewish influence in economics and politics. One can explain his views as a reaction to Zionism and Jewish immigration to Palestine, but from the start he displayed a fervent hatred of Jews, even citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion -- a notorious work of anti-semitism -- as testimony before a British commission in 1929.

Hussaini's collaboration with the Nazis involved more than advising von Mende on religious policy. He recruited soldiers for them and declared their cause just. Most famously, he warned the Nazis of plans to send about seventy thousand Jewish children in Rumania to Palestine, saying they would increase the territory's Jewish population. He argued that he had been a guest of the Nazis for three years, moving in the highest Nazi circles, so there's no doubt that he knew about the Holocaust and was fully aware that if the children did not leave Rumania they were doomed to die.

After the war, the French arrested Hussaini as a war criminal. He was allowed to return to Palestine because the British worried that trying him as a criminal would inflame Muslim passions. By 1948, he was again leading opposition to Jewish immigration. Despite what he had seen in Nazi Germany, he had no sympathy for those arriving, even though tens of thousands had barely escaped the Holocaust. Hussaini continued to associate with ex-Nazis, such as the propagandist Johann von Leers, who had moved to Cairo and changed his name to Amin Lahars. Von Mende's intelligence reports show that Lahars had contact with members of the German Muslim League, a Hamburg-based group of immigrants. One report stated that Lahars "intends through this society to start an anti-Semitic movement in the Federal Republic. Ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajji Hussaini finances the plans of Amin Lahars ... His goal: Anti-Semitism."

One could argue that Hussaini was an outlier. Yet he was a close associate of Banna and his successors. In all of his actions and his worldview, Hussaini behaved as a classic Islamist, bridging the Nazi and post-Nazi era. He pops up again and again in the Munich story, not only in von Mende's reports but also in the company of other players, such as the novelist, activist, and intelligence figure Ahmad Kamal.

Hussaini and the Brotherhood were probably in closest alliance when Arab armies attacked Israel in 1948. Desperate for soldiers, Hussaini turned to the head of the Brotherhood, Banna. "The Mufti told him, you have to do something," recalled Khalek, who by then was in the Brotherhood's shura. "They [the Jews] will take over this place and be cruel to Muslims." Banna agreed to help. The Brotherhood began to recruit soldiers to fight in Palestine. To head the operation, Banna turned to one of his rising stars, Said Ramadan. It was the start of a close cooperation that would last twenty years.

***

Said Ramadan first saw Banna speak at an outdoor revival-style meeting in 1940. After each such gathering, Banna would ask people to come up on the stage -- almost like a pledge to the movement. After about five meetings, the fourteen-year-old Ramadan, not much over five feet tall but powerfully built from wrestling, finally decided to go forward.

"What took you so long?" Banna said. The sheikh had known all along that his future protege was in the crowd. He had just been waiting for him to take the first step.

It was a story that Ramadan liked to tell his friends and acolytes. Banna, he felt, was often misunderstood as purely a political figure. The man had a deeply spiritual, mystic side as well and, as Ramadan tells it, he slept in a graveyard once a month to remind him of his ultimate fate. Disciples of the two often emphasized their physical power. Banna led members in physical exercises, adopting Western ideas of the body as being almost equal to the mind. Ramadan, slender and short -- as an adult he stood five feet six inches tall -- commanded immense respect, partly because he appeared virile and energetic. He had a strong jaw, highlighted by a trim beard. His eyes were soft but intense. People inevitably spoke of his physical attractiveness and presence in a room.

"Physically he was enormously strong;' said Dawud Salahuddin, an African American convert to Islam who met Ramadan in 1976. "What I found about him so attractive is you rarely see men of that intellectual caliber have a physical side. He was a champion gymnast as a kid. There definitely was a charisma. When you're dealing with someone who can stand and talk for three hours then there's a physical aspect."

Like most Western-oriented people of his generation, Ramadan usually wore a suit and tie, reserving traditional Arab dress for special occasions. He spoke directly and always made eye contact.

After meeting Banna, Ramadan became active in the movement, helping to organize rallies. He studied law in college and became an attorney. In 1946 he was hired as Banna's personal secretary and married one of his daughters, cementing the bond. "He was a good speaker," recalls Khalek, who studied with Ramadan at Cairo University. "He had charisma. He was good to be sent to difficult places."

Accounts vary concerning his work in Palestine. Some say he was crucial to Jerusalem's defense against Israeli armies; others, that he had organized only a Brotherhood youth wing there. Some wrote that he established the Brotherhood's branch in neighboring Jordan, where he headquartered their efforts in the 1948 war. Jordan issued him a passport, which he used for years.

The Brotherhood's intense political work, however, was seen as a threat by many governments. Egypt banned the group in 1948, and Ramadan went to Pakistan for a year, where he worked closely with the government, which gave him a radio broadcast. Then, shortly after he returned to Egypt in 1949, Banna was assassinated. Ramadan, who was too young to be considered a successor to his father-in- law, continued his overseas organizing.

"If the Brotherhood had ministries, he'd have been the foreign minister." says Gamal al-Banna, brother of the movement's founder. "He was an eloquent orator and spoke English. He had many contacts overseas." Most of Ramadan's work was devoted to Islamic organization. The goal wasn't some sort of theological or ecumenical agreement among Islam's oft-warring factions. Instead it was political. In theory, Muslims should be ruled by a caliph, a secular ruler who would enforce Islamic law, sharia, in a temporal government. The last caliph resided in Istanbul, but Turkey abolished his office in 1924. Ever since, Islamic activists had dreamed of restoring it.

Starting in 1926, activists tried to unite Muslims through an ersatz caliphate: leagues and conferences. If the Muslim world was too fractured to be united by one leader, then a representative body might at least provide some sort of umbrella structure. In 1949, Ramadan and the Grand Mufti spearheaded efforts to create such a body and in 1951 succeeded in holding a meeting of the World Muslim Congress in the Pakistani city of Karachi. Ramadan was elected as one of the conference's three secretaries. He immediately attacked Turkey's secular government. Ramadan was also active with the Grand Mufti in the Islamic General Congress of Jerusalem. Another key player in these groups was Sayyid Qutb, the most influential Islamist theorist of the twentieth century, who held that anyone, even a Muslim, who didn't followed the Brotherhood's views was an apostate and thus could be killed.

A key goal Ramadan pursued at the conferences was the fight against communism. Although Western countries were seen as degenerate and corrupt, communist states banned or tightly proscribed religion. That made them worse and therefore the Islamists' first target. The Mufti was especially vociferous in opposing communism. According to a declassified U.S. War Department Strategic Services Unit assessment in 1946, "Source states that the Mufti has also sent messages to his followers reminding them that the principles of Communism are completely at variance with the teachings of the Koran."

This theme would come up again and again in CIA surveillance of the Mufti. He was a known anticommunist and thus attractive. But his Nazi past made him an unacceptable ally. Ramadan was a different matter.

***

The first brush between U.S. officials and Ramadan came in the summer of 1953. The White House received an urgent request: prominent Muslims were coming to Princeton University for an "Islamic Colloquium"; would the president meet them? At first, it seemed the encounter wouldn't happen because President Eisenhower was out of town. Then Abbott Washburn, deputy director of the U.S. Information Agency in charge of liaison with the White House, recalled the high priority that Eisenhower gave to religion in his personal life and in geopolitical strategy. The early discussions about using religion more effectively in global politics had already taken place, and Edward Lilly had just circulated his influential memo, "The Religious Factor." Although it's not clear from the record that Washburn saw his memo, the overall feeling was clear: the United States had to grab this chance.

Washburn sent a note to Eisenhower's psychological warfare whiz, C. D. Jackson. He told Jackson that the conference was sponsored by the USIA, the State Department's International Information Agency (IIA), Princeton, and the Library of Congress -- a "four-way play." as he put it, to influence the Muslim world. "Hoped-for result." Washburn wrote, "is that the Muslims will be impressed with the moral and spiritual strength of America."

The White House hesitated. Washburn made one last pitch. He noted that President Eisenhower believed the United States had to push home its spiritual superiority over the USSR. "These individuals can exert a profound and far-reaching impact upon Moslem thinking. Their long-term influence may well outweigh that of the political leaders of their countries." The White House agreed, and eight days later the invitations went out. The meeting was entered into the president's appointment book: 23 September 1953, 11:30 A.M. One of the delegates would be "The Honorable Saeed Ramahdan, Delegate of the Muslim Brothers."

The meeting, Eisenhower officials made plain, was meant to complement the Princeton conference's purely political goals. Some of the attendees were scholars and did present papers, but the conference's principal aim was to show the United States feting Muslim intellectuals. "On the surface, the conference looks like an exercise in pure learning. This in effect is the impression desired." said a confidential memo forwarded to Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles. "IIA promoted the colloquium along these lines and has given it financial and other assistance because we consider that this psychological approach is an important contribution at this time to both short term and long term United States political objectives in the Moslem area."

Attached to the memo was an analysis of the upcoming conference. The goals were to guide and promote the Islamic "Renaissance." whose most influential group was the Muslim Brotherhood. Interestingly, the paper acknowledges that some of the attendees might be dicey -- by law the IIA was supposed to promote cultural exchanges. The Muslim Brotherhood, an overtly political body, did not fit this definition, making it difficult for the IIA to fund Ramadan and other political leaders' participation. "Since the exchange program cannot give grants to some individuals whose presence at the colloquium would be desirable, it is hoped that outside sources may provide a small amount of financial assistance." Private sponsors stepped in. The U.S.-Saudi oil giant Aramco paid some travel costs. The IIA contributed too, paying for two Princeton professors to travel in the Middle East to invite candidates personally.

In July 1953, when most of the participants had been chosen, the U.S. embassy in Cairo was asked if Ramadan could attend. Ramadan wanted to visit Muslim centers in the United States. The embassy forwarded the request to Washington, along with a sanitized version of his career history -- leaving out, for example, his close ties to the Grand Mufti and his battle against Israel. The embassy recommended that he attend.

The conference itself lasted ten days; speakers gave presentations on education, youth, art, and social reform. Compared to conferences today, the pace was leisurely, with only two to three panels scheduled per day and time for long, far-ranging discussions as well as socializing in the evening. The conference moved from New Jersey to Washington and ended as Ramadan and the other participants met President Eisenhower. The resulting photo op symbolizes this eras tentative steps toward harnessing the power of Islam. Ramadan, standing on the far right of the picture, looks on as Eisenhower gestures to make a point. The meetings went smoothly and the conference was deemed a success.

But Ramadan was not going to be an easy ally. In a CIA analysis after the conference, he came across as a political agitator. "Ramadan was invited at the urging of the Egyptian embassy. He was the [emphasis in original] most difficult element at the colloquium as he was concerned with political pressure rather than with cultural problems." According to the report, he refused to make small talk. At one evening gathering he was asked if Egyptian youth shouldn't be encouraged to engage in social work. "The only thing Egyptian youth is interested in is in getting the British out," he is reported to have said. The author of the report continued with a personal evaluation of Ramadan: "I felt that Ramadan was a political reactionary, a Phalangist or Fascist type, rather than a religious reactionary as in the case of the three sheiks who attended," the report's author wrote. "Ramadan seems to be a Fascist, interested in the grouping of individuals for power. He did not display many ideas except for those of the Brotherhood."

Ramadan, however, continued to pop up in U.S. diplomatic circles. In 1956, he met U.S. officials in Rabat, pressing home his demand that Jews be expelled from Palestine. These views made it impossible for Ramadan and the United States to cement a formal alliance. But the mutual attraction to fighting communism was obvious. Later that year, Ramadan and other leaders of the Islamic General Congress of Jerusalem -- the Grand Mufti's group -- pledged themselves to a tough anticommunist battle, stating that communism was antithetical to Islam. But he conceded that it would be a hard sell in the Middle East because communism was seen as anti-Western and most Arabs blamed the West for allowing the state of Israel to be created.

Ramadan had his own immediate problems as well. In 1954, Nasser cracked down on the Brotherhood after a botched assassination attempt, allegedly by one if its associates. Ramadan fled to Saudi Arabia, then to Syria, Pakistan, and Jordan. Cairo stripped Ramadan and a handful of other leaders of their citizenship and charged them with treason. Later Egyptian officials tried to defame him as a homosexual. Few countries wanted to antagonize Egypt, the most powerful nation in the region, and Ramadan had to keep on the move. Perhaps out of gratitude for his service in 1948, Jordan let him keep a diplomatic passport, and the small kingdom sent him to West Germany as ambassador-at-large. Then, perhaps out of genuine academic interest or as a cover for other activities, he showed up at Professor Kegel's door.

***

Five months after Kegel agreed to take Ramadan as his student, he received a letter from the young man, sent under the letterhead "World Muslim Congress Jerusalem" and datelined Damascus. "Dear Prof. Kegel, Again I need your help ... I have not yet found a good material for a thesis." he wrote in English. "There is a dear new tendency towards what is called the 'Islamic law' in many newly independent Muslim countries. What about a thesis comparing efforts to implement Islamic law? Waiting for my Professor's word for this subject: yes or no!"

Kegel was unsure how to respond. The forty-four-year-old scholar was already one of West Germany's most important legal minds because of his work on civil law. A rigorous academic, he liked his students to research traditional thesis topics. He wanted them to seek out court cases or some other form of empirical work and back up their ideas in footnotes. Ramadan was proposing something completely different: a guide to implementing sharia. If Ramadan was to become an academic, the thesis would have to stand up to intense scrutiny, and the young man's interests seemed to Kegel more like a hobby than a serious academic pursuit. But Kegel was nonetheless intrigued, and he gave his approval.

By late 1956, however, Ramadan moved back to the Middle East. He wrote a telegram to Kegel: "On the eve of my departure from Europe I felt I have to express my deep feelings of gratitude I shall always remember the decent reception and good hours I had in Koln." Ramadan continued working on his thesis as he flitted from one country to another, acting as secretary general of the World Muslim Congress. In June 1958, Ramadan wrote Kegel to say the "worsening situation" in Damascus caused him to move his family to Jerusalem. Later he wrote to say he was off to the Hajj to meet Egyptians -- which supported Egyptian intelligence's belief that during this Hajj the exiled Brotherhood met and discussed strategy.

In August of that year, Ramadan decided to move back to Geneva. Swiss officials seemed unaware that he was moving permanently -- a few years later they discussed the fact that he seemed ensconced in Geneva, concluded it was illegal, but decided to allow him to stay because of his strong anticommunist tendencies. Ramadan later explained that he moved because one of his sons needed medical treatment.

In late 1958, Ramadan completed his thesis. On December 15, Kegel gave him the mark "sehr gut" -- equivalent to an A, or "honors." Kegel wrote that "the writer is a man who is capable." saying that Ramadan's dissertation was "head and shoulders" above others that he had read from the Near East and the Middle East. But Kegel also wrote in his two-page evaluation that it was an unusual thesis. It was more theological and political, he said, than law-oriented - an attempt to make Islamic law, or sharia, apply to the modern world.

"It was good. It was very well thought out," Kegel said in an interview, thinking back over forty-five years.

But Kegel began to wonder about Ramadan. When I asked him about Ramadan, Kegel's initial answer was snappy and short: "I would describe him as intelligent if also fanatical."

Ramadan was trying to build a religious utopia. Kegel didn't have anything against utopians, but he didn't like the venture's exclusionary nature -- one religion above all else. Surely, Kegel thought, this was a recipe for intolerance. Kegel had been a young academic in the years before World War II. His teacher had been the famous Jewish legal scholar Ernst Rabel, who emigrated in 1939 after the Nazis made academic life for Jews impossible. "[Rabel] remained lifelong my greatest role model. He was a victim of fanaticism and I couldn't forget such a thing. I knew this kind of fanaticism and felt uncomfortable with it."

Despite Kegel's misgivings, he and Ramadan stayed friends, and Kegel's papers contain several of Ramadan's handwritten letters, which he sent as he traveled the Muslim world. Kegel also wrote a preface for Ramadan's thesis, which was eventually published in 1961. It was the best-selling thesis of any Kegel had supervised. Today Islamic Law: Its Scope and Equity is a standard of the Islamist scene. Translated widely, it is sold in mosques and cultural centers across Europe, wherever the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology has penetrated.

***

St. Paul's Church near Munich's main train station is a testament to an earlier, God-fearing age in Europe. Built in 1906, the church had six thousand members who were generous -- and ambitious. They hired a popular architect who had just built the city's neo-Gothic town hall, and they asked him to build the tallest church in town, hoping to surpass the Marienkirche, the city's medieval landmark. St. Paul's reflected the confidence and pride of the new imperial Germany. Only the intervention of the bishopric kept the spire at ninety-six meters in height, allowing the Marienkirche to keep its status as the city's tallest. During World War II, Allied bombers reduced the church to a shell. Its heavy stone walls withstood the blasts, but firebombs tore through the roof, gutting the interior. By 1958, it had been rebuilt, but in a more sober, almost traumatized-looking form. The roof and windows were replaced, but the church management chose not to reconstruct the ornate decorations. Instead it was outfitted with austere sculptures, clear glass, and raw brick. It became a reminder of ideology's destructive power, which had left the country weary of belief and suspicious of certainty.

It was to this church that upwards of fifty men trudged the day after Christmas in 1958. They arrived by streetcar and subway, braving a snowstorm and walking past the still-empty lots and shells of buildings left by the war. They were there not to praise Jesus but to participate in von Mende's effort to unite Muslims across Germany in building a mosque. Nurredin Namangani's Ecclesiastical Administration was gaining traction after von Mende had sidelined Gacaoglu's group. Now Namangani's association was claiming to represent all Muslims in Germany. Invitations printed in German and Turkish (in Arabic script) requested the attendance of not only the ex-soldiers but also "the other brothers -- Germans, Pakistanis, Persians, Arabs, Turks -- who live in your city to this meeting, because every Muslim who believes in Allah and his Prophet, Muhammad, must answer to Allah if he remains away or doesn't tell his brothers of it." The tone had nothing of the rebuilt church's measured sobriety. Instead, it was old-school apocalyptic: "The end of the world can happen any day and any hour. Therefore we cannot live in this world with closed eyes. We have slept enough and want now to rise up as one."

The meeting had been preceded on the twenty-second by a smaller session of the Ecclesiastical Administration, whose members decided to establish the Mosque Construction Commission with Namangani as chairman and the venerable Said Shamil -- the Dagestani whose family had moved to Saudi Arabia years ago - as honorary chairman. Four days later, the group met again, this time with students and other Muslims present; Said Ramadan was guest of honor. Faisal Yazdani remembered the day well: "The room was full and it was an exciting feeling." he recalled; he was then a twenty-year- old medical student. "We felt we were doing something idealistic -- building a mosque." It was to be a mosque for all Muslims from all over Germany. "Everyone was especially excited because of the presence of Dr. Ramadan. He was a great personality, the head of the Muslim Congress. He was really famous and here he was among us, helping us build a mosque."

Ramadan added to the buzz by showing off his financial connections. The group collected 1,125 marks in donations that day, 1,000 of which came from Ramadan. He was made honorary member of the Mosque Construction Commission. Ramadan had been invited to the meeting by a young Syrian student, Ghaleb Himmat, a self-described member of the Muslim Brotherhood.

"Himmat invited him to take over the leadership," said Obeidullah Mogaddedi, an Afghani medical student and the son of a famous Muslim leader. He attended the meeting and was close to Ramadan for the next few years, functioning as his de facto private secretary. "The idea was to have a famous guy head it."

As Mogaddedi recalled it, Ramadan said he was eager to spread his influence in Europe. Geneva was his base, but Munich, a day's drive away to the northeast, would make a good steppingstone. Mogaddedi was in awe of Ramadan, but -- perhaps in hindsight, perhaps all along -- he had qualms about bringing such a political personality on board.

"Personally 1 was against it, not against Said Ramadan as a person, but Dr. Ramadan was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and was also a political figure and not only a religious figure." he said. "I thought it wouldn't be good if the center was stamped as a Muslim Brotherhood center. We should work for Islam and not a group, whether it's good or bad."

But Ramadan was a captivating, charismatic figure. Students, most of whom were impressionable nineteen- and twenty-year-olds, considered him a star, a man who was leading a renaissance of their ancient religion. He had taken on colonialists and dictators. They enthusiastically endorsed him as their champion.

"The students were all well educated." recalls Muhammad Abdul Karim Grimm, a German convert and long-time Muslim activist. They were especially well educated in Islamic issues -- above all of the Muslim Brotherhood. "They had learned the lessons of Hasan al-Banna."

Ramadan realized that he had to pay a courtesy call on von Mende but had other business to attend to. So he sent Mogaddedi in his place. "After the meeting, I went to von Mende [in Dusseldorf] and told him about the meeting. It turned out that he knew about it already." Mogaddedi said, laughing. Mogaddedi hadn't realized that Namangani was von Mende's man and had been closely following the events. Ramadan, though, was a bit of a mystery. Von Mende quickly put out feelers. Was he an ally or a challenger? Soon von Mende's tidy card file had a new entry: "Said Ramadan, 36, head of the Muslim Brotherhood. R. drives a Cadillac, a gift from the Saudi government."

Go to Next Page