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Commentary :: Right Wing

Refutation of an "Aryan Muslim"

The Aryan Nations is a white-supremacist and neo-Nazi organization that has its roots in the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian founded by the late Richard Butler. The group has distinguished itself from other neo-Nazi groups by the level of violence it has been associated with. That is why it is odd to see a Muslim named Suhaib Jobst who is in charge of their Islamic Liaison and who is quoting Islamic scholars and mentioning Islamic groups on the AN website.
Suhaib Jobst: Aryan Nation Figure and So-Called “Aryan” Muslim

by Umar ben-Ivan Lee

The Aryan Nations is a white-supremacist and neo-Nazi organization that has its roots in the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian founded by the late Richard Butler. The group has distinguished itself from other neo-Nazi groups by the level of violence it has been associated with. That is why it is odd to see a Muslim named Suhaib Jobst who is in charge of their Islamic Liaison and who is quoting Islamic scholars and mentioning Islamic groups on the AN website.

According to the website of the Anti-Defamation League(1) “Several Aryan Nations associates have acted on this call to arms. During the early 1980s, for example, Butler followers joined with members of the neo-Nazi National Alliance and Ku Klux Klan splinter groups to form The Silent Brotherhood, known more widely as The Order, which planned to overthrow the United States government in hopes of establishing an Aryan homeland in the Pacific Northwest. In order to raise funds for this revolution, members of the group went on a crime spree in 1983-1984 that included bank robberies, counterfeiting, bombings, armored car holdups and murder. The counterfeiting operation was based at the Aryan Nations compound.

Ostensibly, The Order's activities came to an end in December 1984, when its founder and leader, Robert J. "Bob" Mathews, died in a fire during a shootout with federal agents on Whidbey Island, Washington, and many of its members were caught and incarcerated. Yet The Order, and to a lesser degree Aryan Nations, has retained a mythic status in the far-right underground. Its legend is now perpetuated across the Internet, inspiring a new generation of would-be white revolutionaries and further reinforcing the Aryan Nations "brand."

In the past, Butler has managed to raise funds for Aryan Nations activities by encouraging congregants to make offerings and pay membership fees, in addition to selling flags and tapes of his sermons. Supporters are also required to tithe 10 percent of their incomes. The group's financial prospects changed dramatically in 1998, however, when Carl E. Story and R. Vincent Bertollini, acquaintances of Butler who had become wealthy in the field of computer technology, donated a significant sum to the group. Both recent transplants from California's Silicon Valley to Sandpoint, Idaho, they founded and lead the 11th Hour Remnant Messenger, an Identity ministry that shares the apocalyptic racism of Aryan Nations. The two men have underwritten several expensive propaganda efforts, including the distribution of a videotaped interview with Butler that was reportedly sent to 9,000 residents of northern Idaho.

Story and Bertollini's largesse aside, the past three years have been difficult for the organization. On August 10, 1998, the group received significantly negative publicity when a 37-year-old former Aryan Nations guard named Buford Furrow

North Valley Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles. Furrow, who had a history of mental illness and trouble with the law, fired more than 70 rounds from a submachine gun, fled from the crime scene and later shot and killed a Filipino-American postal worker, Joseph Ileto. After evading authorities for nearly 24 hours, Furrow surrendered to the FBI in Las Vegas. He declared that his murder spree was intended as "a wake-up call to America to kill Jews" and that he had killed Ileto because the man was nonwhite and worked for the federal government.

Two years later, in September 2000, Aryan Nations' security force made national headlines again when a jury awarded $6.3 million to Victoria and Jason Keenan, a mother and son (represented by the Southern Poverty Law Center) who had been assaulted, chased and shot at by Aryan Nations guards after briefly stopping their car on a road in front of the compound two years before. The jury found Aryan Nations and Butler guilty of negligence in the selection, training and supervision of the security guards. The judgment bankrupted Butler and his group, and the 20-acre Aryan Nations compound and the Aryan Nations name were legally handed over to the Keenans: Butler renamed his organization the Aryan National Alliance. Patrons Bertollini and Story purchased a new home for the Identity pastor in nearby Hayden, Idaho, where he vowed to continue his activities, including propaganda distribution and posting to the Web site.

As the bankruptcy sale of the compound and the Aryan Nations name approached, some of Butler's followers began defecting to a newly-established Christian Identity church, the Church of True Israel, based in Noxon, Montana. Headed by a "council of prelates" instead of a single leader, the Church was founded in 1996 by five men, all of whom were once tied to Aryan Nations. During the summer 1995 Aryan World Congress, the Spokane Spokesman-Review reported, a faction of state Aryan leaders attempted unsuccessfully to wrest power away from Butler; soon afterward, two of the failed mutineers, John Burke and Charles Mangels, left Aryan Nations and founded the new church. Like its predecessor it preaches white supremacy, but it has distanced itself from Butler's glorification of Nazism. Although precise connections cannot be drawn, several of Butler's close supporters are rumored to have ties to True Israel”



All Americans and especially non-white Christian Americans should be concerned about the actions and rhetoric of this organization. The beliefs and actions of this organization are completely out of step with the truth and spirit of Islam. The organization believes that Jews are “the spawn of Satan” and that blacks are “beasts of the field”. The Quran teaches us that “Allah did not create you into different nations and tribes so that you should despise one another but that you should learn from one another”. In the last Khutbah of the Prophet Muhammad (s) the Messenger said “be there no difference in you white over black, Jew over Gentile or Arab over Non-Arab the only difference is in your deeds”.

One of the true beauties of Islam is the brotherhood of the Muslims of all colors. If one goes to a mosque in America you will find a racists worst nightmare because one is likely to find people from twenty or thirty different countries and of all different colors getting along.

Despite this the Aryan Nations has adopted a call for an Aryan Jihad and alliance with Muslims in order to create a “global Kristallnacht”. In order to further this alliance AN leader August B. Kreis III has enlisted a Muslim named Suhaib Jobst who appears to have some knowledge of the deen to be its spokesperson and representative to Muslims. In his introductory writing Jobst invokes the inspiration of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, and the Salafi Dawah. Of course all Muslims with any understanding of the deen will condemn his statements of an alliance between Aryans and Muslims and all of the organizations and groups he mentioned are steadfastly opposed to this.



Hizb-ut-Tahrir (a group I disagree with on many issues) includes prominent members of African descent and has been an outspoken critic of nationalism and has called it “(2) declined thought and narrow thought”.

Khilafah.com states (3)“It is historical fact that Islam succeeded time and again to unite people of different tribes, races and languages under one banner. After its advent, previously warring Arab tribes, Persians, Africans, Turkomen, Europeans, South and South East Asians enjoyed periods of unprecedented unity. From its inception, it sought to destroy the prejudices between people of different colors and tribes and unite them to a new brotherhood.”

Hasan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood also had some choice words on nationalism and racism (4) “If, however, what is meant by ‘nationalism’ is the revival of Pre Islamic customs which have been swept away, and distant memories that have been forgotten, while a successful civilization which has long been established is effaced, and it’s Islamic ties dissolved by nationalistic propaganda and racial glorification, as some states have done, annihilating the characteristic traits of Islam and Arabism even down to personal names, the letters of the alphabet and the vocabulary, then this version of nationalism is reprehensible, destructive in its consequences and evil in its results, causing the East great loss, to forfeit its heritage, prestige and most intrinsic qualities of honor and nobility. But this will do no harm to the religion of Allah:

‘And if you turn your backs, He will replace you with another people, and they will not be like you.’

(Surat-Muhammad (47), ayah 38)

If what is meant by ‘nationalism’ is racial self-aggrandizement to a degree which leads to the disparagement of Other races, aggression against them, and their victimization for the sake of one nation’s glory and its continued existence, as preached for example by Germany and Italy (before and during the Second World War), as claimed by every nation which preaches its superiority over all others then this too is a reprehensible idea. It has no share in humanitarianism and means that the human race will liquidate itself for the sake of a delusion with no basis in fact and embodying not the slightest good.

Concerning the Salafi Dawah, and specifically the eminent scholars of the Dawah that were mentioned by Suhaib Jobst, the late Sheikh Abdul-Azziz Ibn Abdullah Ibn Baz and Sheikh Muhammad Nasser-ud-Deen al-Albani.



Al-Albani said (5) “Allah has erased all distinctions of racism, cast and color and made all human beings equal. He has established a unique criterion for greatness and that is Taqwa. Taqwa is the essence of the teachings of Allah's Messenger (sallalahu alaihe wa-sallam).”



For a Muslim to ally himself with a racist organization such as the AN is an extreme dis-service to Islam and Muslims and is only ammunition for an increasingly militantly anti-Muslim West.

Mr. Jobst says that he would like to see both an Aryan and an Islamic revival and after the success of both each group would live under their own laws. Jobst seems to gloss over the treatment of African-American and black Muslims by the AN. Does he think of his Black Muslim brothers as “field beasts”. Does he not know that some of the Sahabah of the Messenger of Allah (s) came from Jewish descent? If Jews are the spawn of Satan why would they be amongst the companions of the Prophet?

Mr. Jobst says that he speaks as both an Aryan and a Muslim. He should know that all nationalistic identities become null and void upon shahadah and that the bond of the believer is with the fellow believers no matter what their color is.

The following are hadith of the Prophet Muhammad and ayah regarding nationalism;

"He is not one us who calls for `Asabiyyah, (nationalism/tribalism) or who

fights for `Asabiyyah or who dies for `Asabiyyah."



And in another Hadith, the Messenger of Allah (saaw) referring to

nationalism, racism, and patriotism said:



"Leave it, it is rotten." [Muslim and Bukhari] and in the Hadith recorded in

Mishkat al-Masabith, the Messenger of Allah (saaw) said,



"He who calls for `Asabiyyah is as if he bit his father's genitals"



Also, the Messenger of Allah (saaw) said, narrated by At-Tirmidhi and Abu

Dawud,



"There are indeed people who boast of their dead ancestors; but in the sight

of Allah they are more contemptible than the black beetle that rolls a piece

of dung with its nose. Behold, Allah has removed from you the arrogance of

the Time of Jahiliyyah (Ignorance) with its boast of ancestral glories. Man

is but an Allah-fearing believer or an unfortunate sinner. All people are

the children of Adam, and Adam was created out of dust."



Also, the Messenger of Allah (saaw) said,



"Undoubtedly Allah has removed from you the pride of arrogance of the age of

Jahilliyah (ignorance) and the glorification of ancestors. Now people are of

two kinds. Either believers who are aware or transgressors who do wrong. You

are all the children of Adam and Adam was made of clay. People should give

up their pride in nations because that is a coal from the coals of

Hell-fire. If they do not give this up Allah (swt) will consider them lower

than the lowly worm which pushes itself through Khara (dung)." [Abu Dawud

and Tirmidhi]



There are many examples in the Seerah where the Messenger of Allah (saaw)

had rebuked those who upheld nationalism. One one occasion a party of Jews

conspired to bring about disunity in the ranks of the Muslims after seeing

the Aus and Khazraj within Islam. A youth from amongst them was sent to

incite remembrance of the battle of Bu'ath where the Aus had been victorious

over the Khazraj, and he recited poetry to bring about division between

them. As a result there was a call to arms.



When the news reached the Messenger of Allah (saaw), he (saaw) said,



"O Muslims, remember Allah, remember Allah. Will you act as pagans while I

am present with you after Allah has guided you to Islam, and honored you

thereby and made a clean break with paganism; delivered you thereby from

disbelief; and made you friends thereby?"



When they heard this they wept, and embraced each other. This incident

clearly highlights how the Messenger of Allah (saaw) rebuked any forms of

tribalism. Allah (swt) then revealed,



"O you who believe! Fear Allah as He should be feared and die not except in

a state of Islam with complete submission to Allah. And hold fast, all of

you together, to the rope of Allah (i.e. Qur'an), and be not divided among

yourselves; and remember with gratitude Allah's favors on you; for you were

enemies and He joined your hearts in love, so that by His Grace you became

brothers; and you were on the brink of the pit of fire, and He saved you

from it. Thus Allah make His signs clear to you that you may be guided."

[Surah Al'Imran (3); ayah 102-103]



Mr. Jobst is an unwelcomed addition to the public debate on Muslims and Islamic issues and over the next several days I will be working to get a comprehensive group of fatwas condemning him and his work.
 
 

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