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

IT IS A WEEKDAY in December, and the Islamic Center of Munich is almost empty. It is bright inside -- the large windows and shiny tiles make it look warm -- but the concrete walls do little to protect against the early winter weather. The heat is off and the mosque is cold.

Ahmad von Denffer wears a parka as he shuffles through the mosque. A burly fifty-five-year-old with a thick beard, he could be a Bavarian forest ranger, but for the knee-length robe that pokes out from the parka. Surgeon green, the robe is von Denffer's uniform, his announcement to the world that he hasn't just converted to Islam but identifies with one of its groups. In his case, it would be the Pakistani movement Jamaat-e-Islamiya.

Von Denffer's parents were born in Riga, the capital of Latvia, where von Mende's family originated. Founded in medieval times by German knights and merchants, the old Hanseatic seaport had a large German minority until Germany's twentieth-century meltdown, when the country lost not only vast territories but also its dominance in eastern Europe. When his parents were deported at the war's end, they settled in the Rhineland, and von Denffer was born there in 1949. He was a classic West German baby boomer. He grew up comfortably in the banking capital, Frankfurt, got a high school diploma, and then did his military service. It was there he discovered Islam: "I had too much time on my hands in the army. Back then we had to serve eighteen months and I read and read. I read about world religions. The one that made the most sense was Islam."

He began to practice it haphazardly and slowly gravitated to Munich. He started visiting the Islamic Center of Munich regularly in the late 1970s, just a few years after it had opened. This was the time when the Muslim Brotherhood was trying to make a comeback after years of oppression; it was actively organizing. Even though ordinary Turkish Muslims were shut out, the mosque had changed its bylaws to allow prominent Islamist organizers from around the world to join the governing council. That included the Jamaat-e-Islamiya leaders Khurshid Ahmad and Khurram Murad. Von Denffer says Murad played a big role in his life. Soon, von Denffer went to Jamaat's British center in Leicester to study and then to Pakistan for advanced training. It was the time of the jihad against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and Pakistan was a hotbed of political Islam.

For years, von Denffer was the young German convert among the mosque's senior Arab and Pakistani political activists. But with time, he began to take on an important role. He authored books in English and German that supported the classic positions of political Islam: special enclaves for Muslims, implementation of sharia in Western countries, and support for military jihad wherever Muslims might be in trouble. He became a leader of the mosque.

Von Denffer is interested in discussing the history of the mosque. Most of the time, all that outsiders want to know about are the links to terrorism or extremism. He has answered too many questions about Abouhalima and the first World Trade Center bombing, not to mention Salim and Al Qaeda. And then 9/11, the financial freeze on Himmat, and his resignation from all posts. More recently, German federal police raided the Islamic Center of Munich, looking for proof of money laundering and other financial misdeeds.

Von Denffer finds it much more interesting to talk about the 1950s. He knows of the ex-soldiers but says they left voluntarily, not that they were kicked out. Obliquely, he acknowledges the students' ambitious goal of a worldwide revival of Islam.

"They had different views," von Denffer says. "The refugees were locally oriented, the students were internationally oriented."

He also knows about Said Ramadan. And what he says about Ramadan is probably true, at least as seen from the perspective of a movement that ignores its own history. "If you were to ask people who come here to pray, only a very small number would know his name."

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Said Ramadan might have been cut out of the Munich mosque and the revival of the Muslim Brotherhood, but he remained a semi-mythical figure in the world of political Islam, even after his retreat to Geneva. He remained in Switzerland, cultivating his image and popping up from time to time at the center of a controversy.

Right after he left in the mid-1960s, he was the focus of the "affaire des Freres Musulmans." Another attempt to kill Nasser had been uncovered, and the Egyptians claimed that Ramadan was at the center of it. Nasser's secret police provided hordes of documents, guns, and money to prove their point. But coming as it was from a dictatorship, the material was hard to judge -- how much of it was real? The Swiss police vigorously debated Ramadan's status. At this point they came to a conclusion: "Said Ramadan is, among others, an information agent of the English and the Americans." In another report, a Swiss officer reminded the authorities that Ramadan had cooperated closely with Swiss federal police. He was allowed to stay.

Around this time, in 1965, he got a letter (which would become famous) from Malcolm X, who was seeking advice. Later, he went on a whistle-stop tour of the Muslim world, denouncing Nasser. Soviet newspapers alleged that he was a U.S. agent trying to undermine the United Arab Republic -- a short-lived experiment at unifying Egypt and Syria under socialist leadership.

Like many Muslim Brothers, Ramadan was also fascinated by the Islamic revolution in Iran, which took place in 1979. Although he was Sunni Muslim and the Iranians were Shia, he cultivated good ties with Tehran. In the early 1980s, that got him involved in one of his messiest controversies: the assassination of an Iranian diplomat in Washington. The diplomat had remained loyal to the shah, prompting a fanatical American convert, Dawud Salahuddin, to gun him down. Dressed as a delivery man, Salahuddin rang the diplomat's doorbell. Salahuddin had hidden a pistol in a package, and when the diplomat opened the door, Salahuddin opened fire. Salahuddin fled -- to Geneva, where Ramadan was able to secure him safe passage to Tehran, where he remains today. Salahuddin says Ramadan was definitely not involved in the murder. He is keen to protect him from any charges. The two had met in the mid-1970s in Washington when Ramadan was giving a lecture. Salahuddin clearly still reveres him. But he essentially admits that Ramadan's role was accessory after the fact, sheltering him in Geneva and arranging his escape. "If he hadn't made a call, I wouldn't have come here." Salahuddin said in a telephone interview from Tehran.

Over the last fifteen years of his life, Ramadan slid into irrelevance. Islamism was on the rise, but Ramadan was often ill, and many assumed he had already died. His son Tariq, who is a famous Muslim activist in his own right, described his decline in a touching essay. He wrote that his father spent many years able to follow world events only from afar, prone to "long silences sunk in memory and thoughts and, often, in bitterness."

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What of those shut out of the mosque? After von Mende died, the exile groups lost their main benefactor. But they didn't disband. Veli Kayum led the Turkestanis. Hayit continued to work for the West Germans and was the subject of attacks in the Soviet press. He also kept up his academic work, writing a volume on the Basmaci rebellion, the great uprising in Central Asia against communist rule that the novelist Ahmad Kamal claimed to have joined.

One wonders what would have happened if von Mende had lived longer. Would his people have regained control over the mosque? It's possible but doubtful. For three years after von Mende's death, his deputy, Walter Schenk, ran the office. But it became increasingly anachronistic -- a small group of hard-line cold warriors battling on as the world moved toward detente. When the office finally was closed in 1966, Schenk -- who like von Mende had had strong Nazi ties -- was unable to find significant work. He ended up drinking himself to death. Perhaps von Mende had followed a similar path, but instead of drink, he had worked and worried himself to death. It's hard to imagine that the Research Service Eastern Europe was positioned to playa role in Germany's new, Islamic future.

Some of von Mende's other creations continued. Namangani continued to run the Ecclesiastical Administration, the group that had given birth to the Mosque Construction Commission. He eventually retired and moved to Turkey, drawing a West German and then a united German pension. Until the end, he and Gacaoglu continued their sparring, like two wrestlers locked for eternity. Gacaoglu would occasionally write to Bavarian state or federal officials, accusing Namangani of all manner of incompetence. Namangani died in 2002. For all their differences, Namangani and Gacaoglu shared the same fate. To the end, neither was able to build a mosque for his followers. Both had to use small rooms at the back of factories, rented cheap. Neither man attended the Islamic Center of Munich. As for Garip Sultan, the young soldier who worked in the Ostministerium and then for Amcomlib, he returned to Munich after several years of covert propaganda work in the United States. When Amcomlib began focusing exclusively on radio broadcasting in the mid-1960s, he became head of the Tatar desk. He retired and still lives in Munich. He also avoided the mosque. And the Muslims at the grassroots? Some stayed with Namangani or Gacaoglu. Over time, they were outnumbered by the tens of thousands of Turkish migrants who came to work in Munich's booming economy. Some attended the mosque for big holidays; many faded away.

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Von Denffer is back from the afternoon prayer. "The history of the mosque," he says, and muses. Yes, it was important, even internationally important. Now he says it is a local institution. History has moved on, even for it. After an hour of sitting, von Denffer is getting cold. It is midafternoon but the sun has almost set. The inside of the mosque is blanketed in a dull pink light, a winter sunset. The possibility of knowing what happened in Munich seems to recede. As if on cue, von Denffer says consolingly, "It was fifteen, twenty years after the war. It was a completely different time back then. The circumstances under which things happened here are hardly imaginable."

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