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A MOSQUE IN MUNICH: NAZIS, THE CIA, AND THE RISE OF THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD IN THE WEST |
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Inside Cover Left: In the wake of the news that the 9/11 hijackers had lived in Europe, journalist Ian Johnson wondered how such a radical group could sink roots into Western soil. Most accounts reached back twenty years, to U.S. support of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan. But Johnson dug deeper, to the start of the Cold War, uncovering the untold story of a group of ex-Soviet Muslims who had defected to Germany during World War II. As German agents fashioned the group into an anti-Soviet propaganda machine, they naively began a faltering liaison between political Islam and the West that would produce unintended consequences through the Cold War and up to today. And as West German and U.S. intelligence operatives vied for control of this inscrutable but influential Muslim community -- with a quiet mosque in Munich at the center of their covert struggle -- radical Islam built its first beachhead in the West. Culled from an impressive array of sources, including newly declassified documents, A Mosque in Munich interweaves the stories of several key players: a Nazi scholar turned postwar spymaster; key Muslim leaders across the globe, including members of the Muslim Brotherhood; and naive CIA men eager to fight communism with a new weapon, Islam. A rare ground-level look at Cold War spying and a revelatory account of the West's first, disastrous encounter with radical Islam, A Mosque in Munich is as captivating as it is crucial to understanding the mistakes we are still making in our relationship with Islamists today. Inside Cover Right: "A Mosque in Munich should be read in the corridors of power and by citizens who take a serious interest in the continuing issue of how best to address the challenge posed by political Islamism, in both Europe and the Middle East." -- JEFFREY HERF, author of Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys
Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal reporter Ian Johnson spent five years researching and writing this book, interviewing survivors, scouring archives, and pressuring governments to release sensitive intelligence documents. He is also the author of Wild Grass: Three Portraits of Change in Modern China. Jacket design by Brian Moore Back Cover: THE ENTHRALLING COLD WAR TALE OF A NAZI SPYMASTER, A CIA-RUN RADIO STATION, AND THE MOSQUE THAT BECAME RADICAL ISLAM'S FIRST HOME IN THE WEST "I thought I knew something about blowback: the way U.S. support for anti-Soviet Muslim militants in Afghanistan two decades earlier came back to haunt us on September 11, 2001. But Ian Johnson has unearthed an extraordinary episode of similarly disastrous American judgment that begins well over half a century ago, whose full consequences we've not yet seen. It's a chilling piece of history few people know, and he tells the story with a novelist's skill." -- ADAM HOCHSCHILD, author of Bury the Chains and King Leopold's Ghost "A Mosque in Munich is an important book about an important subject. But Ian Johnson is more than a brilliant journalist and tireless researcher; he is a writer of the first rank. His story of an extraordinary Muslim community in Germany is instructive, enlightening, and beautifully done." -- IAN BURUMA, author of Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance "Ian Johnson is one of the best foreign correspondents working today. His literary sensibility gives life to this amazing period, with a cast of characters ranging from exiled Uzbeks to suave CIA agents with a taste for nudist camps. Along the way, he shows how the battle against communism unwittingly contributed to the development of today's terrorist organizations." -- PETER HESSLER, author of Oracle Bones "This fascinating book shows how the establishment of a mosque in Munich and the international machinations that surrounded it contributed, over time, to the rise of radical Islam and Islamic terrorism in Germany and the whole of Europe. Johnson's vivid, absorbing narrative underscores how decisions made decades ago can still haunt us today." -- MARK KRAMER, director, Cold War Studies Program, Harvard University *** IN 1947, MARGARET DOLLINGER went for a swim in the Isar, the Alps-fed river that runs through Munich. There she saw a bronzed, vaguely Asian-looking man. He was Hassan Kassajep, a thirty-year-old Soviet refugee hoping to start a new life. The two looked at each other shyly. "I knew he was the man," she said. They parted only at his death, one year shy of their golden wedding anniversary. This book is dedicated to the Kassajeps and other Muslim emigres who fought this obscure war. Many of them faced impossible moral choices and ended up thousands of miles away from home, living in countries they didn't really understand, hoping that their work would change history. It did, but in ways that they couldn't have expected. This is a common refrain in history -- the story of unintended consequences. But in this case I felt a special poignancy. I came to know these people intimately through their letters, photos, and, in some lucky cases, through meeting people like Margaret Kassajep in person -- aged survivors of another era. I was also struck by the sadness of a life lived in secret. These people could rarely talk openly about what they had done. Sometimes it was because they were embarrassed by their actions -- collaborating with an odious regime, for example, or betraying friends. At other times they felt bound by a code of silence, either directly imposed or implicitly understood in covert operations. Most had constructed an alternate reality: that of the scholar or the freedom fighter, the religious activist or the businessman. I wondered what remains of a life when it is stripped of a public identity. In the case of the people in this book, the answer is, a lot. Though most of them are dead and their life stories obscure until now, their actions reverberate today as we confront similar issues. Like light refracted from a distant planet, they illuminate our own lives. Berlin
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