The Turkish Islamist Necmettin Erbakan (1926 – 2011) claims that the Jews (in his words, “Zionists”) started creating a world order more than 5,000 years ago with the help of the Kabbalah to control all money and labor. The Jews organized the crusades, and because the Catholic church was against money lending, the Jews created Protestantism so as to be able to make everybody work for them by introducing capitalism. That’s how the Jews control the world, apart from Islam, and that’s the fight between good and evil, the struggle between them and Islam.

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This narrative combines two strong antisemitic stereotypes: a Jewish world conspiracy (like in the “protocols of the elders of Zion”), and the Jews as usurers who exploit all others. It puts “the Jews” in a dichotomy with (Turkish) Islam, which is seen as the field of resistance against the purported nefarious plans of the Jewish world cabal. It seems very close to the conspiracy theories of the National Socialists, only put in an Islamist context.

Necmettin Erbakan was the founder of the movement Millî-Görüş that is still active in Turkey and the Turkish diaspora, where it controls mosques like in Berlin-Kreuzberg. He was Prime Minister of Turkey (1996-1997) and was the political mentor of president Erdogan. He and his ideas are still popular among Islamist Turks, including those in Germany.

Every Jew in this theory is an exponent of an evil world cabal. This narrative even justifies attacks on Jewish individuals. Societies that enact these theories as political programs will persecute Jewish people, the Jewish community, and everybody they see part of this conspiracy.

The whole society and economy is put in the crude terms of a paranoid conspiracy theory. People believing this narrative cannot be part of a democratic consensus and take part in meaningful debates about human rights, citizens’ rights and responsibility or economic policy. One group of people (the Jews) are singled out to be hated and to be held responsible for all society’s ills. In this framework the Israel-Palestine conflict is not solvable in a peaceful way.

The Kabbalah is a form of Jewish mysticism practiced by some Jews (Hasidic Jews) and even some non-Jews (“Hollywood-Kabbalah”), but it is not mainstream and also not a way to control the world. The crusades were called for by the Catholic church and in its wake were attacks on Jews in Christian Europe. Jews fought against crusaders alongside Muslims in the Holy Land. Protestantism in Germany was founded by Martin Luther, who was an antisemite. Capitalism has complex origins and is not Jewish – there were, and are, mostly non-Jewish capitalists.

References

Von “Bakterien” und anderen “Zionisten”: Zur Integration des Islamismus accessed 2021-05-19 (article “About “bacteria” and other “Zionists”: on the integration of Islamism” by Karl Pfeifer about Necmettin Erbakan on hagalil.com)

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