Egyptian Researcher...: Hitler Was a "Righteous Believer" According to the Old Testament

Following are excerpts from an interview with Egyptian researcher Muhammad Galaa Idris, which aired on Al-Rahma TV on September 7, 2012.

Muhammad Galaa Idris: They now say that the worse genocide in history was committed by Nazism and Hitler – the Holocaust. In my view, Hitler was one of the most fanatical believers in the Torah.

To those who believe that [the Torah] is a divine book, I say: If it is indeed a divine book, revealed by God, why do you blame Hitler for what he did to the Jews? The genocides that you talk about, which were mentioned in the Torah, were all committed by order of God. If they were by order of God, how can I blame Hitler? Hitler was a righteous believer, according to the writings of the Old Testament.

A. The Canaanites no doubt used many religious symbols. That Muslims use one of them does not in and of itself prove a direct line of descent. For instance, the cross is one of the most common religious symbols around the world. It is used, or was used, by ancient Egyptians, Indians, Celts, Mayans and other American Indians, Buddhists, Norse and many others. Does this mean its use in Christianity “proves” that Christianity is “really” descended from one or more of those pagan religions?

Similarly, the use of the crescent moon as a symbol is part of the common symbology of the Semitic peoples, which include the Jews, Canaanites (now extinct), Arabs and many other peoples.

Perhaps more importantly, the crescent moon was the symbol of the Sassanid Persian empire which the Muslims conquered. It is a much more likely primary source for its use as a Muslim symbol than the religion of a people who had been extinct for well over a thousand years.

B. I quite agree all killing is not the same, that God commanded us not to murder, he did not command us not to kill. But it is extraordinarily odd that you accuse me of situational ethics. I believe that it is always wrong to intentionally kill the innocent. You believe that in some situations it is right to do precisely that. I think you have our philosophical situations reversed. You are the situational ethicist.

C. Faced with WWII I’d do more or less what we did, hopefully with less collateral damage, if possible. I must compliment you on your amazing ability to come up with inappropriate analogies. Had we followed the pattern of the Israelite genocide of the Canaanites (or rather what they were instructed to do in the Bible, it quite apparently was rarely followed through with completely), we would have invaded Europe and killed every living European. Or possibly just invaded Germany and killed every living German, including the babies. We would have liberated the camps and then killed all the surviving inmates.

The Nazis are quite evil, I agree, and should be destroyed by any means necessary. I fail to see why killing their victims is therefore also a moral imperative. To extend this analogy to its modern aspect, I fully agree that women-hating and boy-buggering Islamists are evil and should be destroyed. I don’t, however, see why we should also kill the women and little boys they victimize.

I don’t know if chastise is exactly the right term.

But I would like an explanation.

Is God good because He is incapable of being otherwise?

Or is something good, or bad, because God says it is?

The first “natural law” approach seems to me much more oriented to the Christian idea that God wants us to use our own reason to develop ideas about the universe.

The second notion, that good exists only as God proclaims it to be, seems to me much more suited to Muslim theology, where all Muslims are proud to be the slaves of God and never to even think of questioning His commandments (or what they believe to be such).

You may note that several of the more prominent people in the Bible argued with God quite directly, challenging whether his instructions were really the right thing to do. A Muslim would never even think of doing that.

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