After the withdrawal of the DAP from the Barisan Alternatif (BA) coalition, PAS has found itself in the limelight again. This time round, it was not the pronouncements of the leadership of PAS that got the party into trouble, but rather the contents of the on-line version of the party's official news organ, Harakah .

Harakahdaily.com happens to be one of the most widely read on-line dailies in the country today. Judging by the number of hits that it receives on a daily basis, it has to be one of the most popular websites in Malaysia at the moment and to its credit the site does feature a fairly wide selection of articles - some of which may even go against the grain of the official line of the Islamist party it represents.

But on Oct 4, the independent Malaysian radio station, Radiq Radio revealed in its daily bulletin that the on-line Islamist paper had featured an article entitled ' Auschwitz: The Myths and Facts '. The author of the article was none other than Mark Weber (1), who happens to be the director of the Institute for Historical Review.

For those who have not heard of Mr Weber or the Institute for Historical Review, some facts may come in handy: The Institute for Historical Review (IHR) has been around for some time now and it happens to be one of the key institutions in the United States that has been engaged in revisionist readings and writings of western history. One of the institute's preoccupations seems to be re-writing the history of wartime Germany and the holocaust in particular.

Now to write critical articles that question the validity of many of the claims related to the holocaust is hardly a new phenomenon. Scores of respectable scholars have raised serious questions about the actual facts behind the holocaust and they include academics and researchers like Israel Shahak, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Roger Garaudy and Edward Said. (Many of these liberal intellectuals also happen to be Jews, by the way - a fact that most Islamists conveniently tend to forget.)

Some, like Norman Finkelstein, have even begun to object to the way that the holocaust has been 'marketed' and turned into an 'industry' that serves the interests and agenda of the Zionist lobby based in America and Western Europe.(2)

Correct distortions

The IHR, however, does not fall into the same category in any way. Though the IHR claims that its aim is to correct distortions of the past in contemporary historical writing and to alert the American public to the true facts behind America's involvement in Vietnam and the Gulf War, it is clear that its main agenda is to attack what it regards as the creeping influence of 'Jewishness' in American politics.

The institute operates as an entity under the wing of the 'Legion for the Survival of Freedom', which also runs the Noontide Press, whose specialty includes selling books about Hitler and the Nazis. (One of the titles happens to be ' Adolf Hitler- The Unknown Artist ').

The director of the IHR himself has also had dubious dealings with decidedly repulsive characters like Neo-Nazis and skinhead groups in Germany. (See:http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/w/weber-mark/).

Though the IHR website cites Weber as a 'credited historian', the agenda of the man himself is clearly apparent when one begins to read his writings in full.

Soon after the report by Radiq Radio , Harakahdaily.com removed the article in question from its webpage. (Those who are still interested in reading it can go direct to the IHR website and find it at: http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/auschwitz.html). According to the same radio report, the editor of the Harakahdaily website claimed that the removal of the article was a routine matter as articles are posted for a period of 72 hours on average. Nonetheless, some pressing questions remain.

That such neo-Nazi bilge could find itself on the Islamist party's website is not a new development either.

Those of us who have had the misfortune of having to trawl through the numerous Islamist webgroups and chat-rooms would have noticed by now that right-wing religious activists have a tendency to mix with the most unlikely (or all the more likely) bunch of weirdos and desperados.

Instrumental coalitions

Neo-nazis and crypto-fascists often tend to drop in and out of these cyberspace chat-groups, offering their little bits of advice and pearls of wisdom on how to deal with the common enemy- more often than not described as 'the Jewish problem'.

It is one of the greatest misfortunes (and tactical errors) of the Islamists that they continue to think purely on a short-term basis which allows them to form instrumental coalitions with shady characters such as these. But the Islamists are not the only ones who are guilty of such nonsense.

Anyone who has visited the website of Umno or Umno's own jihad link page will see that they too share PAS's preoccupation with the same 'common enemy' and a lot has been said about the so-called 'Jewish menace' by the hotheads of the other camp.

But these instrumental coalitions - made as they are on an ad-hoc basis and with no grounding in ethics whatsoever - are invariably doomed to failure and will end in tears sooner or later. The worse thing about it, though, is that by the time the lessons are learned the damage has been done.

Lest it be forgotten, the cause of Islam and Muslims cannot and will not be served by any brotherly bonding with these skinheads in suits. The Muslims of the world may feel frustrated, angry and disillusioned with the failure of the peace process in the Middle-east and with America's constant support and patronage of the Zionist regime installed in Tel Aviv, but working hand-in-glove with Nazis and Fascists will not help them either.

If anything, such associations will only tarnish the cause of the Muslims and Arabs, and brings us no closer to any meaningful and lasting settlement of the problem of Palestine.

However it is unlikely that the Islamists will heed these warnings or learn the lessons of history.

Not too long ago, the Malaysian public was informed that some of the followers of the ex-deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim had made overtures to certain American politicians, one of them being the notorious Jesse Helms. Just what these maverick elements were doing then was anybody's guess, and the bigger question was just who was pulling the strings and forming this alliance of incompatibles.

Jesse Helms also happens to be one of those associated with the far-right of the spectrum of American politics. (Once he was described as being 'to the right of Genghis Khan' by a less-than-charitable fellow politician of his country.)

Helms had, for years, campaigned on a number of controversial issues and his own strong stand against the Arab world, Islam and the south were well known to all - except the advisors of Anwar, perhaps. This short-sighted move was, thankfully, stopped in time thanks to the various exposes by the local press. ( Malaysiakini being one of the papers that first came out with the scoop.)

Another blow

But by then the damage had been done. Many of Anwar's followers were shocked and dismayed by the revelation that their revered leader (or some of those close to him) had actually tried to contact the one American politician whose sordid credentials preceded him.

For those who thought that Anwar was the great defender of Islam and the concerns of the oppressed of the earth, the news came as yet another blow to the already shaky image of the man.

Harakahdaily 's blunder is on par as the one made by the reformasi group. Those who hoped that the paper would serve as a sobering alternative to the mainstream media were shocked to learn that it could even contemplate such a manoeuvre.

The lesson to be gained from all this is that a noble cause cannot retain its purity and unity of purpose when one begins to form unlikely and instrumental coalitions with the shadiest of characters.

Harakahdaily 's decision to feature the article by Mark Weber may have been a mistake (or one certainly hopes that it was). More likely it was the result of poor intelligence and lack of research that led the editors of the paper to make the mistake they did. But such mistakes will ultimately incur a cost - both moral and morale - on the image of Islam and the struggle of oppressed Muslims the world over.

In the end the acid test is this: The Arabs and Muslims in general may feel that it is all right to work with neo-nazis and crypto-fascists on the Machiavellian grounds that the 'enemy of my enemy is my friend'. But would these nazis, fascists and white supremacists care to sit and dine with the very same Arabs and Muslims whose antipathy towards Israel they share? Not likely.

Endnotes

1) Mark Weber is currently the Director of the Institute for Historical Review. In March 1988, he testified for five days in Toronto District Court as a witness on Germany's wartime Jewish policy and the Holocaust issue. Weber was born in October 1951 in Portland, Oregon, where he was also raised. He graduated from the Jesuit High School there in 1969. He studied history at the University of Illinois (Chicago), the University of Munich (Germany), and Portland StateUniversity, from where he received a bachelor's degree in history. He then did graduate work in history at Indiana University (Bloomington), where he served as a history instructor and received a master's degree in European history in 1977. During the five years he lived in Washington, DC (1978-1983), he carried out extensive research on the Holocaust issue at the National Archives and the Library of Congress. Weber is the author of over 100 articles, reviews, and essays dealing with the Holocaust story, and his writings on other historical, political, and social issues have appeared in a variety of periodicals. He moved to southern California in early 1991 to work for the IHR. He was the editor of the IHR's Journal of Historical Review from April 1992 to December 2000.

2) See: Norman G. Finkelstein, 'The Holocaust Industry: Reflections On the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering', Verso Press, London. 2000.