Wary of the Nazi past of most of their German interlocutors, the CIA sought to incorporate these Muslim exiles into its own anti-Soviet propaganda machinery, while alighting upon Islam as a powerful weapon in its anti-communist tool kit. The CIA turned to a younger generation of Muslims, notably Said Ramadan, who played a leading role in the construction of the Munich Islamic Centre, which opened in 1958. The son-in-law of the murdered Muslim Brotherhood founder, Hassan al Banna, and father of Oxford's Tariq Ramadan, Said was an intriguing combination of modern man and inflexible views. The Munich mosque became the hub from which the Brotherhood set up shop in several other European countries, Markfield Conference Centre in Leicestershire being its local incarnation in Britain. While the Brotherhood seems modern enough in its modus operandi, the effect of its presence is to heighten religious separatism everywhere. They may or may not be Fascists, as one of Eisenhower's officials perceptively observed way back in 1953, but they are certainly supremacists with a special loathing for Jews. Ken Livingstone's hero, Sheikh Youssef Qaradawi, is a very visible version of the type.

Recently I came across a remarkable novel, The German Mujahid, by the Algerian Boualem Sansal. Writing novels in Algeria is a risky business; my favourite, Tahar Djaout — author of The Last Summer of Reason — was murdered by the Armed Islamic Group in 1993. An engineer turned government official, Sansal explores the deep psychological affinities between Nazi exterminism and fanatical Islamists, through one, assimilated, brother Rachel, who kills himself after finding out that his German father worked at Auschwitz, and Malrich, a ne'er-do-well who has to confront the Muslim Brothers on a bleak Parisian housing estate. The depiction of the latter is much better than the former: especially an imam who goes around "talking it large" as "Allah's Terminator". The role of the French state in seeking "dialogue" with the worst bearded bullies is also instructive. 

The German Mujahid is a brave and path-breaking book in terms of its local culture. Recently I read Israeli President Shimon Peres warmly welcoming the Arab Spring; that event will be even more hopeful when, rather than televising serials of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Arab TV transmits one of The German Mujahid.