A Mosque In Munich

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. There, they had been fashioned into a well-oiled anti-Soviet propaganda machine. As that war ended and the Cold War began, West German and U.S. intelligence agents vied for control of this influential group, and at the center of the covert tug of war was a quiet mosque in Munich—radical Islam’s first beachhead in the West. Culled from an 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 naïve 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 our understanding the mistakes we are still making in our relationship with Islamists today

A searing account of a dark “chapter in U.S. Cold War history . . . to help the anti-Soviet aims of American intelligence and national security agencies” (Library Journal). Even before the final shots of World War II were fired, another war began—a cold war that pitted the United States against its former ally, the Soviet Union. As the Soviets consolidated power in Eastern Europe, the CIA scrambled to gain the upper hand against new enemies worldwide. To this end, senior officials at the CIA, National Security Council, and other elements of the emerging US national security state turned to thousands of former Nazis, Waffen Secret Service, and Nazi collaborators for propaganda, psychological warfare, and military operations. Many new recruits were clearly responsible for the deaths of countless innocents as part of Adolph Hitler’s “Final Solution,” yet were whitewashed and claimed to be valuable intelligence assets. Unrepentant mass murderers were secretly accepted into the American fold, their crimes forgotten and forgiven with the willing complicity of the US government. Blowback is the first thorough, scholarly study of the US government’s extensive recruitment of Nazis and fascist collaborators right after the war. Although others have approached the topic since, Simpson’s book remains the essential starting point. The author demonstrates how this secret policy of collaboration only served to intensify the Cold War and has had lasting detrimental effects on the American government and society that endure to this day.

From the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist: a revelatory portrait of religion in China today, its history, the spiritual traditions of its Eastern and Western faiths, and the ways in which it is influencing China's future. Following a century of violent antireligious campaigns, China is now awash with new temples, churches, and mosques as well as cults, sects, and politicians trying to harness religion for their own ends. Driving this explosion of faith is uncertainty over what it means to be Chinese, and how to live an ethical life in a country that discarded traditional morality a century ago and is still searching for new guideposts. Ian Johnson lived for extended periods with underground church members, rural Daoists, and Buddhist pilgrims. He has distilled these experiences into a cycle of festivals, births, deaths, detentions, and struggle a great awakening of faith that is shaping the soul of the world s newest superpower. (With black-and-white illustrations throughout).

This book captures well the history and spirit of Tzu Chi and its volunteers. It explains the passion and devotion that have made it the largest non-governmental organization in the Chinese-speaking world. Stan Shih Group Chairman Soft Capital Mark O'Neill's dispatches from Greater China over the span of many years have earned him a distinguished reputation as a gifted, insightful writer, versatile on a wide range of topics. A fluent Chinese speaker, he possesses that rare combination for a writer—of a keen nose for news as well as a heart for social responsibility. In Tzu Chi, he has chronicled the extraordinary story of a Chinese Buddhist nun whose selfless vision has built a global organization committed to doing good. O'Neill's book is the definitive story of her life and—more importantly—the organization she has built from humble roots in Taiwan. Thomas D. Gorman Chairman and Editor-in-Chief FORTUNE China Tzu Chi is a brilliant introduction to one of the most important—but to Westerners probably least-known—international charities and religious movements in the world. Tzu Chi is part of a renaissance of belief in the Chinese world and Mark O'Neill has captured it beautifully. Ian Johnson Pulitzer Prize-winner Author of Wild Grass and A Mosque in Munich Tzu Chi has inspired the generosity of millions of Asians and mobilized them for service to the poor and sick. But its good deeds are not sufficiently known in the West. Mark O'Neill's book will change that. He has written a comprehensive, sympathetic, and eminently readable chronicle of this inspiring movement. Richard Madsen Distinguished Profess or of Sociology University of California, San Diego Mark O'Neill has produced a most impressive and timely book to enlighten the many people who are not yet familiar with Tzu Chi, a remarkable organization of universal compassion. While many Buddhist societies focus on meditation and personal enlightenment, Tzu Chi concentrates on community services and global outreach with the scale, vision and management skills of a large business corporation. In a world full of injustice, poverty and disasters, Tzu Chi has been a guiding light toward peace, harmony and happiness. O'Neill's book eloquently describes the story of the many individuals behind this remarkable movement. Professor Dominic Man-Kit Lam Chairman Word Eye Organization This story of the largest worldwide organization you've never heard of will knock your socks off. First with aid to Katrina victims, first outside organization to aid the tsunami-devastated people of Indonesia, first NGO with aid after the Sichuan earthquakes in China, it's called Tzu Chi. This organization was founded by a penniless nun in an obscure town in Taiwan. Mark O'Neill has given us a page-turner in his account of how she transformed pennies in a bamboo tube into three hospitals, an international bone marrow bank, and a quick-response global rescue organization that moves faster than you can imagine. If you are overdosing on bad news, this book is a must-read. Don Gibbs Founding Chair University of California–Davis, Department of Asian Languages

Jeffrey Herf, a leading scholar in the field, offers the most extensive examination to date of Nazi propaganda activities targeting Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East during World War II and the Holocaust. He draws extensively on previously unused and little-known archival resources, including the shocking transcriptions of the “Axis Broadcasts in Arabic” radio programs, which convey a strongly anti-Semitic message. Herf explores the intellectual, political, and cultural context in which German and European radical anti-Semitism was found to resonate with similar views rooted in a selective appropriation of the traditions of Islam. Pro-Nazi Arab exiles in wartime Berlin, including Haj el-Husseini and Rashid el-Kilani, collaborated with the Nazis in constructing their Middle East propaganda campaign. By integrating the political and military history of the war in the Middle East with the intellectual and cultural dimensions of the propagandistic diffusion of Nazi ideology, Herf offers the most thorough examination to date of this important chapter in the history of World War II. Importantly, he also shows how the anti-Semitism promoted by the Nazi propaganda effort contributed to the anti-Semitism exhibited by adherents of radical forms of Islam in the Middle East today.

In Wild Grass, Pulitzer Prize—winning journalist Ian Johnson tells the stories of three ordinary Chinese citizens moved to extraordinary acts of courage: a peasant legal clerk who filed a class-action suit on behalf of overtaxed farmers, a young architect who defended the rights of dispossessed homeowners, and a bereaved woman who tried to find out why her elderly mother had been beaten to death in police custody. Representing the first cracks in the otherwise seamless façade of Communist Party control, these small acts of resistance demonstrate the unconquerable power of the human conscience and prophesy an increasingly open political future for China.

This lavishly illustrated volume explores the history of China from the founding of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) through to the present day. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand this rising superpower on the verge of what promises to be the 'Chinese century'.

"Reveals rivalry and confrontation, but also fascination for the exotic as she points out clichTs and distortions that have shaped western views of Islam and its founder."--Book News, Inc.Generations of Western writers --from the Crusades to the present.