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Modern Anti-Masonry
Ever since the eighteenth century Freemasonry has been a favourite
whipping-boy of conspiracy theorists. However, in recent years a new breed
of conspiracy writer has joined the traditional purveyors of this ‘black
legend’ and a growing number of websites vent a new hatred of Freemasonry. One
such site even offers two free downloadable tapes, alleging that Freemasonry is
responsible for most of the world’s ills. It claims that the Gulf War against Iraq in
1991 was ‘engineered, controlled, and manipulated by an elite group’ who had
been formed in the Crusades.
I am not saying every American government figure knew about this [September 11th]. But there are a few people [in the US government] who want to trigger a third world war. They are sponsored by the business lobby. Most of them are Freemasons, and they have loyalty to the Zionists.Roots of a conspiracy theory The roots of this malicious tale can be traced back to the end of the eighteenth century and the writings of a French priest, the Abbé Barruel. Barruel claimed that the medieval Templars had survived as a secret society before infiltrating Freemasonry in order to bring about the French Revolution and an eventual world republic. A few years later Barruel added a Jewish component to his story after receiving information from an army officer J.B. Simonini in 1806. Barruel claimed the existence of a conspiracy down the ages from the heretic Mani, via the Templars to the Freemasons, which was ultimately controlled by Jews. This created a blueprint for further paranoid elaborations. These stories re-surfaced towards the end of the nineteenth century, only this time in a slightly altered form. In the 1890s the Tsarist Secret Police in Russia, the Okhrana, concocted one of the most infamous and sinister forgeries of all time which first appeared in print in 1905 as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This document purported to be the ‘secret’ minutes of the first Zionist Congress held in the Swiss city of Basle in 1897 and consisted of 24 protocols outlining an imaginary blueprint for Jewish World domination. Freemasonry was implicated in this grand diabolic design as it was stated, ‘Gentile masonry blindly serves as a screen for us [Jewry] and our objects...’ (Protocol 4, 2), and the entire document was allegedly signed by ‘representatives of Zion of the 33rd degree’. Although the Protocols are known to have been a sinister forgery they were fervently believed by the European Fascist powers and helped to prepare the ground for the Holocaust as well as the imprisonment and execution of thousands of Freemasons. During the Second World War, the Fascist regimes flooded the Middle East with anti-Jewish and anti- Masonic propaganda which was readily received in countries such as Iraq whose governments were openly sympathetic to the Nazis. Even the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem met and discussed such matters with Adolf Hitler. When such xenophobic tales became unacceptable in most parts of the world following the defeat of Fascism, the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948 offered new life to such ideas in the Middle East. The Middle East As relations between the new Jewish state and its Arab neighbours deteriorated successive Arab regimes began to outlaw Freemasonry which they perceived as a tool of ‘Zionism’; Iraq in 1958; Egypt in 1964; Syria and the Lebanon in 1965. Indeed, the notion that the Jews, with their cohorts the Freemasons, formed part a gigantic world conspiracy grew in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli six-day war of 1967. Consequently, when the Ba’ath Socialist Party seized power in Iraq on 17 July 1968 the new regime unambiguously reiterated its hostility toward Freemasonry: Whoever promotes or incites Zionist principles, including Freemasonry, or belongs to any one of its institutions, or helps them materially or morally, or works in any form for achieving its purposes shall be executed.¹In neighbouring Iran a number of anti- Zionist writings also called for a holy war against the Jews. The paranoia of a number of Muslim Shi’ite authors was heightened due to the pro-Western policy of the Shah which tolerated the existence of liberal-minded groups such as the Bahais and the Freemasons. After the violent toppling of the Shah’s regime in 1979 the new Islamic Republic immediately turned on Freemasonry and more than two-hundred masons were summarily executed, including Iran’s former Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda. In 1982, even though the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Israel was actually a Christian Arab, paranoia continued to hold sway. Article Thirtytwo of the Palestinian Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) Covenant of 1988 claimed that Zionism knew no bounds and that their ‘scheme has been laid out in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion...’; in other words Freemasonry was once again implicated. Articles Seventeen and Twenty-two both mention Freemasonry and other groups. The latter states that ‘the enemies’ with their financial power ‘formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others...’ Hamas has openly accused Israel of controlling the world's wealth and its mass media, of instigating the French and Russian revolutions and the two world wars, in order to cynically promote Zionist objectives. A similar radical ideology also motivates the Lebanese, Iranian-backed Shi'ite Hizballah (‘the Party of God’), which rose to prominence in the wake of the Israeli invasion of the Lebanon in 1982. And only last year, Egyptian state television broadcast a forty-one episode dramatisation based on The Protocols, despite repeated remonstrations from the Israeli government. According to Professor Robert Wistrich: Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories lie at the very heart of the Muslim fundamentalist and Arab nationalist worldview today linking plutocratic finance, international Freemasonry, secularism, Zionism, and Communism as dark, occult forces led by the giant octopus of international Jewry.²Distressingly, such ideas have, in recent years, taken on a new and ultravirulent form. On 27 July 1997 an English Arab-language magazine, The Political Witness, published an article entitled ‘An in-depth look at Freemasonry and Zionism’. It began by presenting the official view as propounded by the United Grand Lodge of England before radically juxtaposing this with the teachings of Sheikh Adbul Aziz bin Baz who in the late 1970s, pronounced Freemasonry to be ‘Zionist’ and a ‘very evil and dark fraternity’. Significantly, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz was for thirty years, until his death in 1998, Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, the country’s highest religious authority. He also chaired the immensely powerful World Muslim League which has been described as ‘the main conduit for Saudi government funds to Islamic causes worldwide’ and preached in favour of the Taliban regime in the mosques and madrassahs (Sharia religious schools). The Islamic Anti-Christ While such high-level condemnation has gone unnoticed in much of the secular Western world an almost pathological hatred seems to be fomenting in the minds of a growing number of religious zealots. In 1987, the Egyptian writer Sa’id Ayub published a book in which he linked Freemasonry with the Dajjal. Today such ideas are now being espoused by some Muslims living in the west who are being influenced by the teachings of radical preachers such as the English convert to Islam, David Musa Pidcock. In 1998, a sinister book, Dajjal the AntiChrist, was published in London. It baldly asserts that the Dajjal has taken over the world with the assistance of the Freemasons who, it says, control all large corporations, banks and Governments. Perturbingly, it also casts doubt upon the Holocaust. Alarmingly, since September 11th 2001, an increasing number of Muslim and Christian fundamentalist websites seem to be inter-linked in a kind of unholy alliance; a sizeable number even offer complete transcripts of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. They both agree on the existence of the anti-Christ and his forces and they both agree that Jesus will return to defeat the anti-Christ. It is a tragic irony that the extremists who peddle such hatred do not ask themselves a basic question: if, as they assert, Freemasonry is in league with Zionism, how is it that thousands of Muslims have been Freemasons? Freemasons who include the Emir of Afghanistan, Habibullah Khan; the Algerian freedom fighter, Abd El Kader; and the great pan-Islamic religious reformers, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Shiekh Muhammad Abduh; As nonsensical as such conspiracy theories evidently are, they are nevertheless dangerous. For as Umberto Eco once noted, the gap between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is all too slight. ¹ Article 201 of the Iraqi Penal Code No. 111, amended by the Revolutionary Command Council of the Ba’th Socialist Party as amended in 1975. ² Robert S. Wistrich, Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger, The American Jewish Committee. The author would like to thank all those who helped in the preparation of this article. © Daniel Seymour, 2003.
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