The Al-Muthanna Club () was an influential pan-Arabism Fascism society established in Baghdad ca. 1935 to 1937 which remained active until May 1941, when the coup d'état of pro-Nazi Rashid Ali al-Gaylani failed.[Edmund Ghareeb, Beth Dougherty. Historical Dictionary of Iraq. Lanham, Maryland, USA; Oxford, England, UK: Scarecrow Press, 2004. Pp. 167, 1.] Later known as the Iraqi Independence Party, Nadi al-Muthanna was influenced by European fascism and controlled by radical Arab nationalists who, according to 2005's Memories of State, "formed the core of new radicals" for a combined Pan-Arab civilian and military coalition.[ The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Volume 4, p. 125, by Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb, Johannes Hendrik Kramers, Bernard Lewis, Charles Pellat, Joseph Schacht, 1954, [1]]
Saib Shawkat
In 1938, as
fascism in
Iraq grew,
Saib Shawkat, a known fascist and
pan-Arab nationalist, was appointed director-general of education.
[ Saddam Hussein and the crisis in the Gulf p. 73, Judith Miller, Laurie Mylroie, Biography & Autobiography, Times Books, 1990]
With co-founder:Taha al-Hashimi, Shawkat founded the al-Muthanna club in 1939,
Under Germany ambassador Fritz Grobba's influence, The al-Muthanna club developed a youth organization, the al-Futuwwa, modeled on fascist lines and on the Hitler Youth.
Yunis al-Sabawi
Yunis al-Sabawi (يونس السبعاوي) (who translated
Hitler's book
Mein Kampf into Arabic in the early 1930s) was active in the al-Muthanna club
[ Intellectual life in the Arab East, 1890–1939, Center for Arab and Middle East Studies, American University of Beirut, 1981, p. 172 [2]] and in the leadership of the al-Futuwwa.
He was a deputy in the
government,
[ Documents on German foreign policy, 1918–1945: from the archives of the German Foreign Ministry, H.M. Stationery Off., 1966, p. 566 [3]] minister of economics.
[ Britain's informal empire in the Middle East: a case study of Iraq, 1929–1941, Daniel Silverfarb, Oxford University Press US, 1986, p. 135 [4]] Al-Sabawi had become anti-Semitic; on 1 and 2 June 1941, members of al-Muthanna and its youth organization led a mob that attacked Baghdad's Jewish community in a
pogrom later named the
Farhud.
Two days before Farhud, Al-Sabawi, a government minister who proclaimed himself the governor of Baghdad, had summoned Rabbi Sasson Khaduri, the community leader, and recommended to him that Jews stay in their homes for the next three days as a protective measure. He had planned for a larger massacre, planning to broadcast a call for the Baghdad public to massacre Jews. However, the broadcast was never made since al-Sabawi was forced to flee the country.
After the British overthrew the coup government, Sabawi was court-martialed for the mutiny, sentenced to death, and hanged on 5 May 1942.
See also
