I found this article about mussolini calling himself the "Sword of Islam", I thought it was interesting.
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Mussolini’s Opportunistic Role as Protector of Islam
It was however, Mussolini’s quest for a new and grand version of ancient Rome with colonial possessions in North Africa, naval supremacy in the Mediterranean ("Our Sea" – "Mare Nostrum"), the Italian desire for revenge against Abyssinia for the disastrous defeat suffered at Ethiopian hands at Adowa in 1896 that resulted in a total change of his position on a possible alliance with Zionism. In his view Italy had sacrificed much in World War I only to be denied the fruits of victory with an expanded colonial role in the Middle East and Africa. This led him to pursue an aggressive campaign that ultimately brought him into an alliance with Nazi Germany and Hitler whose ideology he had previously ridiculed.
In March 1937, Benito Mussolini proclaimed himself as “Protector of Islam” following a state visit to the Italian colony of Libya where he opened a new military highway. The occasion was to mark the brutal suppression of resistance to Italian occupation that ended with the execution of a Senussi rebel leader, Omar al-Mukhtar. Italy simultaneously began a propaganda campaign designed to pacify Muslim sentiment around the Mediterranean and deflect anti-colonialist sentiment against the British and French presence in North Africa and the Middle East.
This policy included secret Italian support of the most extreme anti-Zionist of the Palestinian Muslim political figures, Haj Amin al-Husseini who had been installed in office by the British in 1931 even though he finished fourth in an election of Palestine’s chief religious leader (mufti) by Muslim notables. The British tried to impress the Arab population that even though they were widely blamed for the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate for Palestine as a “Jewish National Home,” they respected Muslim concerns and rights. Ironically, Italian support was provided for the same reason – exploitation of the mufti’s appeal to the most radical fundamentalist Muslim religious sentiment in the expectation that they could “outbid” the British for Arab sympathy.
Mussolini, in a typically extravagant and bizarre dramatization of his manly image, and newly established title of Protector of Islam, arranged for a ceremonial girding on of the “Sword of Islam” in Libya in 1937. At the ceremony in Tripoli, he declared “Italy will always be the friend and protector of Islam throughout the world”. Italian Foreign minister Ciano noted that Islam was totally compatible with the Fascist outlook and added that “The Islamic world, in accordance with its traditions, loves in the Duce, the wisdom of the statesmen united to the action of the warrior.” These statements dashed the hopes of Italian Jews convincing them that Fascism had taken a dramatic turn for the worse and indeed, not long afterward, the Italian leader bowed to Hitler’s will and paid the price for an alliance with Germany by instituting anti-Semitic laws.
In the Italian campaign of aggression against Abyssinia, the Catholic Church was exploited by Mussolini to lend its approval to a war characterized as one on behalf of Western civilization against African barbarism. Nevertheless, a large proportion of the Italian forces were Muslim recruits from Libya, Eritrea, Somaliland and the Muslim dominated Galla region. Arab volunteers to serve in the Italian forces against the Christian Ethiopians included a contingent from Yemen. The same policy was also followed by General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War (see March 2008 issue of New English Review, "Spain in the Sahdow of Bin-Laden).
The Muslims in Northeast Africa had a long hereditary grudge against the Christian majority in the highland areas of Northern Ethiopia and the Emperor Haile Selassie (whose name in Amharic meant "The Power of the Trinity"). Haile Selassie was also referred to by the title “Negus Negast” ("King of Kings" – as the Biblical reference in Hebrew to King Solomon as “Melech haMlachim”). Abyssinia was divided tribally, linguistically and religiously and Muslims resented the new emperor and his power base in the Southern provinces of Harra and Wollo among the Amharan and Tigre peoples.
Haile Selassie’s original name was Ras Tafari Makonnen. He had come to the throne and defeated supporters of the former Emperor Li Jasu, a Christian who had converted to Islam. In spite of Italian propaganda, Haile Selassie represented an ancient Christian civilization and a ruler who aspired to modernize his country along European lines. His eloquent stand in the League of Nations that culminated in Italy’s expulsion was a great moral victory and one that made Haile Selassie into a hero of Black African nationalism yet Mussolini, like Napoleon and Wilhelm before him, and Hitler and Franco later, could not resist striking a heroic pose before the world’s Muslims to further their aggressive ambitions.
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Allies of Jihad
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