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Fighting With Faith: New Exhibit Sheds Light On Campaign Against Muslim POWs in WW1

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Fighting with Faith

Behind the walls of a prisoner-of-war camp during World War I, Germany and the Ottoman Empire waged an unconventional battle: a fight for the minds and hearts of Muslim prisoners from around the world.

Known as Half Moon Camp or Halbmondlager in German, thousands of Muslim prisoners cycled through the camp. The institution even housed Wunsdorf Mosque, Germany’s first masjid; built in 1915. Prisoners lived a comfortable existence with extra food, rations for exercise programs, online lectures, and even visits from foreign dignitaries, all in an effort to woo them to rebel against their colonial empires.

It’s this storied history that is featured by the National WWI Museum and Memorial in “Fighting with Faith;” an online exhibit that went live this week.

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Patricia Cecil, a specialist curator of faith, religion, and WWI at the museum, stumbled upon the camp and propaganda campaign after discovering the history of Wunsdorf Mosque. She says the exhibit details the first concerted effort to bring the warfare element of jihad onto the global stage. 

“The jihad that Germany and the Ottoman Empire created together in World War I set the tone of jihad with political motivations – motivations to overthrow rival empires,” Cecil said. “It was the first time on a global stage that we saw jihad with specifical global and political motives.”

While Cecil acknowledges the varying elements of jihad -which is, in its purest form, an internal struggle to honor divine expectations-, the camp embodied an organized effort to attempt to encourage Muslim prisoners to unite under the German and Ottoman Empire against their colonial masters. 

“It specifically targeted them to try and wage jihad against the British, French, and Russian empire as a way to destabilize the global and enshrine German supremacy.”

But the campaign was a clear failure. 

A resounding 84 percent of the nearly 6,000 prisoners in the camp were unconvinced of the propaganda campaign. 

The engineers of the propaganda campaign were unable to convince Muslim prisoners to engage in an all-out jihad against their Colonial overlords. 

“Their own concept of personal faith and their own understanding of jihad didn’t align with the propaganda they were being fed,” Cecil said. 

“The ties of culture and country also proved too strong to result in the amalgamation of a globalized force ready to engage in politically-motivated jihad.”

The effort was also destabilized after the Germans and Ottomans disagreed on how to execute the campaign. 

By the early 1920s, the camp was essentially a ghost town. In 1917, many of the prisoners fell ill and were moved to Romania. By then, resources were scarce and it was clear the effort was largely unsuccessful. By 1919, most of the prisoners were sent back to their countries.

Military recruitment from the camp broke down, prompting the Ottomans to import settlers and workers from the camp instead of military recruits. The shift in strategy was not amenable to the Germans who delayed future transports of Muslim prisoners of war to Turkey and used them as workers in factories and farms in Germany. 

The masjid was funded by Germany’s military administration as a cornerstone of the propaganda campaign. But rumor spread that it was a gift from Kaiser Wilhem II; a story that buttressed Germany’s hope that the Kaiser was a friend to Muslims and Germany overall.  It was demolished in the 1930s after the building fell into disrepair. The military built barracks and garages for tanks around the former camp.

Forced labor was used to construct the mosque, which was built briskly within five weeks in the summer of 1915. The architecture represented varying regional styles in an effort to symbolically represent pan-Islamism. 

Most historical accounts depict Germany as the sole mastermind and the Ottoman Empire as a mere pawn in the effort. The exhibit challenges these historical accounts by portraying the joint effort led by the Ottomans and the Germans and the balance between the two powers. 

“For a really long time, the scholarship that existed was very biased in portraying Germany as the brains behind the operation,” Cecil said. “The Ottoman Empire was a major actor.”

Exhibit organizers hope the exhibit sheds new light on Muslims’ contribution to World War I and provides a glimpse into the untold story of the Half Moon Camp. 

“It really is a story that hasn’t been told really anywhere in the world,” Cecil said.  “This is a different way for the public to engage with the history of World War I and hopefully they will feel like they have uncovered a sort of previously hidden chapter of history.” 

The “Fighting with Fire” exhibit officially opened online on Jan. 26

 

Related reading:

Book Review: Lost Islamic History

The Unsung Heroines Of Islamic History

Keep supporting MuslimMatters for the sake of Allah

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Fatimah Waseem is the editor of a hyperlocal website with Virginia-based startup ARLnow. Her work has appeared in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun and other national outlets. She received her master's degree in public policy from Northwestern University in 2020 and graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park with degrees in journalism and government in 2015. She lives with her husband and two boys in Virginia.

1 Comment

1 Comment

  1. Ayman Hossam Fadel

    February 4, 2023 at 1:03 PM

    The location of this exhibit is Kansas City, Missouri. Perhaps a revision of the article could include it in the text, as it took a few links to find this out.

    https://www.theworldwar.org/plan-your-visit

    Thank you for the article. I wish I could travel there to see the exhibit.

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