Personaggio con manifesto antimassonico the discredited libels of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In recent years, however, some Muslims, drawing on western anti-masonic literature, have linked freemasonry with the figure of Dajjal, the anti-christ. 84 These ideas were first developed in 1987 by the Egyptian writer, Sa’ id Ayyub. 85 In Britain, a key figure in elaborating and popularising these ideas has been David Musa Pidcock, a Sheffield machinery consultant who became a Muslim in 1975 and is the leader of the Islamic Party of Britain. 86 The idea that freemasons worship dajjal has become widespread in Muslim communities in England and elsewhere. In recent months, Islamic websites have carried enthusiastic reviews of an audio-tape called Shadows, produced by a London company, Hallaqah Media, which argues that freemasons created the new world order and are the servants of dajjal. 87 If we are at the beginning of a struggle to protect and restate the secular values of the Enlightenment,
88 it is inevitable that the study of freemasonry, so much bound up with the creation of those values, will become of new relevance.
84
See for example http:// antimasons. 8m. com; www. allaahuakbar. net / free-masons / dajjal. htm; http:// johnw. host. sk / articles / islam _ pillars / dajjal. htm; www. trosch. org / bks / muslim _ on _ freemasonry. html; http:// news. stcom. net / article. php? sid = 1295; http:// openyourmind. jeeran. com / dajjal. htm.
85
David Cook,“ Muslim Fears of the Year 2000”, Middle East Quarterly 5( June 1998): available online at: www. meforum. org / article / 397.
86
David Misa Pidcock, Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern, Mustaqim: Islamic Art and Literature 1992; www. islamicparty. com / people / david. htm. Pidcock” s book draws on the familiar anti-semitic and anti-masonic sources on western anti-masonry- his acknowledgements include a special note of gratitude to Nesta Webster and the bibliography includes Holocaust denial literature such as the 1979 pamphlet Six Million Reconsidered. What is distinctive about Pidcock” s book is the way in which these commonplace sources are grafted onto current issues of Islamic concern, such as the Salman Rushdie affair. Pidcock declares( p. 15) that“ Many well researched books have been written by Western writers and journalists exposing the secrets of freemasonry, but to my knowledge none have attempted to seriously use material from Islamic sources in order to reach a better understanding of the subject”. On this basis, Pidcock can legitimately claim to have added a new( and disturbing) thread to the literature of anti-masonry.
87 www. islam-online. net / English / ArtCulture / 2001 / 04 / article1. shtml; http:// isnet. itb. ac. id / KAMMI / Sept98 / msg00030. html; www. halaqahmedia. com / pages / products / index. php. See further Appendix Documents No. 15 A-B, below.
88 cf. Pidcock, op. cit., p. 106, which notes the use of the term“ Enlightenment” by Tom Stoppard and Salman Rushdie, and( following Nesta Webster) links it back, by means of the Illuminati, to revolts against Islam by the Karmathites, Druse, Assassins, etc.
115