Talk:21st Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Skanderbeg

Muslim divisions

how come, despite the fact you have an image of the Grand Mutfi of Jerusalem, you do nhoy point out the 21st, 25 and 13th Waffen SS divisions were all moslem divisions. The Grand Mufti told moslems to join and they did in droves. I have photos of the 25th praying, which shows them in moslems prayer, but my bad expereinces with wikipedia means i wouldn't waste my time offering them — Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.137.136.30 (talk) 22:56, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Several things. The 25th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Hunyadi (1st Hungarian) was a Hungarian, not Muslim SS division. Perhaps you are thinking of the 23rd? With regards to the 13th, 21st and 23rd divisions, the fact that the rank-and-file were mostly Muslim is clearly explained in each of the articles, and although it hasn't been mentioned in the lead of this article to this point, it is mentioned in the lead of the other two. I've added it to the lead of this article, although I've also noted that several hundred Catholic Albanians were also members of the division. It isn't clear to me exactly what else could be done to make it clear they were predominantly recruited from Muslim people. I'm open to ideas of course. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:34, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

David Patterson citation

I object to this:

David Patterson, a historian specializing in anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, writes that the division "played a major role in rendering the Balkans Judenrein in the winter of 1943–1944." (Patterson, 2005, p96).

If this was true it would be extensively documented like all other aspects of the Holocaust, yet Patterson provides no source. The simplest way to see that the claim is just poor scholarship is to note that the "winter of 1943–1944" was already well over before Skanderberg was formed; i.e., the claim is chronologically impossible. There is a later incident involving Jews mentioned in our article already but Patterson fails to mention it.

The background is that this occurs in a chapter where Patterson essentially identifies Islam with antisemitic Jihad [1] and is happy to cite the most absurd sources to prove it. The book, by the way, is full of bizarre claims starting with its central thesis that antisemitism is motivated by the desire to kill God and that racism is a subset of antisemitism rather than the other way around.

The same impossible claim about Skanderberg appears in another of Patterson's books (Genealogy of Evil), again without citation; see here for two reviews that are among the worst I've ever seen for an academic book. More quotations from reviews of Patterson's books are here.

Another example of poor scholarship is the unsourced claim on p87 that there was a Muslim pogrom against Jews in Aleppo in 1853, when actually there was a Christian blood-libel (not a pogrom) that was ruled to be a libellous falsehood by the Islamic court (see Talk:1947 anti-Jewish riots in Aleppo for sources). Patterson's list of pogroms on that page is largely fake, see Talk:Antisemitism_in_the_Arab_world#Fake_list_of_pogroms. Zero^talk 01:42, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Leaving the claims about Patterson's reliability aside, the cited material is sloppy in any case, as I'm not aware of any source implicating the division in rounding up Jews until May, which is hardly winter. I have removed it as a source and moved a few currently unused sources to the FR section. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:36, 14 May 2024 (UTC)