"An English newspaper reported sarcastically that the 'Sword of Islam' had been manufactured by a goldsmith in Florence" (Margret Boveri, Mediterranean Cross-currents, Trans. Louise Marie Sieveking, Oxford UP, 1938, p. 25).Far from a sign of affinity between Islam and the European Far Right that some take it to be, it is a piece of colonial photo op, already judged tawdry by all thinking people even back then.
"Having purchased 'The Sword of Islam' as near to home as Florence and hired Libyan Jewish goldsmiths to engrave Arabic designs on it, the Duce presented it to himself with grotesque solemnity" (William N. Connor, The English at War, Secker & Warburg, 1941, p. 45).
"This sword had been made in Florence after a model published in a German book at the time of Wilhelm II" (Dorothy Norman, Twice a Year, 1948, p. 68).
The same charade, by the way, continues to this day. Just as Fascist Italy pretended to defend Muslims from British and French imperialists, the American empire, too, presents itself as the liberator, this time promising liberation not from other empires but from local "tyrants and dictators."
