http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_grand_mufti.php
Who was the Grand Mufti, Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini?
Grand Mufti with Hitler
Grand Mufti with Hitler
Muhammed Amin al-Husseini [many spelling variations] was born in 1893 (or
1895), the son of the Mufti of Jerusalem and member of an esteemed,
aristocratic family. The Husseinis were one of the richest and most powerful
of all the rivalling clans in the Ottoman province known as the Judaean part
of Palestine.
Amin al-Husseini studied religious law at al-Azhar University, Cairo, and
attended the Istanbul School of Administration. In 1913 he went to Mecca on
a pilgrimage, earning the honorary title of "Haj". He voluntarily joined the
Ottoman Turkish army in World War I but returned to Jerusalem in 1917 and
expediently switched sides to aid the victorious British. He acquired the
reputation as a violent, fanatical anti-Zionist zealot and was jailed by the
British for instigating a
1920 Arab
attack against Jews who were praying at the Western Wall.
The first Palestine High Commissioner. Sir Herbert Samuel arrived in
Palestine on July 1, 1920. He was a weak administrator who was too ready to
compromise and appease the extremist, nationalistic Arab minority led by Haj
Amin al-Husseini. When the existing Arab Mufti of Jerusalem (religious
leader) died in 1921, Samuels was influenced by anti-Zionist British
officials on his staff. He pardoned al-Husseini and, in January 1922,
appointed him as the new Mufti, and even invented a new title of Grand
Mufti. He was simultaneously made President of a newly created Supreme
Muslim Council. Al-Husseini thereby became the religious and political
leader of the Arabs.
The appointment of the young al-Husseini as Mufti was a seminal event. Prior
to his rise to power, there were active Arab factions supporting cooperative
development of Palestine involving Arabs and Jews. But al-Husseini would
have none of that; he was devoted to driving Jews out of Palestine, without
compromise, even if it set back the Arabs 1000 years.
William Ziff, in his book "The Rape of Palestine," summarizes:
* Implicated in the [1920] disturbances was a political adventurer
named Haj Amin al Husseini. Haj Amin, was sentenced by a British court to
fifteen years hard labor. Conveniently allowed to escape by the police, he
was a fugitive in Syria. Shortly after, the British then allowed him to
return to Palestine where, despite the opposition of the muslim High Council
who regarded him as a hoodlum, Haj Amin was appointed by the British High
Commissioner as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem for life. [P. 22]
Al-Husseini represented newly emerging proponents of militant, Palestinian
Arab nationalism, a previously unknown concept. Once he was in power, he
began a campaign of terror and intimidation against anyone opposed to his
rule and policies. He killed Jews at every opportunity, but also eliminated
Arabs who did not support his campaign of violence. Husseini was not willing
to negotiate or make any kind of compromise for the sake of peace.
As a young man, al-Husseini worked with a native Jew, Abbady, who documented
this comment:
* Remember, Abbady, this was and will remain an Arab land. We do not
mind you natives of the country, but those alien invaders, the Zionists,
will be massacred to the last man. We want no progress, no prosperity.
Nothing but the sword will decide the fate of this country.
In 1929, major
Arab riots were instigated against the Jews of Palestine. They began when
al-Husseini falsely accused Jews of defiling and endangering local mosques,
including al-Aqsa. The call went out to the Arab masses: "Izbah Al-Yahud!" -
"Slaughter the Jews!" After the killing of Jews in Hebron, the Mufti
disseminated photographs of slaughtered Jews with the claim that the dead
were Arabs killed by Jews.
In April, 1936 six prominent Arab leaders formed the Arab Higher Committee,
with the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini as head of the organization,
joining forces to protest British support of Zionist progress in Palestine.
In the same month, riots broke out in Jaffa commencing a three-year period
of violence and civil strife in Palestine that is known as the
Arab Revolt.
The Arab Higher Committee led the campaign of terrorism against Jewish and
British targets.
Using the turmoil of the Arab Revolt as cover, al-Husseini consolidated his
control over the Palestinian Arabs with a campaign of murder against Jews
and non-compliant Arabs, the recruitment of armed militias, and the raising
of funds from around the Muslim world using anti-Jewish propaganda. In 1937
the Grand Mufti expressed his solidarity with Germany, asking the Nazi Third
Reich to oppose establishment of a Jewish state, stop Jewish immigration to
Palestine, and provide arms to the Arab population. Following an
assassination attempt on the British Inspector-General of the Palestine
Police Force and the murder by Arab extremists of Jews and moderate Arabs,
the Arab Higher Committee was declared illegal by the British. The Grand
Mufti lost his office of President of the Supreme muslim Council, his
membership on the Waqf committee, and was forced into exile in Syria in
1937. The British deported the Arab mayor of Jerusalem along with other
members of the Arab Higher Committee.
According to documentation from the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, the Nazi
Germany SS helped finance al-Husseini's efforts in the 1936-39 revolt in
Palestine. Adolf Eichmann actually visited Palestine and met with
al-Husseini at that time and subsequently maintained regular contact with
him later in Berlin.
In 1940, al-Husseini requested the Axis powers to acknowledge the Arab
right:
* ... to settle the question of Jewish elements in Palestine and other
Arab countries in accordance with the national and racial interests of the
Arabs and along the lines similar to those used to solve the Jewish question
in Germany and Italy.
While in Baghdad, Syria al-Husseini aided the pro-Nazi revolt of 1941.
He then spent the
rest of World War II as Hitler's special guest in Berlin, advocating the
extermination of Jews in radio broadcasts back to the Middle East and
recruiting Balkan Muslims for infamous SS "mountain divisions" that tried to
wipe out Jewish communities throughout the region.
At the Nuremberg Trials, Eichmann's deputy Dieter Wisliceny (subsequently
executed as a war criminal) testified:
* The Mufti was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination
of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser of Eichmann and
Himmler in the execution of this plan. ... He was one of Eichmann's best
friends and had constantly incited him to accelerate the extermination
measures. I heard him say, accompanied by Eichmann, he had visited incognito
the gas chamber of Auschwitz.
With the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Mufti moved to Egypt where he
was received as a national hero. After the war al-Husseini was indicted by
Yugoslavia for war crimes, but escaped prosecution. The Mufti was never
tried because the Allies were afraid of the storm in the Arab world if the
hero of Arab nationalism was treated as a war criminal.
>From Egypt al-Husseini was among the sponsors of the
1948 war against the new
State of Israel. Spurned by the Jordanian monarch, who gave the position of
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem to someone else, Haj Amin al-Husseini arranged
King Abdullah's
assassination in 1951, while still living in exile in Egypt. King Tallal
followed Abdullah as king of Jordan, and he refused to give permission to
Amin al-Husseini to come into Jordanian Jerusalem. After one year, King
Tallal was declared incompetent; the new King Hussein also refused to give
al-Husseini permission to enter Jerusalem. King Hussein recognized that the
former Grand Mufti would only stir up trouble and was a danger to peace in
the region.
Haj Amin al-Husseini eventually died in exile in 1974.
He never returned to Jerusalem after his 1937 departure.
His place as leader of the radical, nationalist Palestinian Arabs
was taken by his nephew Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat
As Qudwa al-Hussaeini, better known as Yasser Arafat.
In August 2002, Arafat gave an interview in which he referred
to "our hero al-Husseini" as a symbol of Palestinian Arab resistance.
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