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Mohammad Amin al-Husayni (ca. 1895 - July 4, 1974, أمين الحسيني, alternatively known as al-Husseini, el-Husseini, Al-Hajj Amin or Haj Amin), was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim religious leader. A member of Jerusalem's most prominent family, his most important positions were as Mufti of Jerusalem and President of the Supreme Muslim Council.

Known as the "Grand Mufti of Jerusalem", he received this title in 1921 after the death of his father (the Mufti of Jerusalem) under the auspices of the then High Commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel.

He played a major role in Arab resistance to Zionist political ambitions in the British Mandate of Palestine and recruiting Muslims to fight in the German army during World War II. Al-Husayni met many leading Nazis and conducted radio broadcasts and recruitment operations on their behalf during the war.

Al-Husayni served as president of the World Islamic Congress, which he founded in 1931.

Early life

Amin al-Husayni was born in Jerusalem in 1895 (some sources say 1893). He attended Al-Azhar University in Cairo (where he founded an anti-Zionist society) and studied Islamic Law for about one year. In 1913 at the age of 18, al-Husayni made the pilgrimage to Mecca and received the honorific of Hajj. Prior to World War I, al-Husayni studied at the School of Administration in Istanbul.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, al-Husayni joined the Ottoman Turkish army, received a commission as an artillery officer and was assigned to the Forty-Seventh Brigade stationed in and around the predominately Greek Christian city of Smyrna. In November 1916, al-Husayni left the Ottoman army on a three month disability leave and returned to Jerusalem where he remained for the duration of the war. In 1916 he took part in the Arab Revolt and became an acknowledged leader of Palestinian nationalism. He was employed as a clerk in the British military administration in the Department of Public Safety.

In 1919, al-Husayni attended the Pan-Syrian Congress held in Damascus where he supported Emir Faisal for King of Syria. That year, al-Husayni joined (perhaps founded) the Arab secret society El-Nadi al-Arabi (The Arab Club) in Jerusalem and wrote articles for the first new newspaper to be established in Palestine, Suriyya al-Janubiyya (Southern Syria). The paper was published in Jerusalem beginning in September 1919 by the lawyer Muhammad Hasan al-Budayri, and edited by 'Arif al-'Arif, both were prominent members of al-Nadi al-Arabi.

Until late 1921, al-Husayni focused his efforts on Pan-Arabism and Greater Syria in particular with Palestine being a southern province of an Arab state with its capital in Damascus. Greater Syria was to include territory now occupied by Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel. The struggle for Greater Syria collapsed after Britain ceded control over present day Syria and Lebanon to France in July 1920 in accord with the Sykes-Picot Agreement. The French army entered Damascus at that time, overthrew King Faisal and dissolved Greater Syria.

After this, al-Husayni turned from a Damascus oriented Pan-Arabism to a specifically Palestinian ideology centered on Jerusalem and expelling the Jews and foreigners from the British Mandate of Palestine thus restoring it to Dar al-Islam.

Palestinian nationalism

Viewing the Balfour Declaration as a betrayal of the Arabs by the British, al-Husayni organized violent anti-Zionist demonstrations in Jerusalem in 1920. His speeches called for unity with Syria, as he had not yet adopted the Palestinian nationalism for which he would become known a few years later.

One such demonstration, in April, 1920, turned into violent attacks against Jews, and in the ensuing riots 5 Jews and 4 Arabs were killed. Several Jews and Arabs were sentenced to prison terms for their parts in the riots, with al-Husayni being sentenced to ten years imprisonment in absentia, since he had already fled to Damascus by way of Trans-Jordan.

In 1921, the British military administration of Palestine was replaced by a civilian one, as a mandate under the League of Nations. The first High Commissioner Herbert Samuel decided to pardon al-Husayni and appointed him Mufti of Jerusalem, a position that had been held by his brother Kamil and the al-Husayni clan for more than a century. The following year Samuel "appointed" him as President of the newly formed Supreme Muslim Council, which controlled the Waqf funds worth annually tens of thousands of pounds, the orphan funds, worth annually about 50,000 pounds, besides controlling the Shariah courts, the Islamic religious court in Palestine. These courts, among other duties, appointed teachers and preachers.

This method of appointment was actually in consonance with tradition (some have said Al-Husayni seized power). For years under Ottoman rule, Muslim clerics would nominate three clerics and the secular temporal leader, the Caliph, would choose among the three who would become the Mufti. After the British took over Palestine, the secular temporal leader was the High Commissioner. This led to the extraordinary situation of a Jew, Herbert Samuel, choosing who would actually become Mufti. The only difference was that in this instance five candidates were nominated instead of three.

Al-Husayni launched an international Muslim campaign to improve and restore the mosque known as the Dome of the Rock. Indeed, the current landscape of the Temple Mount was directly affected by al-Husseini's fundraising activities. He raised the vast sums necessary to plate the Dome of the Rock with gold.

Al-Husayni's role in the riots in Palestine of 1929 was hotly disputed at the time. The Jewish Agency charged him with responsibility for inciting the violence, but the Shaw commission of enquiry concluded that "no connection has been established between the Mufti and the work of those who either are known or are thought to have engaged in agitation or incitement. ... After the disturbances had broken out the Mufti co-operated with the Government in their efforts both to restore peace and to prevent the extension of disorder".

On 19 April 1936, an Arab rebellion broke out in Palestine. Soon the rebellion had spread across the country, openly and officially led by the Mufti and his Arab Higher Committee, founded a week after the rebellion had started. The Committee, presided by the Mufti, proclaimed an Arab general strike and called for nonpayment of taxes, shutting down of municipal governments and demanded an end to Jewish immigration, a ban on land sales to Jews, and national independence. Jewish colonies, kibbutzim and quarters in towns, became the targets for Arab sniping, bombing and other terrorist activities.

The British initially balanced appointments between the Husaynis and their supporters (known as the majlisiya, or council supporters) and their rivals, the Nashashibis and their allied clans (known as the mu'arada, the opposition) (Robinson, 1997, p. 6), for example by replacing Musa al-Husayni as mayor of Jerusalem with Ragheb al-Nashashibi. During most of the period of the British mandate, bickering between these two families seriously weakened the effectiveness of Arab efforts. In 1936 they achieved a measure of unity when all the Palestinian groups joined to create a permanent executive organ known as the Arab High Committee under al-Husayni's chairmanship.

In July 1937, British police were sent to arrest al-Husayni for his part in the Arab rebellion, but he was tipped off and escaped to the Haram where the British thought it inadvisable to touch him. In September he was removed from the presidency of the Muslim Supreme Council and the Arab Higher Committee was declared illegal. In October, he fled to Lebanon, where he reconstituted the committee under his domination. Al-Husayni retained the support of most Palestinian Arabs and used his power to punish the Nashashabis. He remained in Lebanon for two years, but his deteriorating relationship with the French and Syrian authories lead to him escaping to Iraq in October 1939.

The rebellion lasted until 1939 when it was quelled by the British troops. It forced Britain to make substantial concessions to Arab demands. The British abandoned the idea of establishing Palestine as a Jewish state and, while Jewish immigration was to continue for another five years (allowing a total of 75,000 Jews to immigrate), the immigration was thereafter to depend on Arab consent. Al-Husayni, however, felt that the concessions did not go far enough, and he repudiated the new policy. See also Peel Commission, White Paper of 1939.

Nazi ties and World War II

Pre-war

In 1933, within weeks of Hitler's rise to power in Germany, al-Husayni sent a telegram to Berlin addressed to the German Consul-General in the British Mandate of Palestine saying he looked forward to spreading their ideology in the Middle East, especially in Palestine and offered his services. Al-Husayni's offer was rejected at first out of concern for disrupting Anglo-German relations by allying with an anti-British leader. But one month later, Al-Husayni secretly met the German Consul-General Karl Wolff near the Dead Sea and expressed his approval of the anti-Jewish boycott in Germany and asked him not to send any Jews to Palestine. Later that year, the Mufti's assistants approached Wolff, seeking his help in establishing a National Socialist Arab party in Palestine. Wolff and his superiors disapproved because they didn't want to become involved in a British sphere of influence, because the Nazis desired further Jewish immigration to Palestine, and because at the time the Nazi party was restricted to German speaking "Aryans" only.

On 21 July 1937, Al-Husayni paid a visit to the new German Consul-General, Hans Döhle, in Palestine. He repeated his former support for Germany and "wanted to know to what extent the Third Reich was prepared to support the Arab movement against the Jews." He later sent an agent and personal representative to Berlin for discussions with Nazi leaders. From August 1938, Husseini received financial and military assistance and supplies from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.

In 1938, though Anglo-German relations were a concern, Al-Husayni's offer was accepted. Al-Husayni's links to the Nazi regime grew very close. From Berlin, al-Husayni would play a significant role in inter-Arab politics.

In May 1940, the British Foreign Office declined a proposal from the chairman of the Vaad Leumi (Jewish National Council in Palestine) that they assassinate al-Husayni, but in November of that year Winston Churchill approved such a plan. In May 1941, several members of the Irgun including its former leader David Raziel were released from prison and flown to Iraq on a secret mission which, according to British sources, included to "capture or kill" the Mufti. The Irgun version is that they were approached by the British for a sabotage mission and added a plan to capture the Mufti as a condition of their cooperation. The mission was abandoned when Raziel was killed by a German plane.

In April 1941 the "Golden Square" pro-German Iraqi army officers, led by General Rashid Ali, forced the Iraqi Prime Minister, the pro-British Nuri Said Pasha, to resign. In May he declared jihad against Britain. In a few months British troops occupied the country and the Mufti went to Germany, via Iran, Turkey and Mussolini's office in Rome. See Farhud for more details of the events in Iraq.

In Nazi-occupied Europe

Upon al-Husayni's arrival in Europe, he met the German Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop on November 20 1941 and was officially received by Adolf Hitler on November 28 1941 in Berlin. He asked Hitler for a public declaration that "recognized and sympathized with the Arab struggles for independence and liberation, and that it would support the elimination of a national Jewish homeland". Hitler refused to make such a public announcement, but "made the following declaration, requesting the Mufti to lock it deep in his heart:

1. He (the Führer) would carry on the fight until the last traces of the Jewish-Communist European hegemony had been obliterated.
2. In the course of this fight, the German army would - at a time that could not yet be specified, but in any case in the clearly foreseeable future - gain the southern exit of Caucasus.
3. As soon as this breakthrough was made, the Führer would offer the Arab world his personal assurance that the hour of liberation had struck. Thereafter, Germany's only remaining objective in the region would be limited to the Vernichtung des...Judentums living under British protection in Arab lands.."

The Mufti established close contacts with Bosnian and Albanian Muslim leaders and spent the remainder of the war conducting the following activities:

• Radio propaganda on behalf of Nazi Germany
• Espionage and the fifth column activities in Muslim regions of Europe and the Middle East
• Assisting with the formation of Muslim Waffen SS units in the Balkans
• The formation of schools and training centers for Muslim imams and mullahs who would accompany the Muslim SS and Wehrmacht units.

Recruitment

Beginning in 1943, al-Husayni was involved in the organization and recruitment of Bosnian Muslims into several divisions of the Waffen SS and other units. The largest was the 13th "Handschar" division of 21,065 men (sometimes spelled Hanjar: the word Scimitar in Turkish, Arabic Khanjar خنجر), which conducted operations against Communist partisans in the Balkans from February 1944.

The Holocaust

When the Red Cross offered to mediate with Adolf Eichmann in a trade prisoner-of-war exchange involving the freeing of German citizens in exchange for 5,000 Jewish children being sent from Poland to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, Husseini directly intervened with Himmler and the exchange was cancelled, although there is no evidence that his intervention prevented their rescue.

Among the sabotage al-Husayni organized was an attempted chemical warfare assault on the second largest and predominantly Jewish city in Palestine, Tel Aviv. Five parachutists were sent with a toxin to dump into the water system. The police caught the infiltrators in a cave near Jericho, and according to Jericho district police commander Fayiz Bey Idrissi, "The laboratory report stated that each container held enough poison to kill 25,000 people, and there were at least ten containers."

Post-war activities

After the war, al-Husayni fled to Switzerland, was detained and put under house arrest in France, but escaped and was given asylum in Egypt. Zionist groups petitioned the British to have him indicted as a war criminal. The British declined, partly because they considered the evidence indecisive but also because such a move would have added to their growing problems in Egypt and Palestine, where al-Husayni was still popular. Yugoslavia unsuccessfully sought his extradition.

From Egypt al-Husayni was among the sponsors of the 1948 war against the new State of Israel. The Jordanian monarch, King Abdullah, gave the position of Grand Mufti of the Jordanian part of divided Jerusalem to someone else, and Haj Amin al-Husayni was in contact with the Arab conspirators of 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-Husayni to enter Jerusalem. After one year, King Tallal was declared incompetent; the new King Hussein also refused to give al-Husayni permission to enter the City.

Although the mufti was involved in some of the high level negotiations between Arab leaders before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War at a meeting held in Damascus in February 1948 to organize Palestinian Field Commands, the commanders of his Holy War Army, Hasan Salama and Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, were allocated only the Lydda district and Jerusalem respectively. This decision

paved the way for an undermining of the Mufti's position among the Arab States. On 9 February, only four days after the Damascus meeting, a severe blow was suffered by the Mufti at the Arab League session in Cairo the appointment of a Palestinian to the General Staff of the League, the formation of a Palestinian Provisional Government, the transfer of authority to local National Committees in areas evacuated by the British, a loan for administration in Palestine and appropriation of large sums to the Arab Higher Executive for Palestinians entitled to war damages .

The Arab League blocked recruitment to the mufti's forces, which collapsed following the death of his most charismatic commander, Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni, on 8 April.

Following rumors that King Abdullah of Transjordan was re-opening the bi-lateral negotiations with Israel that he had previously conducted in secret with the Jewish Agency, the Arab League, led by Egypt, decided to set up the All-Palestine Government in Gaza on 8 September under the nominal leadership of the mufti. Avi Shlaim writes:

The decision to form the Government of All-Palestine in Gaza, and the feeble atempt to create armed forces under its control, furnished the members of the Arab League with the means of divesting themselves of direct responsibility for the prosecution of the war and of withdrawing their armies from Palestine with some protection against popular outcry. Whatever the long-term future of the Arab government of Palestine, its immediate purpose, as conceived by its Egyptian sponsors, was to provide a focal point of opposition to Abdullah and serve as an instrument for frustrating his ambition to federate the Arab regions with Transjordan.

Abdullah regarded the attempt to revive the mufti's Holy War Army as a challenge to his authority and on 3 October his minister of defence ordered all armed bodies operating in the areas controlled by the Arab Legion to be disbanded. Glubb Pasha carried out the order ruthlessly and efficiently.

Al-Husayni died in Beirut, Lebanon in 1974. He wished to be buried in Jerusalem, but the Israeli government refused this request.

Mufti's influence

• The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry's report dated April 20, 1946 says: "The flight of the Mufti, Haj Amin el-Husseini, to Italy and Germany, and his active support of the Axis, did not lose for him his following, and he is probably the most popular Arab leader in Palestine today." (Appendix IV. Palestine: Historical Background. The Arabs and the War)

• Yasser Arafat's interview with the London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Sharq al Awsat was reprinted by a leading Palestinian daily Al Quds (August 2, 2002):

Interviewer: I have heard voices from within the Palestinian Authority in the past few weeks, saying that the reforms are coordinated according to American whims...

Arafat: We are not Afghanistan. We are the mighty people. Were they able to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini?... There were a number of attempts to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of his troops."

• According to John Marlowe, "The dominant figure in Palestine during the Mandate years was neither an Englishman nor a Jew, but an Arab — Haj Amin Muhammed Effendi al Husaini... Able, ambitious, ruthless, humourless, and incorruptible, he was of the authentic stuff of which dictators are made."

Footnotes

• Mattar, 1984
• official transcript, trans. Fleming
• "SS: Hell on the Western Front. The Waffen SS in Europe 1940-1945", 2003. p.70
• The Quest for the Red Prince by Michael Bar-Zohar and Eitan Haber, 1983, ISBN 1585747394, also
• Levenberg, 1993, p. 198.
• Sayigh, 2000, p. 14.
• Shlaim, 2001, p. 97.
• Shlaim, 2001, p. 99.

References

• The Mufti of Jerusalem by Philip Mattar (Columbia University Press revised edition, 1988, ISBN 0231064632)
• The Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine Arab Politics, 1930-1937 (Outstanding These from the London School of Economics and Political Science) by Yehuda Taggar (Garland Pub, 1987, ISBN 0824019334)
• Palestinian Leader, Hajj Amin Al-Husoyni, Mufti of Jerusalem (Kingston Press Series. Leaders, Politics, and Social Change in the Islamic World, No 5) by Taysir Jbara (Kingston Press, 1985, ISBN 0940670216)
• The Mufti of Jerusalem: Amin el-Husseini, and his diplomatic activity during World War II, October 1941-July 1943 by Daniel Carpi Studies in Zionism, Vol VII (1983), pp101-131.
• "Al-Husayni and Iraq's quest for independence, 1939-1941" by P. Mattar in Arab Studies Quarterly 6,4 (1984), 267-281.
• "The Formation of Palestinian Identity: The Critical Years, 1917-1923" by R. Khalidi in Rethinking Nationalism in the Arab Middle East edited by James Jankowski and Israel Gershoni (Columbia University Press, 1997, ISBN 0231106955)
• Mufti of Jerusalem: The Story of Haj Amin el Husseini by Moshe Pearlman (V Gollancz, 1947)
• "The Grand Mufti and Hitler: National Socialist Networks in the Mideast" chapter 4 of The Hitler Book: A Schiller Institute Study edited by Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Ben Franklin Booksellers, 1984, ISBN 0933488378)
• Days of our Years by Pierre van Paassen (Hillman-Curl, Inc., 1939, LC 39027058) pp. 363-373
• Biographical Dictionary of the Extreme Right Since 1890 by Philip Rees (Macmillan Library Reference, 1991, ISBN 0130893013)
• The Mufti and the Fuehrer: The rise and fall of Haj Amin el-Husseini by Joseph B Schechtman (T. Yoseloff, 1965)
• The Grand Mufti: Haj Amin Al-Hussaini, Founder of the Palestinian National Movement by Zvi Elpeleg, translated by David Harvey and edited by Shmuel Himelstein (Frank Cass Publishers, 1993, ISBN 0714634328)
• The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict edited by Walter Laqueur and Barry M. Rubin (Penguin Books 6th Rev edition, 2001, ISBN 0140297138)
• Extreme Islam: Anti-American Propaganda of Muslim Fundamentalism edited by Adam Parfrey (Last Gasp, 2002, ISBN 0922915784)
• Article on Amin al-Husayni, including a picture with Hitler
• Levenberg, Haim (1993). Military Preparations of the Arab Community in Palestine: 1945-1948. London: Routledge. ISBN 0714634395
• Robinson, Glenn E. (1997). Building a Palestinian State: The Incomplete Revolution. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0253210828
• Sayigh, Yezid (2000). Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198296436
• Shlaim, Avi (2001). Israel and the Arab Coalition. In Eugene Rogan and Avi Shlaim (eds.). The War for Palestine (pp. 79-103). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521794765
• Zertal, Idith (2005). Israel's Holocaust and the Politics of Nationhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521850967

See also

• The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism (book)
• Islam and anti-Semitism
• Palestinian terrorism

External links

• "Husseini, Amin al-" article at encyclopedia.com (includes links to many articles)
• HUSSEINI, HAJ AMIN (1895-1974) at PALESTINE FACTS (with photos)
• Mufti's Biography at the Jewish Virtual Library
• Hajj Amin El Husseini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem article in Encyclopedic Dictionary of Zionism and Israel at Zionism and Israel Information Center
• Al-Husseini profile and photogallery at Tell the Children the Truth
• The Holocaust in Bosnia-Hercegovina, 1941-1945, by Carl K. Savich

• 1895 births
• 1974 deaths
• Holocaust
• Israeli-Palestinian conflict
• Nazi Germany
• Palestinian people
• Anti-Semitic people