Al-Husayni, Al-Hajj Amin

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Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni

Born in 1895 (Jerusalem, Palestine)
Died on July 4, 1974 (Beirut, Lebanon)

Religious leader
Politician

Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Mufti (Islamic religious leader) of Jerusalem from 1922 until his death in 1974, was one of the most controversial figures in the Arab-Israeli conflict during the period from the 1920s through the 1940s. To some he was a hero, an early advocate of Palestinian independence and a devoted opponent of what some saw as Jewish aggression in the Middle East. To others he was a villain, someone who sponsored early Palestinian terrorism and who cooperated with the German Nazis in their evil project to destroy all Jews. In fact he was a complex figure who was caught between conflicting interests during a time of great change. Over the course of his long career as leader of the Palestinian people, al-Husayni was primarily identified with his opposition to Zionism, the movement for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine, and his desire to obtain political independence for Palestinians. Pursuing his goals, he cooperated with and later fought against British policy in the Middle East, competed vigorously with other Arab leaders for control of Palestinian politics, and for a time allied himself with German leader Adolf Hitler (1889–1945). The story of his life is an important chapter in any study of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"[Palestine] is my country and the country of my ancestors—I will sacrifice myself for the sake of its sons."

Born to privilege

Muhammad Amin al-Husayni (sometimes known as al-Husseini) was born in 1895 in the city of Jerusalem, then part of the Ottoman Empire territory of Palestine. (The Ottoman Empire was a vast Turkish empire founded in the thirteenth century and dissolved after World War I [1914–18].) The Husayni family was one of the wealthiest and most respected Muslim Arab families in Palestine. They traced their heritage back to the Muslim prophet Muhammad (c. 570– 632), and they had held religious power in the holy city of Jerusalem continuously since the end of the eighteenth century. That power resided in the office of the Mufti, a religious figure who interpreted Sharia (Islamic religious law). As the Mufti of Jerusalem, the most important city in Palestine, the office holder became one of the most important figures in the region. Under Ottoman rule, the Husayni Muftis had acted as mediators between the Ottoman rulers and the Palestinian people. With such power, they placed other family members in powerful political and religious positions. Young Amin al-Husayni, as he was known, thus grew up among the political elite of Palestine.

Al-Husayni had seven sisters and a half-brother, Kamil. His father, Tahir, and his mother, Zaynab, encouraged all of their children to be serious and devout Muslims, and also to understand the politics of their people. From an early age, al-Husayni learned his lessons by attending an Islamic elementary school and sitting in on political and religious discussions with his father. Biographer Philip Mattar reported in The Mufti of Jerusalem that al-Husayni had memorized a large portion of the Koran by the time he was ten. By the age of sixteen he was ready for college, and he attended al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. While in Egypt he also studied at the school of the prominent Muslim Arab reformer Rashid Rida (1865–1935), who urged that Islam be given a central role in any Arab state. Amin al-Husayni's allegiance to these ideas would place him at the center of one of the great debates among Arab states in the twentieth century, over the place of religion in government.

Wrestled with the central problem of his time

Al-Husayni came of age at a time when a new political issue began to demand the attention of Muslims living in Palestine. Beginning in the 1880s, Jews from around the world called for the creation of a homeland for Jews. Jews faced persecution in many countries, for they were seen as outsiders and were often held responsible for economic problems and the spread of disease by governments that were looking for a group to blame for these issues. Many Jews thought that the only way to escape this sort of hatred in other countries was to start a country of their own, and the Jews wanted to build that homeland in Palestine, the location of ancient Jewish religious sites, especially the holy city of Jerusalem. The problem was that the population of Palestine was made up predominantly of Muslim Arabs. In fact, in the early 1880s the population of Palestine was about 80 percent Muslim, 15 percent Christian, and 5 percent Jewish. From the 1880s onward, however, the world Jewish community, with the encouragement of many European nations, sought to increase the Jewish population in Palestine and to buy up land to create the basis for a future Jewish state. This movement, known as Zionism, put Jews on a collision course with the native Arabs, who wished to maintain their power in the region.

From the time he was in college, Amin al-Husayni was in the middle of the Arab-Zionist clash. Known as an outspoken activist, he organized a campus group of Palestinians whose goal was to awaken fellow Palestinians to the perceived dangers of Zionism. When he left college in Egypt in 1913, he made the pilgrimage to Mecca, a city near the coast of the Red Sea where the Muslim prophet Muhammad was born. This pilgrimage, called the hajj, was considered a sacred duty for every Muslim. It allowed al-Husayni to add the name al-Hajj to his name to indicate that he had made the trip. He then returned to Jerusalem where he alternated between teaching at religious schools, writing articles about the growing threat of Zionism, and training at a military academy.

When World War I (1914–18; war in which Great Britain, France, the United States, and their allies defeated Germany, Austria-Hungary, and their allies) began, al-Husayni fought for the Ottoman army, which was allied with the Germans and Austrians. As the tide of the war shifted, however, many in Palestine felt that they had a better chance to create an independent Arab state if they joined forces with the British. Therefore, al-Husayni and many other Palestinians fought alongside British soldiers. When the war ended, the victorious British and the French divided up the former Ottoman Empire. Some of the new nations that were created were independent, including Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. Others, such as Syria, Iraq, Transjordan, and Palestine, were under a governmental system known as the mandate, in which the French and British governments maintained administrative and military control. The British, who were the mandatory power in Transjordan and Palestine, soon found themselves in a difficult situation.

The British made a number of promises during World War I. They promised the Arabs that they would help them to create Arab states in the Middle East. But they also promised Jews that they would help them create a national home in Palestine. The most famous version of these competing promises came in the Balfour Declaration, issued by British foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour (1848–1930) on November 2, 1917. The entire text of the declaration, quoted in the Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East, reads: "His Majesty's Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." From that moment on, both Jews and Arabs in Palestine fought to ensure that Britain lived up to its contradictory promise.

From exile to leadership

Al-Husayni emerged from his experiences in the war more confident and mature, and even more committed to the idea that Arabs must resist Zionism, which he felt threatened to turn Palestinians into second-class citizens in their own land. In 1920 he helped organize several demonstrations against Britain's promise to aid the Jews, though the extent of his involvement is not known. In April of that year one of the demonstrations turned violent. Palestinians demanding the creation of an independent Arab state clashed with Jews demanding the creation of a Jewish homeland. British police attempted to break up the demonstration, resulting in the deaths of five Jews and four Arabs. The demonstration changed al-Husayni's reputation forever. Arabs saw him as a leader in their quest for independence, but Jews saw him as an enemy who wanted to drive them out of Palestine. To the British, however, he was a criminal involved in stirring up a riot. Fearing arrest, al-Husayni fled to Transjordan.

Al-Husayni did not remain a criminal for long. The British needed Arab cooperation if they were to successfully manage Palestine. They needed someone from a highly placed and well-respected Arab family. Sir Herbert Samuel (1870–1963; see entry), British High Commissioner of Palestine, pardoned (freed from penalty) al-Husayni and allowed him to return to Jerusalem, where his brother Kamil presided as Grand Mufti (the Grand had been added by the British). Upon Kamil's death in 1921, Samuel used his power to appoint al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Grand Mufti had real power: he controlled interpretations of Islamic religious law and also controlled the funds gathered by Islamic religious foundations. In 1922 he was appointed head of the Supreme Muslim Council, with a large annual budget. He was the most important religious and political leader of Muslims in Palestine. The British wanted a cooperative Grand Mufti, and al-Husayni promised his cooperation. Over the years it would prove to be a tumultuous relationship.

Served two masters

Al-Husayni took office pledging to work with the British to ensure peace in Jerusalem and Palestine. The British had promised in the Balfour Declaration not to "prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," yet they were under constant pressure from prominent British Jews and from Zionists in Palestine and around the world to allow more Jewish immigration to Palestine and to protect and expand the rights of Jews in Palestine. Al-Husayni, on the other hand, believed that Zionism posed a real threat to Arabs, thinking that the Jews threatened to buy up Arab land and dominate the economy.

Al-Husayni managed to balance these interests throughout the 1920s. Though he spoke out and wrote articles in favor of limiting the Jewish population in Palestine, he kept radicals in the Arab community from engaging in demonstrations and attacks against growing Jewish communities. British officials rewarded him with money, which he distributed through the Arab community, thus winning more popularity. By the late 1920s, however, more and more Arabs grew angry at the growth in the Jewish population, and feared that they would lose power to the Jews. Their anger would soon erupt in violence that even the Grand Mufti could not control.

Late in 1928 and into 1929, Jews and Muslims clashed over Jewish access to a holy site in Jerusalem called the Western Wall (also known as the Wailing Wall). The Western Wall is a surviving remnant of an ancient Jewish temple, but it is also part of the Muslim shrine called Haram al-Sharif. Muslims controlled the wall, but Jews wanted to visit the wall to pray. Confrontations between Jews and Muslims over activity at the wall soon escalated from rock throwing to outright riots. The wall became a cause for Jews and Muslims: the Jews pushed the British to guarantee their rights to the site, and Muslims depicted Jewish claims as another attempt to drive Arabs from Palestine. In August 1929, tensions erupted in violence throughout Palestine as groups of Jews and Arabs started attacking one another, resulting in the deaths of 133 Jews and at least 113 Arabs. Al-Husayni was caught in the center, supportive of Muslim groups who despised the growing power of the Jews but trying to keep the peace for the British. Though some believed that al-Husayni orchestrated attacks on Jews, the British commission that investigated the riots did not pin blame on al-Husayni.

The British largely sided with the Jews in interpreting the violence of 1929. They blamed Muslims for the violence, arresting many Palestinians and ordering punishments for entire Arab villages. Many Palestinians believed that the time had come to fight openly against British control of Palestine. Al-Husayni did not agree. He continued to try to work with the British to secure rights for Palestinians. In negotiations for a legislative body, he constantly pushed for representation based on population, which would give Arabs control. He traveled to other Arab countries trying to persuade their leaders to provide support for Palestinian issues. In 1931 he organized a General Islamic Congress to promote cooperation among Muslim nations. But al-Husayni's efforts to use peaceful pressure to secure his goals ultimately failed. The British authorized a continued flow of Jewish immigration to Palestine. According to Mattar, Jewish immigration grew from 4,075 in 1931, to 9,553 in 1932, 30,327 in 1933, 42,359 in 1934, and to 61,854 in 1935; and militant Palestinians became ever more willing to use violence to announce their anger. By 1936 cooperation between the Palestinians and the British was no longer possible, and al-Husayni was forced to take sides.

Led the Arab Revolt

Throughout the early 1930s, Palestinian politics and the policies of the British occupation were pulled in opposite directions. Radical political factions within Palestine called for increased resistance to Zionism, while events in Europe—especially the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany—caused increasing violence against Jews, lending more weight to the calls for Jewish immigration to Palestine. Finally, in 1936 the fragile bridge that al-Husayni had created between British authorities and Palestinian Arabs was broken. A radical Muslim scholar named Izz al-Din al-Qassam (c. 1880–1935) was killed by the British after he preached a jihad, or holy war, against the Jews and the British. His death caused an uprising among Palestinians, including frequent demonstrations against Jewish and British interests in Palestine. Finally, in April of 1936, various Palestinian groups called for general protests against British and Jewish influence in the region.

In the midst of this general uprising, al-Husayni recognized that it was no longer possible for him to please both sides. On April 25, 1936, he accepted the leadership of the Arab Higher Committee, an organization created to express the united interests of the Palestinians. According to Mattar, the committee "declared its determination to achieve three major demands: a complete halt to Jewish immigration, prohibition of the transfer of Arab lands to Jews, and the establishment of a national government responsible to a representative council." Al-Husayni thus became the figurehead for the organized opposition to British policy and Jewish interests.

The events of 1936 began what is known as the Arab Revolt. For the next several years Palestinians engaged in a multi-faceted attack on their perceived enemies. They staged a general strike and boycott, refusing to work for or buy from the British or the Jews. They held demonstrations and protests against the British and the Jews. In 1937 the revolt became even more intense. Al-Husayni officially called for an end to British rule in Palestine, and Palestinians launched a military offensive that took control of a number of Arab villages and towns. By 1838, however, British army units counterattacked, recapturing territory and taking many Palestinian lives. By the time the revolt ended in 1939, approximately five thousand Palestinians had been killed, the same number taken prisoner, and some fifteen to twenty thousand were wounded. The Jewish economy had become stronger, and Jewish military groups gained crucial experience in organizing and fighting.

Al-Husayni became a hero to Palestinians and to many pro-Palestinian Arabs throughout the Middle East as a result of his leadership of the Arab Revolt. He rejected British attempts to negotiate a compomise in 1938 and 1939, insisting that only complete Palestinian independence was an acceptable outcome. After 1937, however, al-Husayni was a man on the run. He had fled Palestine for Lebanon in 1937, and in 1939 he escaped to Iraq. From Iraq, al-Husayni became a leader of the anti-British, pro-Arab movement that dominated the Middle East throughout World War II (1939–45; war in which Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States, and their allies defeated Germany, Italy, and Japan). He encouraged the Iraqi government to ally itself with Germany and Italy against the British, the French, and the Russians. In turn, the British government ordered his assassination (though no attempt was carried out). After the British invaded Iraq in 1941, al-Husayni issued a fatwa, or official religious decree, calling on all Muslims to come to the aid of the Iraqis.

Al-Husayni allies with the Nazis

As World War II raged, al-Husayni fled from country to country seeking refuge. With the British conquest of Iraq, he fled to Iran. The British captured his wife and children in Iraq, and placed them under house arrest. Iran was not safe for al-Husayni, and he fled again, in disguise, first to Turkey and then to Italy. From Italy al-Husayni began a relationship with the Nazis that would forever taint his reputation. As early as 1940, al-Husayni had been in contact with German officials, hoping to gain support for his efforts to drive the British out of Palestine. Driven from his country by the British, al-Husayni now entered into direct talks with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) and German dictator Adolf Hitler. He pledged Arab cooperation in fighting the British in exchange for German support for the creation of independent Arab states after the war. Hitler would not enter into a signed agreement with al-Husayni, but he pledged his support for Arab independence and for the elimination of the Jewish national home in Palestine.

For the remainder of the war, al-Husayni did what he could to aid the German cause in the Middle East. He called for Arabs to revolt against British and French influence in the Middle East, and delivered speeches supporting the Germans that were broadcast over the radio in the Middle East. "The results of these efforts," concluded Mattar, "were an abysmal failure." Arab resistance to the British was minimal, and the Allies (primarily Britain, France, Russia, and the United States) finally defeated the Germans and the Japanese in 1945. The defeat of the Germans sent al-Husayni on the run once again, first to Austria, then to Switzerland, then France, and then finally back to Palestine.

Decline after World War II

After World War II, world opinion had changed with regard to Palestine and Zionism. The German attempt to exterminate all Jews in Europe had created an immense amount of sympathy for the creation of a safe homeland for Jews in Palestine. Backed by the United States, Western governments (governments of countries such as Britain, France, Spain, and Canada) supported the United Nations (an international organization founded in 1945 and made up of most of the countries of the world) when it called for the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1947. Al-Husayni, who played an important though weakened role in post war Palestine, resisted the United Nations plan and, along with others, launched a war against Jews in Palestine. Supplied with Western arms, the Jews decisively defeated the Palestinians and their Arab allies, leading to the creation in 1948 of the nation of Israel, the final realization of the Zionist dream.

A Deal with the Devil: Al-Husayni and Hitler

The blackest mark on the record of early Palestinian leader al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, was actually captured in a famous photograph of him in conversation with Adolf Hitler (1889–1945), the leader of the German Nazi Party. Al-Husayni met with Hitler on November 28, 1941, and the two plotted how they might help defeat the British. The question has long remained, however, whether al-Husayni aided Hitler in his evil attempt to exterminate the Jewish people.

Once the war ended, some Jews argued that al-Husayni should be convicted of war crimes for aiding Hitler. They produced evidence that al-Husayni had written letters urging that Jews not be allowed to immigrate and settle in Palestine, suggesting that they be sent instead to Poland, the site of German concentration camps. They also produced a letter from a German official claiming that al-Husayni cooperated with efforts to exterminate European Jews. British officials who might have tried al-Husayni for war crimes did not find this evidence conclusive. There was no proof that al-Husayni knew of the concentration camps, and it seems likely that the German official mistook al-Husayni for an Arab religious leader in another Middle Eastern country.

In the end, it remains uncertain whether al-Husayni really did aid Hitler's evil plot. It is possible that al-Husayni was helping Germany due to their promise to drive both the British and the Jews from Palestine and was unaware of Germany's plan to kill Jewish people in death camps.

Al-Husayni's political efforts following the creation of Israel were increasingly futile. He was instrumental in the creation of the Palestine National Council, and this quasi-government issued a Palestinian Declaration of Independence on October 1, 1948. But the government had no real existence, for it controlled no territory and had neither money nor an army. In the years that followed, al-Husayni scrambled to ally himself with other Arab political leaders to gain support for Palestinian resistance to Israeli rule. Increasingly, however, he was seen as a figure from the past. Younger, more radical Arab leaders like Eygptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970; see entry) and Palestinian radical Yasser Arafat (1929–2004; see entry) earned the loyalty of those Arabs who once might have supported al-Husayni.

Al-Husayni spent his remaining years living first in Transjordan, then in Lebanon. He remained a Muslim religious leader, heading the World Islamic Conference, until his death on July 4, 1974, in Beirut, Lebanon. Late in his life, and to this day, his legacy has remained complicated. For those who supported Israel and the early attempts to create a Jewish homeland, al-Husayni was a villain. His early resistance to Zionism was considered bad enough, but because of his cooperation with Hitler during World War II many see him as nothing less than a war criminal. Even supporters of the Palestinian cause find his legacy troubling. Critics have claimed that his early cooperation with the British contributed to the decline of Arab influence in Palestine, and that his eventual turn against the British was not managed effectively. Others suggest that al-Husayni missed key opportunities to gain political concessions from the British, thus leading to the present, desperate conditions that face many Palestinians living within the borders of Israel. Still, some Palestinians revere al-Husayni for his lifelong support of the Muslim religion and for his early and principled resistance to Zionism. His supporters claim that he did the best he could to lead an impoverished and poorly organized people in their resistance against a wealthy, determined enemy.

For More Information

Books

Elpeleg, Zvi The Grand Mufti: Haj Amin al-Hussaini, Founder of the Palestinian National Movement. London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1992.

Jabarah, Taysir. Palestinian Leader Hajj Amin al-Husayni, Mufti of Jerusalem. Princeton, NJ: Kingston Press, 1985.

Mattar, Philip. The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement. Rev. ed., New York: Columbia University Press, 1988.

Taggar, Yehuda. The Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine: Arab Politics, 1930–1937. New York: Garland, 1986.