The Mufti's Early Connections With Germany

Early connections with Germany

Since the First World War the British, the French and even the Italians had become an object of a growing distrust and hatred in the Middle East. They all had colonised some parts of the late Ottoman Empire and aroused Muslim distrust of the Western culture they tried to introduce. However, Germany had remained a mere observer. Germany's fervent nationalism, anti­semitism and anti‑Versailles sentiments did not escape the attention of the Muslim Middle East. The Mufti was no exception.

And the Mufti had plans to keep the Palestine pot boiling — with
the help of Adolf Hitler. The Führer despised the Jews for economic and
ideolog­ical terms; the Mufti for political and social reasons. Hitler
wanted to weaken Britain's imperial system; Haj Amin to oust her out the Middle
East. The two men had a good deal in common.[1]

In March 1933 the Mufti sent a telegram to Berlin, in which he sent greetings to the Nazi regime and said he looked forward to spreading their ideology in the Middle East, especially in Palestine.

[2] A month later, he secretly met Wolff, the German Consul-General, 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.[3] Later that year, the Mufti’s assistants approached Wolff, seeking his help in establishing a National Socialist Arab party in Palestine. Both Wolff and his superiors disapproved, but the German refusal could hardly have been a surprise. Firstly, Germany's Palestinian policy was then to keep the country open for further immigration of German Jews besides they did not want to get involved in the British sphere of influence. Also, both Wolff and his superiors were following a pro-Zionist policy because the need for further Jewish immigration, made known in the Ha'avara. Secondly, the membership of the NSDAP, the Nazi party, was restricted to German speaking “Aryans” only.[4]

The policy of the Nazi party was then to make Germany juden­rein, free of Jews. The only country which could possibly absorb a larger number of Jews was Palestine. The Nazi leaders realised that it was in their interest to keep on sending the Jews to Palestine, despite the Mufti's protests. Nevertheless, the German Palestinian policy was unstable and depended heavily upon Hitler's day-to-day decisions. However, one thing remained certain: Germany did not want a Jewish National Home in Palestine, or elsewhere, let alone a Jewish State. When the Mufti finally realised that his pleas for support from Germany would not be successful he turned to Italy and in 1934 he received his first payment from there.[5] His interest in Germany, however, was not to be severed, despite Hitler's official lack of interest for the time being. However, the Führer's Palestinian policy was not to remain pro-Zionist much longer.

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[1] Kurzman: Genesis, 32.
[2] Yisraeli: The Third Reich, 350, 353.
[3] Nicosia: The Third Reich and Palestine, 85, 86.
[4] ibid, 89, 90.
[5] Brenner: Zionism, 91.

Muftism and Nazism: Introduction

Unfortunately I posted the 1st chapter earlier

Introduction

During the Second World War millions of soldiers and civilians lost their lives, including around 6,000,000 Jewish men, women and children; who were shot, gassed and put to death through slave labour, hunger and medical experiments.


After the War, however, the Western Powers decided to atone for their previous neglect and organised the greatest war‑crime trials ever to be staged and hunted down the surviving Nazi leaders. The trials took place in Nuremberg, ironically, where the Nazis had published their first radical anti-Jewish laws. However, among the victims of the Holocaust themselves, the Jews, there was little enthusiasm for mass trials: those who where responsible for the Holocaust should bring to justice and the others be granted freedom. In order to participate to some extent in the trials, the leaders of American Jewry formed committ­ees and came up with just a single name to add to the Allies’ list of war criminals. The accused one was Haj Mohammed Amin al‑Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem and the former President of the Supreme Muslim Council.

During the last weeks of the War the Mufti escaped from Germany, where he was living from 1941 onwards, to Switzerland. The Swiss authorities denied him a political asylum, because he was one of 32 persons whose name appeared on the country’s persona non grata list.[1] The neutral Switzerland considered him one of the 32 individuals who could not be granted asylum, very likely along with men as Hitler, Himmler and other Nazi leaders. Thus he returned to Germany and was captured by the French army. Since the French, as well as the British, did not want to stir up trouble in the Middle East, they turned a blind eye to his "escape" to a safe haven at the king's palace in Egypt. That stopped the pleas from the Jews, the Yugoslavs, the Soviets and some other countries to charge him for war crimes before the Nuremberg court.

Ever since, the accusations against the Mufti have been a subject of emotional debates. Many argue that he was guilty of war crimes, but others, especially Arabs, have tried to justify his statements and actions and, even in the face of concrete facts, declare his complete innocence. The question is, was he guilty of war crimes? Did he participate in Hitler's Final Solution, and if so, to what extent did he collaborate with Germany? Philip Mattar explained that no

period in the Mufti’s life is more controversial and subject to distortion than the years of World War II. Zionists were so eager to prove him guilty of collaboration and war crimes that they exaggerated his connection with the Nazis. The Mufti and other Arabs, on the other hand, were so busy justifying his statements and actions in the Axis countries that they ignored the obvious and overwhelming fact that the Mufti had cooperated with the
most barbaric regime in modern times.[2]

The main question is then, who was stepping over the line, those who “exaggerated” or the ones who “ignored facts”. Since Mattar, the Mufti's apologist, admits that the documents reveal that the Mufti collaborated with Germany, and totally denies the Arabic justifying measures, there must be more to the former argument. The Mufti surely was a Nazi collaborator, but to what extent did the participate in the Jewish Holocaust?

[1]Elpeleg: The Grand Mufti, 74.
[2] Mattar: The Mufti, 99.

The Rise of Haj Amin

1. The rise of Haj Amin

Mohammed Amin al-Husseini is said to have been born in 1893, or 1895, of an aristocratic family in Jerusalem. The Husseinis were one of the richest and most powerful of all the rivalling clans in the Ottoman province mutasarriflik Jerusalem, better known as the Judaean part of Palestine. Haj Amin, only in his late twenties, became the youngest ever Mufti of Jerusalem in 1921. His election was due to family connections and possibly threats.

The British supported Haj Amin to the post and granted him amnesty from a 10 year long sentence for encouraging murders. He had been one of the leaders of the 1920 Arab riots in Palestine and incited the masses to murder Jews and loot their homes. This first step later became a force of habit. He celebrated his succession by organising a Jewish pogrom in May 1921, followed by the annual anti-Balfour riots.

When the Mandate authorities founded the Supreme Muslim Council in December 1921, they wanted to provide for complete communal autonomy in religious matters. Every five years should the Muslims of Palestine elect a President, according to its charter. Haj Amin, however, was never elected. He simply seized the post and threatened every one who might want it.

The President of the SMC was the most powerful person in Muslim Palestine. He 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, the most rigorous propaganda emissaries possible in Muslim societies. In other words, the Mufti controlled the communal finances and it was in his power to appoint communal officials. In addition, he monitored a nation-wide net of propagandists, usually sponsored by his embezzled funds. Several times when the Mufti was pressed to publish accounts for the funds he refused and simply had the ones who asked killed or "strongly advised" to be still.

However, when the Nashashibis complained about the Mufti's abuse of charity money the British authorities could take no action. Only the Shariah court could demand an account for religious property, and since the Mufti could manipulate the Court through the SMC, a compulsory demand never came. The Waqf funds, which were supposed to be used for charity, were spent on the Mufti's pet programs. He used the funds to recruite armed gangs, hire propaganda activists, travel around the Muslim world to gather support and to purchase arms.

The Mufti tried to eliminate the Jewish presence in Palestine at the expense of the poor, whose need for funds, as well as work at the Jewish farms, exceeded those who received them. In addition to all this, he received donations from abroad to build an Arab university in Jerusalem and to repair Palestine's mosques, especially the sanctuaries on the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount). By the means of taking control in Palestine he even collected taxes from the citrus exports, along with the general taxes that the Arab population paid. In total, he seems to have had access to 150-200,000 pounds annually to finance his terrorist campaign in Palestine and propaganda against the Jews.

Along with abusing and snatching the communal money he even fixed himself the very titles he used so frequently. He usually called himself the Eminence or the scholarly Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, although he just attended university for several months. The sheikh-president of his former university, Al-Azbar in Cairo, had the following to say about this matter:

In Islam, there are no "eminencies" and no "grand" muftis. Before Allah all men
are equal. And it ill behoves a religious teacher to assume such redundant
titles... A mufti is a teacher in Islam. And even to that title Haj Amin should
have no claim, for he has not finished a single course of studies here at the
University. He owes his appointment to political influence and family
connections. He is a politician.

However, he managed to combine religion, in which he had no formal training, to politics, in which he was an expert, through terrorism. He extended his terror both against the Jews as well as other Arabs, the same philosophy as the modern Intifadah displays. His power among the Muslims of Palestine was unlimited, especially after he had murdered or frightened into exile the members of the National Defence Party, belonging to the rival Nashashibi clan, in 1936-8. His ambition was to become the leader or even the Sultan of Palestine and the spiritual leader of all the Muslim world. John Marlowe is in no doubt that Haj Amin was the most prominent figure of inter-War Palestine, and said:

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.

The greatest obstacle to his dream coming true, he believed, was the Jewish presence in Palestine. The Mufti's policy towards the Jews seems to have gone through two main stages: first, kill the Zionists, second, kill the Jews. When he was young he used to work with a native Jew, Abbady, and one of his remarks to him was documented:

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.

The Mufti's hatred towards the Jews originated from those roots. He did neither want progress nor prosperity. He just wanted Palestine to continue being the same backward and poor country, as it had been since the Jewish departure in the first centuries CE. Besides his pan-Arab tendencies he saw the Jews as bearers of modern European way of life, which confronted to the most sacred concepts of Islam, at least according to his version. In an interview with one Ladislas Farago he said:

The Jews have changed the life of Palestine in such a way that it must
inevitably lead to the destruction of our race. We are not accustomed to this
haste and speed, and therefore we are continually being driven into the
background.

At first, his policy was to fight or massacre the Zionists, which he most notably achieved in the riots of 1920 and 1929 and later the 1936-1939 rebellion. However, when he realised that the Jews kept on flocking into the country, he thought the best way to deal with the Jewish problem was to dry up the source in Europe. With that purpose in mind he approached the newly established Nazi regime in Germany, which had as early as 1932 established Nazi party cells among the Palestinian Germans.

Muftism: the term and its origins

It has been a long time and I cannot be totally sure, but I think it was I, back in 1993, who coined the term "Muftism". It is now widely accepted and was even used for a documentary on this very same subject. If I am wrong, please correct me.

Muftism, in my view, is basically a local version of Islamism, mixed with a particular ethnic agenda and is supposed to unite an entity against a common enemy that usually happens to be Jewish.

However, when I used this term back in the old my idea was that this ideology of hatred would be put on the same level with the other, Nazism, and they were, indeed, compatible.

If I remember correctly, it was Yasser Arafat's family that actually owned or/and leased a large part of the Gaza Strip of today. And Arafat was brought up at the feet of the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Thus it should in fact not be surprising that the Muftists of today, commonly referred to as Hamas, should control that piece of land.

The story of Hajj Amin thus has a message for today. Muftism of the 1930s and 1940s claimed thousands of lives, where civilians were murdered for their ancestry's sake, their blood, their religion.

The same thing might happen in the near future, as the modern Muftists, Hamas, are planning to continue the work of their most logical predecessor: The Mufti of Jerusalem.

Muftism and Nazism

Many years ago, in 1992-1993, I was studying history at the University of Leicester, England and during my leisure hours I began to collect material on the Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini, and his Nazi collaboration during the World War II era. I worked on that for a while and the product became known as Muftism and Nazism, and was slightly updated during my studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1995.

This short esssay was published at my former website some years later and somehow gained momentum in the world of the internet where it can be found at various locations. I have received many emails concerning this subject, the latest one only a couple of days ago.

I have not had time to update this essay and perhaps I don't have to or should not. Maybe this essay should stand as it is.

I am planning to re-publish this essay here, at this blog, one piece at a time.

Hopefully we can learn something from this lesson of the dangers of collaborating with evil or what happens when two evil minds come together.