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.