Hitler’s Mufti

Eight years ago, I researched a documentary film about Haj Amin al-Husseini, which unfortunately never made it to production. Given the news recently and the controversy surrounding Bibi’s comments, this summary (written at the time) may help clarify.

Today, the notion of Islamofascism is heatedly debated around the world. What does it mean? Does such an ideology exist? If so, how should it be tackled? Nazi ideology found many admirers in the Arab world. The German Nazi party saw three attempts to copy it in the Arab world in the 1930s in Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt. Ironically, the Egyptian party, Young Egypt, otherwise known as the “Green Shirts”; was at one time led by former president Anwar Sadat.

It also may be the case the admiration was mutual. In an interview published in 1939, Carl Jung noted: “Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is already on the way; he is Muhammad. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic.” In his 1942 book, I Was in Hell with Niemoller, Leo Stein wrote: “The Nazi movement is not merely a political movement, but a religious movement, like Mohammedanism. From Mohammedanism Hitler derives his idea of the religious state.”

Even today there remains a great deal of sympathy and often admiration for Hitler and his ideologies across the Middle East, with Arabic translations of Mein Kampf readily available in book stores throughout the Middle East along side translated version of the infamous “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. The Egyptian press recently reported on the formation of a new Nazi Party, which intends to participate in the upcoming Egyptian elections in September.

Many will argue that this fusion of European Fascist and Islamic extremist ideologies found in organisations such as Al Qaeda and Hamas or with leaders like President Ahmadinejad of Iran; can trace its routes back to one man, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al Husseini, known to some as Hitler’s Mufti.

Grand Mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini was arguably the first Muslim to fuse European fascist ideology with Islamic extremism. As the spiritual and political leader of the Arabs in British Mandated Palestine and the wider Middle East, he allied himself to Hitler and Nazi Germany in WW2, acting as Hitler’s representative to the Arab and Muslim world. A virulent anti Semite, he made many radio broadcasts of Nazi propaganda and anti Semitism from Berlin during the war. He was also instrumental in recruiting the infamous “Hanzar Troop” the Muslim unit of the Waffen SS. Accused of war crimes after the war, he managed to escape prosecution, finding refuge in Egypt and finally in Lebanon where he died in 1974.

His legacy stretches far and wide, having influenced and inspired many in the modern Arab world. Among his post war protégés and admirers are Gammal Abdul Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Yasser Arafat, a distant cousin and President Ahmadinijad of Iran.

Background

Muhammad Amin al-Husseini was born in 1893 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 Judean part of Palestine. 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 and was an officer during the “genocide” committed by the Turks, when they murdered over one million Armenians. He returned to Jerusalem in 1917 and expediently switched sides to aid the victorious British. He acquired the reputation as aviolent, fanatical anti-Zionist zealot and was jailed for fifteen years by the British for instigating a 1920 attack against Jews who were killed while 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 ofJerusalem (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, thereby becoming the religious and political leader of the Arabs in the region.

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”.

Germany.

In late March 1933, al-Husseini contacted the German consul general in Jerusalem and requested Germany help in eliminating Jewish settlements in Palestine, offering, in exchange, a pan-Islamic Jihad in alliance with Germany, against their common enemies, the Jews and the British. It was not until 1938, in the aftermath of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s infamous capitulation to Hitler at Munich, that these overtures to Nazi Germany were officially reciprocated. However. by then the influence of Nazi ideology had already grown significantly throughout the Arab Middle East.

Several of the Arab political parties founded during the 1930s were modelled after the Nazi party, including the Syrian Popular Party and the Young Egypt Society, which were explicitly anti-Semitic in its ideology and programs. The leader of Syria’s Socialist Nationalist Party, Anton Sa’ada, imagined himself as an Arab Hitler and placed a swastika on his party’s banner.

In 1937 Husseini fled Palestine to Lebanon after instigating the “Arab revolt” of 1936-39. He then found refuge in Iraq, another of Britain’s mandates, where he again topped the British most wanted list after helping pull the strings behind the pro Nazi, Iraqi coup of 1941. The revolt in Baghdad was orchestrated by Hitler as part of a strategy to squeeze the region between the pincers of Rommel’s troops in North Africa, German forces in the Caucuses and pro-Nazi forces in Iraq. Interestingly, Saddam Hussein was raised in the house of his uncle Khayrallah Tulfah, who was a leader in the coup. However, in June 1941 British troops put down the rebellion and the Mufti escaped via Tehran to Italy and eventually to Berlin.

Once in Berlin, the Mufti received an enthusiastic reception by the “Islamische Zentralinstitut”, which welcomed him as the “Führer” of the Arabic world.” In an introductory speech, he called the Jews the “most fierce enemies of the Muslims” and an “ever corruptive element” in the world. Husseini soon became an honoured guest of the Nazi leadership and met on several occasions with Hitler.

He personally lobbied the Führer against the plan to let Jews leave Hungary, fearing they would immigrate to Palestine. He also strongly intervened when Adolf Eichman tried to cut a deal with the British government to exchange German POWs for 5000 Jewish children. The Mufti’s protests to the SS were successful, and the children were sent to death camps in Poland instead. Throughout the war, he appeared regularly on German radio broadcasts to the Middle East, preaching his pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic message to the Arab masses back home.

To show gratitude and commitment towards his hosts, in 1943 the Mufti travelled several times to the Balkan’s where he recruited the notorious “Hanzar Troop,” a special, Muslim, mostly Bosnian, Waffen SS unit which slaughtered 90% of Bosnia’s Jews and thousands of Serbians. A great deal of the hatred which manifested itself in the Balkan wars of the 1990’s had their routes in this period. These Muslim recruits rapidly found favour with SS chief Heinrich Himmler, who established a special “Mullah” Military school in Dresden. The only condition the Mufti set for his help was that after Hitler won the war, the entire Jewish population in Palestine should be liquidated.

Adolf Eichmann’s deputy, Dieter Wisliceny testified at the Nuremberg Trials that Haj Amin al-Husseini “was one of the initiators of the systematic extermination of European Jewry and had been a collaborator and adviser to 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.” At Auschwitz, al-Husseini reportedly “admonished the guards running the gas chambers to work more diligently.”

Exile

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. He received political asylum in Egypt where he met a young Yasser Arafat. Arafat’s real name was Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat As Qudwa al-Husseini. He was the Grand Mufti’s cousin and a fierce supporter. In August 2002, Arafat gave an interview in which he referred to “our hero al-Husseini” as a symbol of Palestinian Arab resistance.

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, al Husseini arranged King Abdallah’s assassination in 1951. 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.

In Palestine and the wider Arab world, al Husseini’s influence is still apparent. Today, Mein Kampf currently ranks highly in the best-seller lists in the Arab world, as does, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In recent years a TV series of the Protocols has played on Arab TV stations with very high ratings. Luis Al-Haj, translator of the Arabic edition of Mein Kampf, writes glowingly in the preface about how Hitler’s “ideology” and his “theories of nationalism, dictatorship and race are advancing throughout the Arab world.