Amin al-Hussein was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine.
Background
Amin al-Husayni was born in Jerusalem during the last decade of the nineteenth century. Male members of his family had held the post of Mufti of Jerusalem since the end of the eighteenth century. This position authorized the incumbent to issue non-binding legal opinions (fatwa) based on Islamic law (shari'a), custom, and precedent.
Education
Amin al-Husseini was educated locally.
Career
With red hair and blue eyes that suggested he had European blood, Haj Amin was a Turkish army officer in WWI. For inciting Arabs to anti-Jewish terror in protesting British commitment to the Balfour Declaration of 2 Nov 17—which called for a national Jewish homeland in Palestine—he was jailed in 1920 by British authorities, who had a League of Nations mandate in Palestine and Transjordan. Sentenced to five years in prison, he promptly escaped. A year later High Commissioner Sir Herbert Louis Samuel gave Haj Amin a full pardon, soon appointing him to succeed his late half-brother as Mufti of Jerusalem. (A mufti, normally a professional jurist, interprets Muslim law.) “Amin appeared to be an innocuous and pliant youth, but he immediately took the title ‘Grand Mufti'” and “incited his Moslem followers to massacre the Jews.”. The British arrested members of the Arab High Commission on 1 Oct 1937 and banished many of them to the Seychelles, but the Grand Mufti took refuge in a mosque until 16 Oct 1937 and escaped to Syria.
Soon after war broke out in Europe, he moved in Oct 1939 to Iraq. Urging the recently installed pro-British regent, Abdul Illah, and Prime Minister Nuri es-Said to remain neutral, he sent emissaries to offer Hitler and Mussolini pan-Arab cooperation in return for Axis support. The Grand Mufti, promised German arms, conspired in a coup d’etat that installed the pro-Axis Rashid Ali Beg al- Gailani (1892-1965) as PM on 1 Apr 1941. But the Axis support never came, and Maj Gen William J. SLIM led his 10th Ind Div in a lightening campaign, 2-30 May 1941, that shattered the Iraqi army and forced an armistice the next day in Baghdad.
Fleeing to still-neutral Persia (Iran), the Grand Mufti went on to see Mussolini on 27 Oct 1941 and Hitler on 28 November. Complicated negotiations for Axis support were exacerbated by a power struggle in Berlin with Rashid Ali Bed al-Gailani for leadership. It was not until 5 Apr 1943 that the Axis formally supported the pan-Arab movement for independence in their separate states, and Hitler finally anoited the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem as his favcored Arab partner, perhaps for his Aryan complexion.
The shadowy, publicity-shy leader of a race notoriously incapable of cooperation, even against the Jews, remained in Berlin. He issued calls to nationalists of all Arab countries of the Middle East, which by 15 July 1941 were controlled by the British and the Free French. The Grand Mufti helped form SS units from Muslims in occupied countries, and he vigorously opposed Jewish emigration to Palestine.
Haj Amin el Husseini left Germany in 1945 for house arrest in France but escaped to Cairo in May 1946 (Tunney) and eventually set up shop in Lebanon as godfather of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Turning up occasionaly in Syria and Egypt the Grand Mufti died 4 July 1974 in Beirut.
Politics
His opposition to the British peaked during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. In 1937, evading an arrest warrant, he fled Palestine and took refuge successively in the French Mandate of Lebanon and the Kingdom of Iraq, until he established himself in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. During World War II he collaborated with both Italy and Germany by making propagandistic radio broadcasts and by helping the Nazis recruit Bosnian Muslims for the Waffen-SS (on the ground that they shared four principles: family, order, the leader and faith). Also, as he told the recruits, Germany had not colonized any Arab country while Russia and England had. On meeting Adolf Hitler he requested backing for Arab independence and support in opposing the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home. At the end of the war he came under French protection, and then sought refuge in Cairo to avoid prosecution for war crimes.
In the lead-up to the 1948 Palestine war, Husseini opposed both the 1947 UN Partition Plan and King Abdullah's designs to annex the Arab part of British Mandatory Palestine to Jordan, and, failing to gain command of the 'Arab rescue army' (jaysh al-inqadh al-'arabi) formed under the aegis of the Arab League, formed his own militia, al-jihad al-muqaddas. In September 1948 he participated in the establishment of an All-Palestine Government. Seated in Egyptian-ruled Gaza, this government won limited recognition by Arab states but was eventually dissolved by Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1959. After the war and subsequent Palestinian exodus, his claims to leadership were wholly discredited and he was eventually sidelined by the Palestine Liberation Organization, losing most of his residual political influence. He died in Beirut, Lebanon in July 1974. Husseini was and remains a highly controversial figure. Historians dispute whether his fierce opposition to Zionism was grounded in nationalism or antisemitism or a combination of both. Opponents of Palestinian nationalism have used Husseini's wartime residence and propaganda activities in Nazi Germany to associate the Palestinian national movement with European-style anti-Semitism. While his ideological influence on post-war Palestinian nationalism is minimal, al-Husayni's legacy is of interest to modern scholars of Political Islam for his role in introducing radical antisemitism into Islamic fundamentalism.