Haj Amin al-Husseini

Amin al-Husseini (c. 1897 – July 1974) was the leader of Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine. He was a leader of both the 1936–1939 Palestinian revolt against British rule in Mandatory Palestine and formed the Arab Liberation Army to fight Israel in the 1948 Palestine war. After the Arab defeat in that conflict, he led the unrecognized All-Palestine Government, but was increasingly sidelined by rival movements and governments until his removal by Egypt in 1953. He also collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. He died in Beirut, Lebanon.

Husseini with Adolf Hitler, in 1941.

Quotes

• No one ever thought that 140,000,000 Americans would become the hands of the Jews....How would the Americans dare to Judaize Palestine while the Arabs are still alive?...The wicked American intentions toward the Arabs are now clear, and there remain no doubts that they are endeavoring to establish a Jewish empire in the Arab world. More than 400,000,000 Arabs [?] oppose this criminal American movement.... Arabs! Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you.
  • Quoted in Joseph B. Schechtman, The Mufti and the Fuhrer (1965) p. 150

• For us Muslims, it is unworthy to utter the word Islam in the same breath with Judaism since Islam stands high over its perfidious adversary.
• The Arabs have a particular understanding for introducing forceful measures against Jews in Germany and for their expulsion from the country. After the [First] World War, England and America enabled the Jews to settle in Palestine and to establish a Jewish state there. Jewish excrement from all countries assembled there, rascally striving to seize the land from Arabs. And indeed, they succeeded in buying land from the poorest of the poor and from unscrupulous landlords. By doing so, they took poor widows' bread and stole food from children to fatten themselves. When the Arabs opposed the Jewish settlement, the Jews did not shun bloody murders. So they robbed many families of their livelihood and threw the families into misery and troubles. (God will punish them for those disgraceful deeds).
• The Jewish struggle against Arabs is nothing new for us, except that as time passed, the location of the battlefield changed. Jews hate Muhammad and Islam, and they hate any man who wishes to advance the prosperity of his people and to fight against Jewish lust for possessions and Jewish corruption.
  We, the Muslims, must always bear in mind the Khaibar feast. If the Jews betrayed Muhammad in such a way, why wouldn't they treacherously persecute us today with the purpose of destroying us?!
  • Islam and Judaism

Quotes about Haj Amin al-Husseini

• Husseini is still regarded by many as 'the George Washington' of the Palestinian people, and if the Palestinians were to get a state of their own, he would be honored in the way our founding father is.
  • Dalin and Rothman Icon of Evil, p. 105

• Hajj Amin el-Husseini, ex-mufti of Jerusalem, and Muslim jihadist, who became, additionally, a full-fledged Nazi collaborator and ideologue in his endeavors to abort a Jewish homeland and destroy world Jewry, was also a committed supporter of global jihad movements. Urging a “full struggle” against the Hindus of India (as well as the Jews of Israel) before delegates at the February 1951 World Muslim Congress, he stated: "We shall meet next with sword in hand on the soil of either Kashmir or Palestine."
  • Bostom, A. G. (2015). Sharia versus freedom: The legacy of Islamic totalitarianism.

• With every passing month after Stalingrad, the criteria for Waffen-SS membership grew more elastic, forcing Himmler to cite the multinational structure of the old Habsburg army as a precedent. Ukrainians were recruited; so were Hungarians, Bulgarians and Serbs. In February 1943 the first of three divisions was formed of Bosnian and Albanian Muslims, who wore fezes decorated with SS runes and were led in their prayers by regimental imams notionally under the supervision of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Out of all forty-seven Waffen-SS divisions, twenty were formed wholly or partly out of non-German recruits or conscripts and a further five out of Volksdeutsche. Towards the end of the war, in fact, there were more non-Germans than Germans serving in Himmler's army.
  • Niall Ferguson, The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Descent of the West (2006), pp. 458-459

• Hitler didn't want to exterminate the Jews at the time [of the meeting between the mufti and the Nazi leader]. He wanted to expel the Jews... And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said, "If you expel them, they'll all come here [to mandatory Palestine],"... "So what should I do with them?" He [Hitler] asked. He [Husseini] said, "Burn them."
  • Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015. Accuracy of this characterization is disputed.

External links

• Encyclopedic article on Amin al-Husseini on Wikipedia
• Media related to Haj Amin al-Husseini on Wikimedia Commons