Amin el-Husseini

**Mohammed Amin el-Husseini** (Arabic: محمد أمين الحسيني‎; c. 1897 – 4 July 1974) was a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in Mandatory Palestine and the First Palestinian Republic. He was Secretary-general of the Palestine Arab Party from 1930 to 1955. He played an important part in the founding of the All-Palestine Provisional Government during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which governed the country until the election of 1950, during which Husseini lost to Ragheb al-Nashashibi of the National Defence Party.

## Biography

El-Husseini was the scion of a family of Jerusalemite notables, who trace their origins to the eponymous grandson of Muhammad. After receiving an education in Islamic, Ottoman and Catholic schools, he went on to serve in the Ottoman army in World War I. At war's end he stationed himself in Damascus as a supporter of the Arab Kingdom of Syria. Following the Franco-Syrian War and the collapse of Arab Hashemite rule in Damascus, his early position on pan-Arabism shifted to a form of local nationalism for Palestinian Arabs and he moved back to Jerusalem. From as early as 1920 he actively opposed Zionism, and was implicated as a leader of the 1920 Nabi Musa riots. Al-Husseini was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for incitement but was pardoned by the British. In 1921 the British High Commissioner appointed him Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, a position he used to promote Islam while rallying a non-confessional Arab nationalism against Zionism. During the period 1921-36 he was considered an important ally by the British Mandatory authorities.

He joined the fledgling Palestine Arab Party in 1925, the year of its founding, becoming its secretary-general in 1930; the following year, he was part of the General Islamic Congress (VIII session of the Palestine Arab Congress. His opposition to the British peaked during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, during which he actively promoted the militant activities of Izz ad-Din el-Qassam's Black Hand, which protected Congress sessions after their outlaw by British authorities. 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, maintaining from exile his position as Secretary-general of the Palestine Arab Party. During World War II, many Arabs saw an Axis victory as the likely outcome and a way of securing Palestinian independence from the British, and Husseini 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, leadership and faith). Also, as he told the recruits, Germany had not colonized any Arab country while France 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 Legion, the coalition formed under the aegis of the Arab League, Husseini formed his own militia, el-Jihad el-Muqaddas (lit. "Holy Struggle"). In September 1948 he participated in the establishment of the All-Palestine Provisional Government, and was nominated as the Palestine Arab Party's candidate for President of Palestine in the 1950 elections, but lost to Ragheb al-Nashashibi of the National Defence Party. After the election, his claims to leadership were wholly discredited, and he was eventually sidelined by younger cadres of the Palestine Arab Party led by Ahmad Shukeiri (who would go on to serve as 3rd President of Palestine), losing most of his residual political influence. He fled the West Bank after the Army of the Republic of Palestine's defeat in the 1967 Six-Day War and subsequent Israeli occupation of Palestine, and died in Beirut, Lebanon in July 1974.

## Controversy

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 antisemitism. While his ideological influence on postwar Palestinian nationalism is minimal, Husseini's legacy is of interest to modern scholars of Islamism for his role in introducing radical antisemitism into Islamic fundamentalism.