Between 1920 and 1942, Jerusalem saw the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini rise to power over his Islamic counterparts. Husseini’s rise to power was not immediate; instead, it took him years to establish himself. Husseini used fear and terrorism to garner financial support from wealthy Arabs in the region, which angered his fellow Palestinians. Husseini and his followers were arrested and exiled from Palestine in 1937. However, Husseini saw this as an opportunity to travel throughout Europe and meet with Axis leaders like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Because of the anti-Zionist nature of Husseini, he ambitiously sought the allyship of Hitler, who he believed shared a common goal regarding the Jewish people.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the voices of Husseini’s dissenters became emboldened. In October 1938, Fakhri[1] Bey Nashashibi, a member of the Husseini family’s political rival Palestinian families, released his famous “J’accuse”[2] statement.
“I accuse Haj Amin el Husseini, the former Mufti of Jerusalem, of diverting the noble Arab revolt to his own selfish ends. I also accuse him of using funds collected for the relief of Arab sufferers in Palestine to buy arms and ammunition to further his own ambition. Haj Amin’s fifteen years’ tenure of office in Jerusalem proved his destructive tendencies.”[3]
This statement by Nashashibi was bold because it was one of the first times a notable Arab voice had publicly spoken out against Husseini and his followers. This statement also allowed other Arabs to follow suit, creating more robust dissent should Husseini return to the Middle East.
During Nashashibi’s resistance, Husseini met with Benito Mussolini in Rome and was on the cusp of traveling to Berlin to meet with Adolf Hitler. Knowing it was essential to show he still had his affairs in order in the Middle East, Husseini had his Tribunal give the execution order for Nashashibi. While walking down the street in Baghdad on November 9, 1938, Fakhri Bey Nashashibi was assassinated by a Palestinian man riding his bicycle. Husseini had successfully shown his hand as he made his trip to Berlin. Upon being received in Germany, Husseini was met with cheers and great fanfare for his meeting with Hitler. By showing his powerful grasp on the Middle East while abroad, Husseini was given the title of “Fuhrer of the Arab World.”[4] Moshe Pearlman says, “He had shown his Axis masters that distance had not impaired his capacity to terrorize and murder.[5]
Whispers of Dissent tells who the Grand Mufti was, who dissented against him within the Arab world, and what happened to them. How did he use fear to gain control of people? What was his final solution, and did it align with Adolf Hitler’s? The tale of Husseini details a level of corruption to achieve political prominence. Therefore, it does a disservice to the individuals of the Middle East to tell the story as if it were purely partisan. There were members of the Arab world who were against Mufti from the beginning of his influence in Jerusalem. Newspapers from the late 1930s detail discomfort with the Mufti and his ambitions and tell of some being executed for dissenting. This shows the complexity of Arab infighting among Middle Eastern States and the birth of Jihad. The research behind Whispers of Dissent is not intended to investigate or solve the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East.
It is also essential to consider the state of the Arab world during World War II. To do this, primary sources like the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes-Picot Agreement are engaged as they laid the foundation for relations between the Middle East and the West after World War I. World War II in the Middle East was a new kind of conflict as the war was a culmination of Western influence. These documents provide context to the establishment of borders and the framework of modern Israel before Israeli Independence Day in 1948. Actions taken by the West in the Levant led to violence and chaos that filled the void after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. During World War II alone, the Middle East saw conflicts in Iraq, which had the Mufti’s fingerprints embedded until the British were able to re-establish control. Complicating matters further was the arrival of more Jewish people in the 1930s while Adolf Hitler moved to eliminate Europe of Jews.
[1] Has been also spelled Fakhir in texts.
[2] Pearlman, Moshe, The Mufti Over the Middle East, 18.
[3] Ibd.
[4] Dalin et al., Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam, p. 4
[5] Pearlman, Moshe, The Mufti Over the Middle East, 26
