Sunday, July 13, 2014

Emir Feisal: For Israel- Hashemite, Descendant of Muhammad and Against Israel: Haj Amin al Husseini of Jerusalem

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

                                                                                                      

                                                    Father, Hussein bin Ali, Sherif and Emir of Mecca
"As a Hashemite, he was highly respected in the Islamic world. His noble lineage granted him the status he maintained in the Hijaz:(Saudi Arabia)  as a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.   The British recognized this status.  

The sherif of Mecca 1854 – 4 June 1931) was the Sharif and Emir of Mecca from 1908 until 1917, when he proclaimed himself and was internationally recognized as King of the Kingdom of Hejaz.   Hejaz was the original name of Saudi Arabia.  The Hejaz became independent in 1916, and became Saudi Arabia in 1932. 

The 3rd son of Hussein bin Ali, sherif of Mecca,(1885-1933) was Feisal Ibn Hussein, also a Hashemite. Feisal was the younger half brother of Ali of Hejaz and Abdullah I of Jordan.   He was the leader of the Hashemites and led the Arab "rising" against Turkey which was the Ottoman Empire in WWI by being on the Allied side and fought with the British.  This took place from 1916 to 1918. His father, the sherif of Mecca, proclaimed himself as the Caliph of all Muslims.  No wonder Feisal was considered the major leader of Arabs after WWI.   

Because he was the most important leader of his day, the leaders of the Zionist movement of returning to the Holy Land  invited him to their meetings.  His opinion was important to their success.

He had been sympathetic to Zionism because he hoped to receive help from the Jews in building his future kingdom.  He had met Dr. Weizmann in Transjordan in 1918 and then in Paris in 1919 where they reached an agreement on mutual aid, conditional on the implementation of the British promises to the Arabs. At the time, many European and Arab leaders hoped Jews would revive this small, impoverished, thinly populated region.
                                                                         
                                                   Chaim Weizmann and Emir Feisal

He said in 1919, "We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with deepest sympathy on the Zionist movement.  We will wish the Jews a hearty welcome home.  Our two movements complement one another."

Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire.  The British were given the mandate to manage it and the French had Syria.  The ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah lay in Palestine.  They had been renamed "Palestine" by the Romans in order to erase their history who commonly did things like that.  They picked the name of the Philistines, the old enemy of the Jewish empire.

For his contributions, Feisal was chosen to be the King of Syria. Because he was expelled from Syria by the French in 1920,  he then became King of Iraq through the British from 1921. The other Palestinian Arab leaders influenced him to change his attitude towards Zionism and so he became hostile towards it.

What Feisal is known for is Pan Arabism.  "Faisal fostered unity between Sunni and Shiite Muslims to encourage common loyalty and promote pan-Arabism in the goal of creating an Arab state that would include Iraq, Syria and the rest of the Fertile Crescent."  

Feisal's health was failing.  "In July 1933, right before his death, Faisal went to London where he expressed his alarm at the current situation of Arabs that resulted from the Arab-Jewish conflict and the increased Jewish immigration to Palestine, as the Arab political, social, and economic situation was declining. He asked the British to limit Jewish migration and land sales. The British went overboard in keeping Jews out which was going against the mandate they had been given; to see to it that the Jews had their homeland.  
King Faisal died on 8 September 1933, at the age of 48. The official cause of death was a heart attack while he was staying in Bern, Switzerland, for his general medical checkup

King Hussein, born in 1935, was the king of Jordan.  He succeeded to the throne in 1952.  His son, Abdullah II,  is now King of Jordan.

The Jordanian monarchy was set up in 1921, with the help of Britain. The sons of Sherif Hussein ibn Ali were set up as kings of Iraq and Jordan. In Jordan, Abdullah I, 2nd of the 3 sons of the sherif of Mecca,  was made Emir of Transjordan, a post he held from 11 April 1921 until Transjordan was granted independence on 25 May 1946 as the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan. Abdullah was crowned the country's first king. He was the half-brother of Emir Feisal.  The country's name was shortened to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on 3 April 1949.
The Hashemite dynasty originates in the Hejaz, which is now part of Saudi Arabia.
                                                                                                                                               
                                                                         
"Haj Muhammad Amin al-Husseini (1893-1974)was born to the wealthy, prominent and a devout Muslim Husseini family in 1893 in Jerusalem. His father was Tahir al-Husayni (1842-1908), also the Mufti of Jerusalem.  The family was the most powerful and influential clans of the Ottoman Province, with his grandfather Mustafa and half-brother Kamal both being the muftis of Jerusalem. Husseini attended Al-Azhar University of Cairo and studied Islamic philosophy, carrying on his family tradition. Husseini received the honorary title of ‘Haj’ on his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1913." During WWI and the fight against the Ottoman Empire with the British he was just an artillery officer.  He returned to Jerusalem and was incensed to find that new Jews had come to live there and had joined Jews already there.  He feared that the Arabs would be expelled with this incoming tide of immigrants. 

This Palestinian leader, Haj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini,  was against the Jews' return as it spoiled his plans of having his own little empire, so he repeatedly fomented riots against Jews.  During 1920 there were many incidents.  Six Jews were killed and 200 wounded.  In 1921 there were 43 Jews killed and 147 wounded.  In response, Jews organized defensive forces that would later become the Haganah, the forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces or IDF.  This type of Arab riots and terrorism happened in the early Mandate Period with the British in control.  

Al-Husseini was sentenced to ten years imprisonment, but was pardoned by the British.  Starting in 1921, al-Husseini was appointed  Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, using the position to promote Islam, while rallying a non-confessional Arab nationalism against Zionism.  It was Sir Herbert Samuel, a British Jew,  who appointed him mufti of Jerusalem. and Supreme Moslem Council. 

"The whole idea of sharing their land with anti-Islamic nation and ending the Muslim control was unacceptable to Husseini from the beginning so he rejected Balfour Declaration and also the British Mandate in Palestine."

In 1929 more massacres were instigated by Haj Amin al-Husseini.  Mobs attacked Jews in Jerusalem, Safed, Jaffa and Kfar Darom, a kibbutz in the Gaza Strip.  Hebron, which was a Jewish community for centuries, was destroyed and 67 Jews were slaughtered there.  British authorities reported the incidents of rape, torture, beheadings of babies and mutilation.  The British High Commissioner, John Chancellor, wrote, "I do not think that history records many worse horrors in the last few hundred years."  135 Jews were killed and 350 were maimed or wounded in these riots.  This was also the year of the stock market crash in the USA.  The whole world was going through an economic crisis.
                                                                         
                           “Fuhrer of the Arabic World: Haj Amin al-Husseini and Hitler

With the support of Nazi Germany, Haj Amin al-Husseini led a 3 year rebellion against the British, the Jews and his political opponents to force an end to Jewish immigration and land purchases.  An estimated 415 Jews, 200 Britons and 5,000 Arabs were killed from 1936 to 1939, which was the era that the Nazi party was changing the world and taking over.  By 1939, only one ship was able to leave Germany with Jews heading for the USA and safety.

 It was in 1936 that he organized the Palestine disturbances for which he was sentenced to exile in 1937 where he fled to Lebanon and was in the coup in Iraq during WWII before he went to Europe where he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem areas of Bosnia.  In 1946 he escaped to Egypt.  After 1948 he set up a short-lived "Palestine Government" in Gaza and later in Cairo.  

Husseini influenced  "Anwar Sadat, Gamal Abdul Nasser and Yasser Arafat. Yasser Arafat met Grand Mufti while he was still young. He became his role model and a mentor and also involved Arafat in his cover network."  "One can say that Haj Amin was the father of Arab nationalism and the only reason he is not revered as much in Palestine today is because “he did not succeed in destroying the Jews and Israel”."  He died in Beirut, Lebanon on July 4, 1974.  

A note on religion of Husseini clan:  Husayni (Arabicالحسيني‎ also spelled Husseini) is the name of a prominent Palestinian Arab clan formerly based in Jerusalem, which claims descent from Husayn ibn Ali (the son of Ali).
The Husaynis follow the Hanafi school of Sunni Islam, in contrast to the Shafi school followed by most of the Arab Muslim population of Palestine.  Mustafa was the mayor of Jerusalem.  Shafi Islam is also followed by Indonesia, Egypt, Malaysia, some of Yemen, Somalia, Jordan, Djibouti, Drunei, and Maldives.

In studying the family line, this has been found.  "Researchers and historians have differed in their evaluations of the Husseini family’s lineage since the Mandate period, following a political struggle between Haj Amin Husseini and his parliamentarian supporters and the opposition led by the Nashashibi family. Haj Amin contributed to the spread of an account of the family stating that it was among the ashraaf, that its members had settled in Jerusalem and its suburbs since the thirteenth century CE, and that they had played an important role in Jerusalem’s history since the Mamluk period. The opposition to Haj Amin’s appointment as Palestine’s mufti and his political leadership in turn spread an account stating that the affiliation of the Husseini family to the ashraaf was false and that Haj Amin’s grandfather, Mustafa, had attained the post of mufti through lies and trickery. 

The opposition’s account found traction with Zionist researchers inimical to the Palestinian national movement, who then spread it in campaigns against Haj Amin intending to mar his family’s reputation and harm the national movement he led. Israeli researchers in recent decades have published studies casting doubt on the Nashashibi family’s account of its competitors. 

In fact, they have leaned towards accepting the Husseini account of their lineage and their historic role in Jerusalem, at least post-eighteenth century. Although these studies are important, have distanced themselves from propagandistic research, and have removed some of the confusion concerning the Husseini family history, they have not entirely uncovered the truth of this family’s origins or its role prior to the mid-eighteenth century."

Resource: Israel 101, from StandWithUs Special Edition, partners of Christians United For Israel
 page 4
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia, p. 327 Feisal
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faisal_I_of_Iraq
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_mandate_grand_mufti.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Tahir_al-Husayni
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Feisal_bin_Al_Hussein  family tree, descendants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_tree_of_Husayn_ibn_Ali
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussein_bin_Ali,_Sharif_of_Mecca
http://www.jerusalemquarterly.org/ViewArticle.aspx?id=38
http://www.kingabdullah.jo/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kings_of_Jordan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_I_of_Jordan
http://www.theroyalforums.com/forums/f194/caliph-hussein-bin-ali-sharif-of-mecca-king-of-hejaz-and-king-of-all-arabs-14961.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashashibi
correction of Feisal being oldest son to 3rd son of Hussein, Sharif of Mecca.  by friend S.S. 7/14/14








2 comments:

  1. The Qadi and Mufti of Jerusalem were: Mohammed Tahir al-Husayni from the 1860s to 1908
    Muḥammad Ṭāhir al-Ḥusayni 1813[5]
    Kamil al-Husayni from 1908 to 1921
    During World War I (1914–1918), the Ottoman Empire claimed that As'ad Shuqeiri was the Grand Mufti.
    Mohammad Amin al-Husayni from 1921 to 1937, dismissed by the British,[6] but kept the title in the Arab world until 1948. They are the : Sunni Muslim cleric in charge of Jerusalem's Islamic holy places, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque

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  2. Hussein bin Ali was the last of the Hashemite rulers of the hejaz to be appointed by the Ottoman Empire. "In reward for his support, Hussein’s sons were made Kings of Transjordan (later Jordan), Iraq and Syria, although the latter lasted very short time. Hussein proclaimed himself King of Hejaz and King of all Arabians. After the Turkish Caliphate was abolished, he also proclaimed himself Caliph. This didn’t go too well with some of the Arabian leaders and the Saudis launched an attack on Hussein, which resulted in the loss of Mecca, Medina and Jeddah.

    Hussein was forced to flee to Transjordan, where his son was King. In Transjordan Huseein abdicated in favour of his eldest son Ali, however the latter ruled over Hejaz for a very short time only. A few years later Hussein died in Amman.

    Hussein bin Ali had 5 sons with his 4 wives:
    Ali – he was briefly King of Nejaz
    Abdullah – he later became King of Transjordan and founder of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
    Faisal – he was briefly King of Syria, before accepting the Throne of Egypt.
    Zeid – he became claimant to the Throne of Egypt after Faisal’s grandson was murdered in 1958.
    Hassan died at a young age."

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