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Friday, September 1, 2023

The Sherif of Jerusalem: Haj Amin al-Husseini, The Grand Mufti and How He Fought Against Jews

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

Hajj Mohammed Amin al-Husseini  (1893-1974) in Jerusalem, the son of the mufti of that city and prominent early opponent of Zionism, Tahir al-Husayni. The al-Husseini clan consisted of wealthy landowners in southern Palestine, centered around the district of Jerusalem. 

            Musa al-Husayni was the Mayor of Jerusalem and led the Palestinian national movement

Thirteen members of the clan had been Mayors of Jerusalem between 1864 and 1920.  Another member of the clan and Amin's half-brother, Kamil al-Husayni, also served as Mufti of Jerusalem.    Al-Husseini was the scion of the al-Husayni family of Jerusalemite Arab nobles, who trace their origins to the eponymous grandson of Muhammad.  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). 

 al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAlī, (born January 626, Medina, Arabia [now in Saudi Arabia]—died October 10, 680, Karbalāʾ, Iraq), hero in Shiʿi Islamgrandson of the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fāṭimah and son-in-law ʿAlī (the first imam of the Shiʿah and the fourth of the Sunni Rashidun caliphs).

I would say that the Husseini and the Hussein families are like  the Hatfields and McCoys;  on opposing teams.  Islam split between Shi'i and Sunni because Mohammad did not leave a male heir.  Muslims follow the 2 different leaders.  



                             Abdulla I Hussein (1882-1951), king of TransJordan  His father was Husayn bin Ali.  

The question is if Amin is related to King of Jordan Hussein (reigned from 1946 to 

1951.   His son  eliminated the British officers from his Arab Legion

in 1956 and signed a pact with Egypt and Syria but later refrained from joining the Sinai Campaign with them.  He kept

his throne and in 1967 attacked Israel with the others, but his

army was defeated and they retreated from Eastern Palestine.  Then he was threatened by the Palestinians and Black September came about.   As a member of the Hashemite dynasty, the royal family of Jordan since 1921, Hussein was a 40th-generation direct descendant of Muhammad.                        

In 1936, as chairman of the Arab Supreme Council, Husseini organized the Palestine riots and for this he was sentenced to exile in 1937.  Instead, he fled to Lebanon, and during World War II, participated in Rashid Ali's pro-Axis coup in Iraq before going to Europe, where he assisted Hitler and was largely responsible for the liquidation of the Jews in the Moslem areas of Bosnia. 

 Rashid Ali Gaylani (1892–1965). Prime Minister of Iraq 1933, 1936–8, 1940–1 Born in Baghdad from a distinguished Sunni family, he graduated from Baghdad Law School. In 1924, he became Minister of Justice, and in 1925–8 he served as Minister of the Interior.  A group of increasingly powerful anti-British and pro-German colonels made Rashid Premier. His subsequent denial of help to the British army, and his expulsion of the Hashemite dynasty, led to the intervention by British forces, who deposed him and reinstated Faisal I. He fled to Nazi Germany, and remained in exile in Saudi Arabia until 1958, when he returned to support Qassem's revolutionary regime. He was soon linked with attempts to oust Qassem, for which he was sentenced to death. He was pardoned, and released from prison in 1961.


He was selected by Viscount Herbert Louis Samuel (1870-1963) of the British government in the cabinet since 1909,  to be the Sherif of Jerusalem.  Up till now, I have never understood why a Jew, the only one in Parliament, would do such a thing as to have chosen one of Israel's worst enemies from the Palestinian Arabs.  

Husseini's father, Tahir al-Husayni,  was an anti-Semite.  Born in Jerusalem to the al-Husayni family, Tahir was appointed the Qadi of Jerusalem in the 1860s by officials in the Ottoman Empire. From 1865 until his death, he held the post of Mufti of Jerusalem. Tahir sat on the committee of A'ayan scrutinising land sales to foreigners in the Jerusalem area, this in effect stopped land sales to Jews for a few years, beginning in 1897. When he died, his son Kamil became the Mufti of Jerusalem and later (1918) the Grand Mufti.

Samuel's father was 1st Viscount Marcus Bearsted Samuel  (1853-1927) an English industrialist.  He was responsible for the creation and following development of the Shell Oil Company and its important subsidiaries.   Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New York Stock Exchange.

Marcus was Lord Mayor of London from 1902-1903, ending when he refused to entertain officially the representative of the anti-Semitic Romanian government.  He was raised to the peerage in 1920.  Samuel was born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family from western Europe in WhitechapelLondon. His father, also named Marcus Samuel, ran a successful import-export business, M. Samuel & Co., trading with the coalition in the Far East, which Marcus carried on with his brother, Samuel Samuel. M. Samuel & Co launched the first Japanese gold sterling loan issued in London in 1897, and was largely concerned in the introduction of Japanese municipal loans, and in the development of the coal trade in Japan.   Samuel was lord mayor of London in 1902–03, the fifth Jew to hold this office. In 1921, he was made baron, and in 1925, Viscount Bearsted. Although holding no important Jewish communal offices, Samuel used his influence to help persecuted Jews.

           Colonel Walter Horace  Samuel was the son of Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted and his wife Fanny Elizabeth Samuel, brother to Viscount Herbert Louis Samuel .

His son, Walter Horace Samuel, 2nd Viscount b: 13 March 1882-8 November 1948) was active in philanthropic work, especially for the relief of refugees from Nazi Germany.  

 Samuel had done one good deed in that he had sent a memorandum to the Cabinet in 1914 concerning a British Trust for the Jewish Homeland which did influence the Balfour Declaration.  From 1920 to 1925 he himself was the 1st High Commissioner  for Palestine.

Both Samuel and Husseini had long family histories  of dealing with their present positions, only Husseini was determined to get rid of all the Jews as he saw them as threatening his position.  Samuel was only thinking of the control Husseini had and his high position;  not how he felt about Jews.  What a pair they were!  

Resource: 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Husayni_family

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_I_of_Jordan

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