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Hajj Amin Husseini's Anti-Semitic Legacy

Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Muhammad Haj Amin al-Husseini (Jerusalem 1893-Beirut 1974) has been widely recognized as one of the most important protagonists of political developments in Palestine prior to creation of the State of Israel. Historians are also well-acquainted with his collaboration with the Nazis during the World War II, even though there are aspects of that collaboration yet to be more thoroughly scrutinized. However, as I have argued in my article Haj Amin al-Husseini: Herald of Religious Anti-Judaism in the Contemporary Islamic World the Mufti’s role in shaping wider Muslim perception of Jews might be a far more important and lasting legacy of his, than the immediate political activism in Palestine, in Germany or elsewhere. An important source for supporting this thesis can be found in a booklet authored by him and intended for the Muslim soldiers enlisted in an SS Division in Bosnia. During the Mufti’s stay in Berlin he closely befriended the Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler. Himmler’s fascination with Islam and the Mufti’s zealous support for the Nazi cause resulted in several common enterprises of theirs. The one relevant for this study had been the Mufti’s engagement in establishing a volunteer Waffen-SS Division in Bosnia, made up mostly of Bosnian Muslims, later named the Handžar Division. Most books about the Handžar Division display photography of its soldiers – distinguishable by the Division’s insignia on uniform lapels and fez headgear – reading a booklet titled Islam und Judentum. The cover does not display the name of the author, but it is most certainly the Grand Mufti, and the booklet is the German version of his pamphlet Islam i židovstvo (Islam and Judaism). In whatever language the pamphlet was originally written, the intended readers, as we shall see from the text, were Muslims (Bosnian or other), and not Germans. I have not been able to find a German copy of the text to compare, but it seems reasonable to regard the text written in the language of the Bosnian Muslims, which was at the time called Croatian as the most relevant. That fifteen-page booklet I have translated from the Croatian original into English, and present it here in its entirety.

Aanti-Judaism; Bosnia-Herzegovina; Haj Amin al-Husseii; Islam; jihad; Palestine; Pamphlet Islam i židovstvo (Islam and Judaism)

The article is complementary to article "Haj Amin al-Husseini: Herald of Religious Anti-Judaism in the Contemporary Islamic World" http://www.academia.edu/10979170/Haj_Amin_al-Husseini_Herald_of_Religious_Anti-Judaism_in_the_Contemporary_Islamic_World