MUFTI OF JERUSALEM

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3892, 21 April 1937, Page 3

MUFTI OF JERUSALEM

BRITISH RULE OPPOSED. POWER OF THE ARABS. The man who holds the initiative in Palestine to-day is Haj Amin al Hus.seini, the Mufti of Jerusalem, states Ernest Main in the London “Daily Telegraph.” The Mufti, a sleek, courteous, ruthless man of about 46, was during the war a Turkish artilleryman, and after the war he became a minor official in Palestine C.LD. In 1920 he was given a life sentence for the active share which he took in the rioting of that year. But Sir Herbet Samuel, then High Commissioner, was bent on a policy of reconciliation, and after seven months the life sentence

was squashed. Sir Herbet Samuel though that the path to peace might be found by giving jobs to the dangerous men. In 1922 a new Mufti came to be elected, and Haj Amin was fifth in the voting. The final selection, made by the High Commissioner, is from the first four, but by arrangement behind the scenes the fourth Jarralah, withdrew and Haj Amin thus became fourth. Although he had the fewest votes of the eligible four, Sir Herbert Samuel nevertheless appointed him.

The new -Mufti at once began to transform the Supreme Moslem Council into a political body. This Council controls religious endowments, schools, mosques and other organisations and has a strong cadre of officials and a valuable power of patronage. Its funds are controlled by the Mufti and there is no public audit or even scrutiny. Palestine is the only Moslem country in which the Wakf moneys, or religious endowments, are not controlled by a Government department. About 85 per cent, of the Moslems are illiterate and the Mufti’s word to them is oracular. His personal salary is £l2O a month, of which half is coiftrolled by the Palestine Government. His religious position has given to the Mufti in recent years a decisive political influence. He has personal ambitions and he. realises that any compromise on the Jewish issue would stand in the way of these ambitions. Of necessity, therefore, he continues his extremist policy, and his latest success was the retirement from office a year or two ago of the then mayor of Jerusalem, Ragheb Bey Nashashibi, a leader of Arab moderate opinion.

The present mayor of Jerusalem, Dr Khalidi, is! pro-Mufti, and so the Mufti now controls the principal municipality in the country as well as the religious machine.

It is true that the mass of the Arabs in Palestine want peace instead of strife, but as the Mufti pays the piper lie can call the tune. The convocation in Jerusalem in 1931 of an international Moslem Congress further increased the Mufti’s prestige. When Mashashibi fell from power in 1934, the Mufti felt that his chief opponent had disappeared. Nashashibi is still a member of the Arab Higher Committee, and he sat on the Mufti’s right hand -when he made his opening statement of the Arab case before the Royal Commission. But the Nashashibi party was obviously forbidden to give evidence and all that the Royal Commission heard was the Mufti’s side.

It has thus come about that the Mufti’s personal ambition has brought him and the extreme Nationalists into line. The leader of the Istiqlal (or Independence) party is Auni Bey Abdul Haoi, a clever lawyer, who was Feisal’s secretary at Versailles in 1919. The Mufti fights the Jews first and then the British; the Istiqlalists want to get rid first of the British and then, as a matter of course, the Jews.

It is important to note that it is within the constitutional power of the Palestine Government to remove the Mufti from office, and it should be within their administrative power to “freeze” his funds. These funds he utilises for political ends, and the freedom of the Press have given him a further lever to control Arab opinion.