Arno Rosenfeld

2/10

Icon of Evil

Haj Amin al-Husseini was, by all accounts a despicable man. His virulent Antisemitism which

led him to lead many of the Arabs in Palestine toward violence against the Jews is unequivocally evil.

His attempted friendship with Hitler and his support of the genocide of the Jewish people is absolutely

despicable. You will not find anyone coming to al-Husseini's defense, save for possibly some radical

terrorists in the Middle East. All of this makes it quite remarkable that authors David G. Dalin and John

F. Rothman weren't able to put together a more sophisticated and fact based case against the former

mufti of Jerusalem.

Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam is a painful book to read. While it

appears on the surface to be a biography of one of the central characters in the radical opposition to the

creation of Israel, it is nothing more than an unsophisticated attempt to characterize the Arabs of

Palestine as Nazis. It equates the entire Palestinian side of the Israel/Palestine debate into a fight

between fanatical Antisemitism and victimized Jews. Al-Husseini was not responsible for the rise of

“Radical Islam”, as the book would lead one to believe. He was a Palestinian nationalist, who caused a

lot of harm to a lot of Jews.

The book certainly does lay down a lot of criticism, though it tend to be light on sources,

especially when dealing with controversial claims. For example, Dalin and Rothman claim that al-

Husseini became mufti because he was involved in a “passionate homosexual relationship” with Ernest

Richmond, a British official in Palestine (Dalin and Rothman 21). However, there is no citation for this

claim. In the same section the authors accuse Sir Ronald Storrs of being Richmond's “lover” and find it
acceptable to say that this was “well-known in the Jerusalem of the 1920's” without citing any actual

sources (Dalin and Rothman 22). While I won't say that these allegations of homosexuality are

inherently homophobic, they do little to convince me that this was the reason that al-Husseini got his

job. They do however make it seem as though there was a large homosexual conspiracy within the

British foreign service and that it led to high-level officials making serious policy decisions based on

the desires of their gay “lovers”. While this makes for a slightly more entertaining read, it takes a

serious toll on the books credibility. I find such little credibility in the book that I was reluctant to

continue reading after the first few pages which cited al-Husseini's memoir as a source. In describing

his meeting with Hitler, al-Husseini claims that Hitler told him “The Jews are yours.” (Dalin and

Rothman 6). The authors use this quote to punctuate the story of the two men's meeting and yet I am at

a loss as to what on earth made Dalin and Rothman think that the man, who they portray as a deceptive

liar, would be a reliable source for an account of such a meeting.

The claim that Daniel Pearl's murder was the “culmination and fulfillment of the viciously anti-

Jewish ideology of... al-Husseini” (Dalin and Rothman 107) is a shallow argument that does more to

shock the reader into looking at any terrorism in the Middle East as directly anti-Israeli, than it does to

educate the reader about who al-Husseini was and what his actual effect on the anti-Israel movement

was. Did al-Husseini inspire a generation of radical violent opposition to Israel? That is quite probable.

But did they really need inspiration? I find it unlikely that without al-Husseini the Palestinian Arabs

and the European Jews would have lived peacefully in the Holy Land. Dalin and Rothman claim that

al-Husseini was almost solely responsible for the distribution of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in

the Middle East. Again, nobody is doubting that al-Husseini was a vicious anti-Semite and an evil man,

but making outrageous claims about the out-sized effect he had on anti-Semetism in the Middle East

harms the authors message more than it helps it.

As the majority of intellectuals and historians turn away from the Great Man philosophical

theory of history, Dalin and Rothman embrace it. The underlying problem with Icon of Evil is that al-
Husseini was not the seed from which “Radical Islam” grew. The authors however, were persistent in

their belief that he was. This is why we get a book that is an amalgamation of rumors, speculation, facts

taken out of context, fiction, and commentary. As Hebert Shepard said “[Y]ou must admit that the

genesis of a great man depends on the long series of complex influences which has produced the race in

which he appears, and the social state into which that race has slowly grown....Before he can remake

his society, his society must make him.” [Italics added]. Though Shepard died over a hundred years

before the publication of this book, the authors would have been wise to listen to him.