It is hard to see how anyone can understand contemporary extremist Islam or the Arab-Israeli conflict without some awareness of the central role played by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mid-20th-century grand mufti of Jerusalem, in the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s — and, indeed, historians have written a fair amount about his notorious exploits. Yet, in an America where one in four 17-year-olds cannot identify Adolf Hitler on a multiple choice test, it is fair to say that the particulars of al-Husseini’s life remain largely unknown to most people, even those who proffer strong opinions on “why they hate us.” By calling attention to this truly evil man who commanded the loyalty of millions of Arabs and Muslims years before there was an Israel or Palestinian refugees, the authors of “Icon of Evil” have done an important service. The more people who read this book the better.

“Icon of Evil: Hitler’s Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam,” by David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann (New York: Random House, 2008)

David Dalin and John Rothmann rightly describe al-Husseini as the link “between the old fascism and the new,” between the old European anti-Semitism and “the new radical Islamic anti-Semitism that has spread and metastasized throughout the Arab world in the decades since World War II.” The mufti directed the Arab struggle against Zionism and Israel in the decades preceding and following the independence of the Jewish state. Though he failed to achieve any of his own declared goals, he became a poignant, honored, even legendary symbol for leaders of movements as diverse as the PLO, Hamas, Al Qaeda, the Iraqi Ba’ath regime, the Holocaust denial campaign, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

By the beginning of the Second World War, al-Husseini’s reputation as an implacable foe of the British and the Jews was well established. But his ties to Adolf Hitler and Nazism would go far beyond the opportunistic principle that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend.” Dalin and Rothmann aptly assess the Berlin meeting between Hitler and the mufti on Nov. 28, 1941, as an encounter between “soul-mates.” Though Hitler had previously written about the racial inferiority of Muslims, he thought of the blond, blue-eyed mufti as an honorary Aryan and had high regard for his political shrewdness. Throughout the war, al-Husseini interacted with the likes of Himmler, Goebbels, Eichmann, Mussolini, von Ribbentrop, and others. At the Nuremberg trials, one of Eichmann’s top deputies testified that the mufti had visited Auschwitz incognito and urged Eichmann to accelerate the exterminations. Whether that is true or not, al-Husseini did describe Eichmann as “a very rare diamond, the best savior of the Arabs.”

The mufti helped the Nazis in many ways, some of which had a demonstrable impact on the war effort and the Holocaust. From his office in Berlin, al-Husseini issued daily pro-Axis messages that the Germans and Japanese broadcast to many countries with substantial Muslim populations. For example, the mufti urged his listeners “in the name of the Koran and for the honour of Islam, to sabotage the oil pipe lines, blow up bridges . . . kill British troops.” Speaking on another occasion about the Jews and drawing on his authority as a religious leader, al-Husseini declared: “They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals…. The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews.”

At the request of Heinrich Himmler, the mufti recruited many thousands of volunteers to serve in Muslim Waffen-SS divisions in occupied Bosnia and Croatia. In late 1944, he dispatched five men with the objective of poisoning Tel Aviv’s water system. Although these men were caught before completing their mission, they possessed enough poison to kill 250,000 people.

In one instructive chapter, Dalin and Rothmann imagine the mufti’s role if Hitler had postponed his invasion of Russia to focus instead on the war in North Africa. Had Rommel prevailed there, al-Husseini might well have become Hitler’s man in the Middle East and most likely would have directed an extension of the Holocaust into Palestine.

The mufti was not one man acting alone to help the Nazis. He commanded a huge public following and, after the war, despite his complicity in Nazi crimes, was welcomed as a hero by most Arab leaders and the Arab public. In a sense, the massive involvement of the acknowledged leader of many Arabs discredits the frequent contention that the Holocaust was a purely Western, European, and Christian affair. Muslims, too, played a part — one for which they have never atoned. In the 1960s, when al-Husseini was no longer powerful, “All of the leaders of Arab Jerusalem, religious, secular, and nationalist, greeted him with deference, reverence, and enthusiasm.”

After World War II, the Allied powers knew that the mufti deserved prosecution as a war criminal, but he escaped indictment because of the Allies’ unwillingness to anger the Arabs. This very attitude of appeasement — similar to the one that had proved so inadequate in confronting the Nazis in the 1930s — had been responsible for elevating al-Husseini to power in the first place. He had been initially appointed to his post by a British colonial official, a Jew no less. Herbert Samuel — the first Jew to hold power in Palestine for nearly two millennia — was no self-hater, but he hoped that the voices opposed to the Balfour declaration would quiet down as a result of the appointment. After the Second World War, similar thinking in the West continued to empower the mufti.

Dalin and Rothmann argue that the mufti was the man who — more than any other — endowed Islamic extremism with its defining features. For example, he pioneered political jihad along with the highly destructive tactic of murdering moderates, an approach that goes a long way toward explaining why there are so few voices of reason in the Muslim world today. He also infused the Arab struggle with vicious anti-Semitism, trumpeting the poison of the already discredited “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

Despite the importance of Dalin and Rothmann’s message, their book is not a comprehensive biography; it contains little new material, drawing mainly on secondary, English-language sources. I frequently found myself wanting far more detail than the 143-page essay provided, especially regarding the mufti’s motivation, background, ideology, and interactions with other Muslim leaders. In what sense was he a religious man? How — specifically — did he and Sayyid Qutb, a founder of Islamic terrorism, influence each other? Did he really believe what he said or was he more of an opportunist? Too often, the authors refer to what the mufti “must have been thinking,” without sufficient documentation; this weakens their otherwise well-grounded discussion.

More troubling, when they discuss the mufti’s influence on contemporary Muslim and Arab leaders, the authors sometimes brush over vital distinctions. In what sense, for example, can the pan-Arabist Nasser be spoken of as a “future leader of radical Islam”? And if, as the authors suggest, “it was not al-Husseini who imposed the radical path, but the Arabs of Palestine themselves who demanded the course of action that was to lead to generations of bitterness and conflict,” then we must look elsewhere for the origins of that destructive orientation.

Dalin and Rothmann write that there is an “unbroken line of continuity from generation to generation, an unbroken chain of terror from Adolf Hitler, Haj Amin al-Husseini, Sayyid Qutb, and Yasser Arafat to Hamas’s founder and spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, Sheikh Omar Abd al-Rahman, and Ramzi Yousef, who planned the World Trade Center bombing of 1993, to Osama bin Laden and Mohammed Atta, to Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the Pakistani Muslim terrorist who planned the kidnapping and murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, and to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”

There may be an element of truth in this analysis, but the notion of an unbroken line can be misleading. Alas, there have been many different types of radicalism in the Arab world. While I have no problem classifying all of the people on Dalin and Rothmann’s list as evil, they are different varieties of evil; their common (though by no means equally intense) affection for the mufti may, in fact, tells us very little about the origins of these differences.

The authors conclude by asserting that “As Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini were decisively defeated in their day, the new icons of evil must be unconditionally vanquished in ours.” Amen to that. A more differentiated guide to the nature of the enemy might provide better guidance concerning how to accomplish that necessary objective. But this readable and — at times fascinating — account is a good place to start.