On: 'Barid al-Sharq', 'Imam Institute ', Sheikh 'Abu al-Saud Hassan, rewriting Nazi Mufti, etc.

Comment at EoZ ^ | June 12, 2023

[Milagros]

ON: 'BARID AL-SHARQ', 'IMAM INSTITUTE', SHEIKH 'ABU AL-SAUD HASSAN, REWRITING NAZI MUFTI, ETC.

Excerpt from:

Muhannad Ibrahim Abu Latifa: Arab Media Work in Germany 1896-1945 Pages from the History of Arab Liberation Movements
"مهند إبراهيم أبو لطيفة: العمل الإعلامي العربي في ألمانيا 1896-1945 صفحات من تاريخ حركات التحرر العربية"
At (infamous - Abdel Bari Atwan's) Rai al-Youm, Apr 27, 2019:

' - “Bareed Al Sharq” magazine, a fortnightly magazine run by Kamal El Din Jalal since 1939...

Among those who contributed their writings in the period between 1896 AD-1945 AD, by country:

- Palestine:

Sheikh Hassan Abu Al-Saud: Religious teacher, one of the men of the Palestinian national movement, member of the Higher Arab Authority for Palestine. He participated in the Caliphate Conference in Cairo in 1926. He participated in the Islamic Conference in Jerusalem in 1931. He worked as an advisor to the Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini in Iraq in 1939. He was a member of the “Arab Nation” organization in 1942. He worked as director of the Islamic Center in Berlin in 1943. His contributions were through booklets, pamphlets, press articles, speeches and lessons, especially with the Arab Legion.

- Haj Amin al-Husayni:

The great Palestinian national leader, Haj Amin had a very large media activity in Berlin, and he had extensive relations with German politicians. He met Hitler in 1941. He was treated as a representative of Arabs and Muslims in Berlin. The Mufti arrived in Berlin from Rome by train, on November 9, 1941. In Berlin, he met a number of great leaders such as: “Ghulam Sadiq Khan,” the Afghan Foreign Minister, the famous Indian leader “Subhas ChandraBose,” and a number of leaders of Azerbaijan, the Caucasus, and the Muslims of Russia . He was constantly calling for support for the independence of the Arab countries, and submitting written projects to the German government through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He held receptions for German politicians, visited them in their homes and urged them to support Arab independence, and participated in sit-ins on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration and others. Most of his sermons and letters have been published and distributed, and some have been translated into German. His presence was distinguished, and he contributed to the establishment of the “Imam Institute” in the city of “Guben” to support the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), and another institute in the city of Dusseldorf. The Egyptian Dr. Mustafa Al-Wakil and Sheikh Hassan Abu Al-Saud worked with him. Hajj Amin died in Beirut in 1974.

- Aziz Doumet (1890-1943): Palestinian teacher, poet and playwright. From 1939 until his death he worked as a translator in the Ministries of Information and Foreign Affairs. Has published a number of books, and has many contributions to the press. Most of his works have been translated ...'

End of excerpt.

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Fixes and expansion:

(1)

'Barid Al Sharq' - 1939-1944, was a Nazi propaganda magazine on Arabic by contributors: Younes Bahri, Shaquib Arslan and the Mufti.

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barid_al-Sharq.jpg

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(2)

{{Re 'Imam Institute'}}

* The 'Imam Institute' was at: a SS hotel in Guben.

Source: Lepre, G. Himmler's Bosnian Division: the Waffen-SS Handschar Division, 1943-1945. (Schiffer Military History, 1977), p. 185

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(3)

{{Re Haj Amin al-Husseini}}

Though stressing on "Arab independence", the Mufti was fir a Pan Arab Pan Muslim greater Caliphate dream,. Not really for a "Palestine state."

But most of the Mufti al-Husseini' 'work' was anti-Jewish, such as instigating with others toward the 1941 Farhoud pogrom; and since meeting Hitler in Nov-1941 then being surrounded by German women and getting high Nazi salary: calling on all Arabs to 'kill the J..s wherever they are, this pleases Allah;" his 1942 plan to build Crematorium in Dotan Valley for all Jews of the M.E.; his separate visits of conectration camps Trebbin and Monowitz; his 1943 organizing SS Muslim units; his 1943 urging the Nazis to bomb Tel Aviv; the 1944 poisoning 250,000 plot on Atlas Operation; his intervention against Jewish children being saved from the Holocaust about to escape to Eretz Yisrael.

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(4)

{{Re Aziz Doumet}}

L. Badr, M. van Reisen, M. Raheb (2014), "Palestinian Identity[sic] in Relation to Time and Space":

'Aziz Doumet (1890-1943) Living in Germany for many years, Doumet married there and worked for the German-Arab radio station.'

__

E'tedal Salameh, "Arabs of Berlin: Artistic and Social Achievements, Political Failures." Aawsat, Aug 24, 2016:

'Aziz Doumit, a Palestinian poet who was born in Cairo (1890-1943), has written in the German language but the level of his writing remarkably regressed.
Berlin, the neighborhood of Arabs The generation that lived the World War II must remember the expression of “Berlin, the neighborhood of Arabs” by the voice of Youness al-Bahri, who worked in a radio station established by the Nazi government to broadcast news in Arabic.'

[https://eng-archive.aawsat.com/etedal-salameh/lifestyle-culture/arabs-berlin-artistic-social-achievements-political-failures].

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(5)

{{Re 'Abu Al-Saud Hassan}}

The following is from the "Palestinian" Arab source, Passia:

'Abu Al-Saud Hassan (Sheikh) (1896-1957)

one of the prominent persons of the Palestinian Arab Party

Born in Jerusalem in 1896; studied at the American School in Jerusalem, and at Salahiyyah College, Jerusalem, which was founded by Jamal Pasha to turn out Arab youth who would contribute to the advancement of the Arab and Islamic Worlds after the WWI; continued his higher education at Al-Azhar University in Cairo; co-founder of the Rawdat Al-Ma’arif School in Jerusalem in 1916; the location of his house near Al-Buraq (Western Wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque) was among the reasons of his flaming the first spark of Al-Buraq revolution in 1929; he was also an orator; one of the prominent persons of the Palestinian Arab Party (established in 1935) advocating Arab unity and opposing the policies of the British Mandate; Mufti of Al-Shafi’yah Madhab (School of Islamic Jurisprudence) in Palestine; Shari’a Court Judge in Ramleh; controller of Shari’a Islamic courts; captured by Allies in 1945 in Berlin, where he had fled with Mufti Amin Al-Husseini at the end of WWII; managed to leave to Switzerland while the rest of the Palestinian leaders were taken into custody by the Americans; Vice-Chairman of the All-Palestine Government, established in 1948; died in Cairo in 1957.'

End of Passia piece.

[Milagros]

BTW, Shaquib Arslan was an Islam scholar who had great influence over Mufti’s thinking and others.

[Steely Tom]

Is he the one who visited the United States and witnessed teenagers dancing with each other while music played?

[Conservat1]

2014 book:

By the end of 1944 this formation included three thousand Muslim SS men.

Al-Husaini opened two schools for training imams to serve both SS and regular Muslim units: one in Dresden for Soviet Turkic recruits, and another in Guben for those from the Balkans. Among the teachers in Dresden were Professors Richard Hartmann, sixty-three, of Berlin University and Munich University's Bertold Spuler, thirty-three. They trained forty Turkic Muslim imams at a time for both SS and regular units in six courses lasting two to four weeks each.

The Guben imam school opened on April 21, 1944, in ceremonies presided over by al-Husaini and Berger... The graduates were told to preach Islam in their units, bond Germans and Muslims together, and make their soldiers into "good" SS men. The teachers were four more senior Bosnian clerics, the best-known being Husain Sulaiman Djozo, and seventeen younger men. Three of al-Husaini's aides— Shaikh Hasan, Abu as-Saud, and Mustafa al-Wakil—helped with the courses and al-Husaini himself often lectured there too.

The school trained fifty SS imams in two courses of four months each.

[Milagros]

Motadel, D. (2014). Islam and Nazi Germany’s War. United Kingdom: Harvard University Press.

p. 67:

A major figure promoting an ideological interpretation of Islam in Germany was the Nazi propagandist Johannvon Leers, who advanced the idea of a historical hostility between Islam and Judaism. The Qur'an, he claimed in an article in the propaganda journal Die Judenfrage in late 1942, described the Jews as sat-nic... After the war Leers settled in Egypt, where he converted toIslam and took the name "Omar Amin von Leers." Another propagandist of the regime who spread similar ideas was Else Marquardsen-Kamphövener, a publicist who had grown up in Istanbul and who would continue to write on Islam in postwar Germany. At the height of the war, Marquardsen-Kamphövener published an article on "Islam and Its Founder" in the journal Wir und die Welt, offering an anti-Jewish interpretation..

p. 88

Articles in Barid al-Sharq, dominated by the usual anti-British, anti-Communist, and anti-Jewish agitation, also drew on religious themes. They dealt with the suppression of religion in the Soviet Union and the Anglo-American exploitation of the Islamic world, and, on the other side, with German friendship with Islam and the activities of the Islamic Central Institute in Berlin. The journal also published several speeches by members of the Nazi elite, by al-Husayni (including his calls for jihad), and, on the occasion of the hajj in 1944, by the head of al-Azhar, the elderly Muhammad Mustafa al-Maraghi, even though he was known for his pro-British leanings.
Contributors included the Lebanese pan-Islamist Shakib Arslan and Abdurreshid Ibrahim, who, after his service for Germany during the First World War, had now become imam of the Tokyo Mosque, giving the paper a further pan-Islamic tinge.
Johann von Leers wrote on issues such as the suffering of the Muslims in India and the antagonism between Communism and Islam. The editors of Barid al-Sharq also published an Arabic language brochure with the title Islam and the Jews (al-Islam wa-l-Yahud), based on a series of articles that the journal had run earlier under the same title. Numerous copies were distributed in Tunis. In  spring 1942, the German consulate in Tangier reported the “confiscation” ofseveral boxes of the brochure by Spanish officials. Files stored in the archives of the Foreign Office in Berlin indicate that the distribution of Barid al-Sharq in the Tangier zone repeatedly caused friction between German officials and the local Spanish administration during the North African campaign.

[Milagros]

Le Maroc et l'Allemagne: actes de la première rencontre universitaire : études sur les rapports humains, culturels et économiques. Morocco: Editions arabo-africaines, (1991):

Al-Jaheer" (وبالمقابل) was a monthly magazine published by the Arabic section of Radio Berlin. It was addressed to the same readers of the "Barid al-Sharq" who had to be persuaded to be hostile to the Anglo-Saxons, the Communists and the Jews. The magazine sought to bring the sympathy of these readers towards Germany, which is intended to be shown as a great power advocating Islam and Muslims.