Extended quotations from this article, "Zionism as told by Rashid Rida":
Muhammad Rashid Rida (b. 1865) established al-Manar (The Lighthouse), a journal dedicated to the religious and political revival of the Muslim world. He remained the journal’s editor and chief writer until his death in 1935...Rida’s geopolitical analyses greatly influenced Hasan al-Banna (1906 – 49), the founder of the Muslim Brothers, and still matter today in Arab political discourse...
...At first (1898) Rida described Zionism as a humanitarian resettlement plan that highlighted the poor material state of Muslims and their disunity and should thus encourage Islamic reform. Then (1902) he exposed Zionism as a political movement that aimed to take over Palestine. Following the Young Turk revolution he warned (1910 – 14) that the ultimate ambition of the Jews was to convert the al-Aqsa mosque into a Jewish temple and cleanse Palestine from all of its Arab inhabitants...
...A reading of Rida’s depictions of Jews as the embodiment of vices and the orchestrators of global-scale conspiracies is useful to the broader discussion on the proliferation of anti-Semitic ideas in the contemporary Arab world. Translations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion have been available in Arabic since the mid-1920s, and by the late 1920s they were already incorporated as an argument against Zionism. Following the 1948 war, the Protocols proliferated as an explanation for the Arab defeat. However, Rida viewed Jews as the masters of anti-Christian and anti-Muslim conspiracies already at the turn of the century, with no experience of defeat in mind and no foundational hateful European textbook to guide him. It appears that he was acquainted, albeit not through primary sources, with French anti-Semitic expressions as well as with their refutations in France. Anti-Semitic allegations in Istanbul also did not escape him. Ironically and to a large measure, Rida’s developed anti-Semitism reads as accommodation of his original admiration of Jewish virtues with his realization that Zionism was a serious threat...
...The threat of Jewish manipulation of the situation in the Ottoman Empire continued to preoccupy Rida in the months that followed. In December 1910, he presented the Zionist danger in even graver terms: should the Jews realize their plan to take over al-Aqsa, they would expel the Muslims and the Christians from the Holy Land. He urged the Ottoman government not to facilitate Jewish purchase of land or massive migration to Palestine, arguing again that Zionism posed a grave threat...
...Rida had already predicted in the 1910s that Jewish ascendancy in Palestine would endanger al-Aqsa and result in the ethnic cleansing of the Arab inhabitants...Already in October 1928, only days after the tensions over the Wailing Wall began, Rida portrayed events in Palestine as a struggle between Judaism and Islam, as well as between Britain and Islam. In this struggle, the British were assisting the Jews as part of Britains’s “ambitious” and uncharacteristically ill-conceived plan to subordinate the Arab nation and impose British rule on the Arabian Peninsula and the three holiest shrines – in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. In this struggle, the ultimate goal of the Jews was the destruction of al-Aqsa, the third holiest shrine in Islam, and its replacement with a new Jewish temple (“Fath al-yahud li-bab al-fitna fi al-Quds” [The Jews open the door to turmoil in Jerusalem], al-Manar 29, no. 6 (October 1928): 414 – 16. He argued in this context that the Muslim prophetic evidence for the Muslims’ claim to al-Aqsa was stronger than the prophetic evidence of the Jews, an argument he repeated later)....Rida’s views on Zionism in the months following the riots create the impression that once the focus of the conflict became the future of al-Aqsa, and waves of Muslim support for the Palestinian struggle reverberated in Egypt and elsewhere, the editor of al-Manar, euphoric and combative, took it upon himself to convince his readers – and possibly also himself – that there was no possibility other than the elimination of Zionism by the Arabs.
There you have it.
In an al-Manar article appearing on December 2, 1910, [Rida] further warned that the Jews intended to turn the Al-Aqsa into the Jewish Temple and expel the Arab population from Palestine. Thus, the myth of the Jewish plan to take over al-Aqsa was born, a myth which would take full effect in the 1920s. The British war correspondent for the Daily Mail, J.M.N. Jeffries, while travelling in the Middle East in
the early 1920s, reported an interesting experience he had with one of the early propagandists of the Islamic cause in Damascus: “I learned how every pilgrim of any consequence to Mecca had our policy exposed to him. I came to know, in a sparringpartner sort of way, one of the Moslem sheiks chiefly engaged in this. He had just come from Mecca. (…) He was responsible, I had little doubt, for the leaflets distributed to Mecca pilgrims which bore a representation of the Mosque of Omar with either the cross or a Jewish symbol (I forget which) placed at its summit, supposedly, of course, by the British authorities in Jerusalem.” [Joseph Mary Nagle Jeffries, Front Everywhere (Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1935), 279–80.
And see] The picture Jeffries described had been painted in the late 19th century by a Yeshiva, a religious Jewish establishment, for fundraising and decorative purposes. Thus, it bore no connection to the Zionist movement or the British government, nor of course did it express any intent to take over the Haram al-Sharif, the complex of Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount. Nevertheless, Arab and Islamic propagandists have used it as proof since the 1920s of alleged Jewish plans to take over the Al-Aqsa. In their view, Jewish state-building in Palestine during the 1920s seemed to confirm the correctness of the ‘Jewish War against Islam’ theme...
...The Fourth Palestinian Congress, which was held in Jerusalem in June of 1921,
discussed the idea of dispatching delegations to the Middle East to propagandize their struggle and raise money. In June 1922, the first such delegation departed for Mecca, consisting of Abd al-Kadir Muzaffer, Rafiq Tammimi and Amin Nurallah. During a stay in Egypt, they produced a leaflet designed to call attention to the supposed threat, and which included a print of the by that time wellknown picture of the Star of David topping the mosque. After meetings with the religious leadership of the country and Rashid Rida, they published a Fatwa to call for the defense of Al-Aqsa. In Mecca, the delegation took part in the pan-Arab al-Jazirah congress, again raising this issue and resulting in the establishment of ‘Association for Muslim Solidarity’ to defend Al-Aqsa on August 9, 1922. In early 1923, Kamel alBudeiri campaigned among the Transjordan Bedouins using the yeshiva picture. To a significant degree, the spreading of the ‘Jewish War against Islam’ theme in the first half of the 1920s was therefore the consequence of a conscious propaganda campaign...
...In contrast to its propaganda campaign abroad, the SMC pursued its propaganda in Palestine with greater restraint. Thus, the call for the defense of Al-Aqsa did not affect the country until 1928{*}. The public festivities held on the occasion of completion of the renovations of the Islamic holy sites in August 1928 proved the success of the internationalization strategy. The event was attended by many international guests, including Abdullah I of Jordan and Abd al-Hamid Said, the president of the Islamist YMMA in Egypt...
...During the Wailing Wall riots in 1929, the Egyptian branches of the YMMA echoed the Mufti’s propaganda in Palestine, portraying the clashes as a religious struggle. The most popular allegation claimed that the Zionists were intent on destroying the Islamic holy places in Jerusalem and re-erecting their Temple. Moreover, the propaganda cited hadiths to prove Islam’s eternal enmity to the Jews. The major Egyptian newspapers published calls for the defense of Al-Aqsa. Paradoxically, the Jews were accused of seeking to reestablish their ancient kingdom and of spreading Bolshevism at the same time. In al-Manar, Rida began speaking of a “War on Islam” by the British and the Jews, crediting the latter with intent to destroy the three holiest places of Islam. In parallel, the SMC emphasized the Muslim character of Palestine by declaring its sanctity for Islam. This coincided with the now frequent use of the term ‘holy country’ by Muslims, which was probably influenced by the Jewish and Christian designation for the Land of Israel. SMC publications alleged that Zionism sought to eradicate Islam
from Palestine...
{*} I would not agree with that. All through the 1920s, the Mufti interfered with Jewish prayer customs at the Western Wall, specifically preventing benches as well as prayer separation screens (mechitzot).
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