Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam

Abdul Rahman Hassan Azzam ( 1893 - 1976 ) was an Egyptian diplomat, with family origins in Libya (Nisan, 2002).¹ He served as the first secretary-general of the Arab League between 1945 and 1952 .² Azzam also had a long career as an ambassador and parliamentarian . He was an Egyptian nationalist and one of the foremost proponents of pan-Arab idealism – viewpoints he did not see as contradictory - and was passionately opposed to the partition of Palestine (Louis, 1986).³ On 2 March 1946, in an address to The Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry into the Problems of European Jewry and Palestine, Azzam explained the Arab League’s attitude towards the Palestinian question and refuted the Zionist claim to Palestine: Our brother has gone to Europe and to the West [and] come back a Russified Jew, a Polish Jew, a German Jew, an English Jew. He has come back with a totally different conception of things. On 11 May 1948 Azzam warned the Egyptian government that owing to public pressure and strategic issues it would be difficult for Arab leaders to avoid intervention in the Palestine War, and that Egypt could find itself isolated if it did not act in concert with its neighbors. Azzam believed that King Abdullah of Jordan had decided to move his forces into Palestine on 15 May regardless of what the other Arabs did and would occupy the Arab part of Palestine whilst blaiming other Arab states for failure. On 27 August 1948, in response to charges by Azzam that Palestinians remaining in the (now) Israeli town of Acre were being mistreated the United Nations sent an observer from France, Lieutenant Petit to investigate. Petit found that around 80 Palestinians had been killed, mostly for no reason. One of Petit’s witnesses also reported six cases of rape. Another, Mohammed Fayez Soufi, reported that he and four other Arabs had been stopped by a group of 15 Jewish soliders and forced to drink poison (an acid of potassium). Soufi did not drink the poison but fell down to the ground with the other men. Three of the men died. Petit also reported allegations that Arab children were being kidnapped and killed, but these were unverified. Malcolm X ’s reading of The Eternal Message of Muhammad and his meeting with Azzam Pasha are vividly recounted in his autobiography. It is clear that these events marked the point in his life at which Malcolm X turned towards orthodox traditional Islam.⁴