Prime Minister Winston Churchill labeled Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, as such. Here's What You Need to Know: King Abdullah of Transjordan called his political foe Haj Amin "a devil straight from hell." Like all Palestinians and most Arabs, Haj Amin al-Hussaini not only looked forward to an Axis Pact victory in World War II but also saw it as a means of defeating what he believed was a joint British-Jewish conspiracy to foist an Israelite homeland on the Middle East that would be to the detriment of his own people. An Arab officer in the Turkish Ottoman Army in World War I, the young, familial, dynastic figure rose to political fame and power at an early age by helping to restore two Arab holy places in Jerusalem, hit his stride during the late 1930s, and reached the zenith of his fame by 1946, its nadir after 1948, and its twilight between 1950 and 1974.