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The Struggle for Palestine:

The first Jerusalem revolt broke out in April 1920, led by His Eminence at the head of a group of young men from Jerusalem and the mass of the Palestinian people, during the celebrations of the Nabi Musa festival. A British military court was formed to try those accused of instigating it, and he was sentenced in absentia to ten years’ imprisonment with hard labor. But he had managed to escape the grip of the colonialists and made contact with prominent tribesmen and clan leaders, such as the Bani Sakhr, the Huwaytat, the Bani ʿAtiyya, the Al Fayiz, the Al Tarawna, the Al Majali and others, to unite efforts in defense of Palestine. He then moved to Syria in the first days of its independence, where there was broad scope for work on behalf of the Palestinian cause. Together with a number of leading Palestinian figures, he participated in the Syrian-Palestinian Congress, which convened in Damascus and proclaimed Syria’s independence.

When the French occupied Syria by armed force and extinguished its independence, His Eminence took refuge in the Syrian desert. He lived there for a time, during which he worked to establish contact with the leaders of its Arab tribes, until the sentence against him was annulled. He then returned to Palestine and assumed the office of mufti in 1921, succeeding his late brother, Sayyid Muhammad Kamil al-Husayni.

As President of the Islamic Council:

In 1922 His Eminence was then elected President of the Supreme Islamic Sharia Council to administer the affairs of the religious endowments and the Islamic sharia courts. He reformed their administration and organized their affairs, taking care to prevent the lands of Palestine from slipping into the hands of the covetous Zionists. He opposed colonial policy and Jewish ambitions with the utmost resistance and assumed the full burden of the Palestinian national movement. He worked to convene Palestinian and Islamic conferences, form executive committees, and send political delegations to the outside world and Islamic delegations to Islamic countries. He himself headed numerous delegations to Arab and Islamic countries, such as Egypt, Iraq, Syria, the Gulf emirates, Iran and Afghanistan, to inform the Arab and Islamic worlds of the injustice suffered by Palestine and rouse them to save it from the Jewish danger and British colonialism. He undertook the restoration of the blessed al-Aqsa Mosque, which was in danger of collapse. When the restoration was completed, an official celebration was held in the presence of delegations from the Arab and Islamic worlds.