That's how Malcolm X described the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in The Autobiography of Malcolm X:

I seized the opportunity to run down into the lobby, to see it again before Dr. Azzam arrived. When I opened my door, just across the hall from me a man in some ceremonial dress, who obviously lived there, was also headed downstairs, surrounded by attendants. I followed them down, then through the lobby. Outside, a small caravan of automobiles was waiting. My neighbor appeared through the Jedda Palace Hotel's front entrance and people rushed and crowded him, kissing his hand. I found out who he was: the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. Later, in the hotel, I would have the opportunity to talk with him for about a half-hour. He was a cordial man of great dignity. He was well up on world affairs, and even the latest events in America.

There's one of the usual "neutrality disputed" Wikipedia battles, with post-modernist style bickering over whether the Mufti should be called an antisemite ("not sure that antisemite and fascist are the right terms") or even whether he was a Nazi ("Maybe he was a Nazi and maybe he wasn't, but we aren't going to learn the truth by privileging wartime propaganda from the Haganah over scholarly sources").

Please! Why Wiki has to allow itself to be tyrannized by nitpicking arguments against reams of historical evidence I do not know.

Anyway, his work with Hitler and Himmler, his formation of the Bosnian SS Handschar Division, his relentless murdering of Jews -- all this is beyond dispute.

See Indopedia, Yad Vashem , and innumerable links with plenty of pictures like these, excellent summaries of his life, and even a discussion of his American connection.

Here's the Mufti with Hitler:

And with Himmler:

(Via Gates of Vienna.)

This YouTube video of a German documentary is excellent (be patient; the English subtitles appear soon after the beginning):

And another documentary in English, which ties him to more recent terrorist acts:

Arguments like this are often made that the Mufti was the grandfather of Islamofascism and the precursor to modern Islamist terrorism:

The Mufti's years in wartime Nazi Germany, where he lived in a confiscated Jewish mansion in Berlin as head of a Nazi-Muslim government in exile and where he spent confiscated Jewish monies on a lavish lifestyle and on the launching of an international anti-Jewish propaganda campaign, is an extraordinary story and would be unbelievable if there wasn't so much evidence. Upon arrival in Berlin, 1941, the Mufti met with Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbontrop and was then officially received by Adolf Hitler on November 28. Subsequently, and thorough the war years, the Gross mufti von Jerusalem would meet regularly with high Nazi officials and would play a leading role, perhaps more significant than is commonly known or may ever be known, in the "final solution" against the Jews
of Europe. He was intimately involved in the training of Bosnian and other Muslim SS Hanshar divisions in Nazi occupied Yugoslavia and in other Nazi occupied areas with Muslim populations. His broadcasts from Nazi Germany, transmitted to the Arab world, are amongst the most blood-curdlingly anti-Jewish in history. The Mufti should be viewed as on par with any one of the top Nazi villains and was in many respects far worse. This shocking story begs to be told and retold.

After the War, and after his conviction as a war criminal at Nuremberg and the issuance of a warrant for his arrest from Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity, the Mufti fled to Cairo where, as a guest of Abdel Gamal Nasser, another of his many protégés, he remained in exile for the rest of his life. From Cairo, he devoted his considerable energies toward the destruction of the State of Israel and the poisoning of any vestiges of peace between Israel and the Arab states. He would help Nazi war criminals settle in the Arab world through what is known as operation Odessa. He would further encourage his followers to seize power in Arab capitals and to establish National Socialist style governments.

There were three important phases in the Grand Mufti's career. The first is the period from 1920 when he inspired the first pogrom against Jews in Palestine to 1937 when he meets with Adolf Eichmann in Palestine and assumes influence in the Arab world at large. The second is the period from the 1937 Eichmann meeting, through his involvement in the Nazi-inspired Iraq coup, and on to his activities in Nazi Germany until the end of the war in 1945. The third is his activities from the end of the war to his death in Cairo in 1974.

My contention is that Muftism, the poisonous and fanatic legacy of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, continues to maintain a firm grip in the Arab mind and the Arab world today much to the determent of both the Arab peoples who are forced to live under the regressive socialist jack-boot of Mufti inspired regimes and to the possibility of peace between the Israelis and the Arabs. After the defeat of the Mufti's Nazi sponsors in 1945, the Soviet Union and the international left largely filled the power vacuum and the left remains the primary booster of Muftism in the Arab and Islamic world today. Muftism bears a large responsibility for modern terrorism and fanatic Islamic movements. While Europe was largely de-Nazified after the war, Muftism, or Arab-Islamic Nazism remains a major political and philosophical force. Arab peoples continue to groan under Nazi-Arab oppressive regimes and Mufti influenced pan-Arabists continue to wage war against non-Islamic nations and peoples.

The Mufti's tireless and single-minded career contributed greatly to a regressive trend in the Arab world. Progressive forward-thinking Arabs who have sought freedom oriented sovereignty and the benefits of modern democracy were swept away by the thuggish and radical followers of the Mufti. His inheritance is a Fascist movement that continues to predominate. His philosophical offspring continue to be animated by a modern Islamic form of authoritarian Socialism that was advocated by the Mufti from his Nazi perch in Berlin. His influence, philosophical as well as literal, calls out for examination as a means of understanding the present crisis in the Arab world. If nothing else, the destructive career of the Mufti serves as a testament to the degree in which one individual can influence and change the course of history.

What was he doing in the early 1960s, when he met Malcolm X? In 1962, the Mufti headed the World Islamic Conference at which he again called for genocide:

The Mufti aided in Operation Odessa, which was a ratline smuggling thousands of Nazi war criminals into Egypt and Syria. Many Nazis, once settled in Arab capitals, changed their names, converted to Islam, and involved themselves in war against Israel. The Mufti promoted the so-called "right of return" for Palestinian Arabs, this after having exhorted Arabs to leave Palestine during Israel's war of independence. The Mufti worked to keep Arabs in refugee camps to be used as recruiting centers to fight against Israel. In his last public appearance in a speech before a World Islamic Conference in 1962, the Mufti called for the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from the Arab world. He died in Beirut July 5, 1974.

None of this is to say that Malcolm X approved of (or even knew about) the Nazi Mufti's politics; he may have been bamboozled.

But as Malcolm X moments go, I don't think it will be remembered as his finest. In fact, it doesn't seem to be remembered any more than what he said about the Jews.

Or for that matter, Catholics.

From a Playboy interview, a year before his Mecca pilgrimage:

MALCOLM X: Insofar as the Christian world is concerned, dictatorships have existed only in areas or countries where you have Roman Catholicism. Catholicism conditions your mind for dictators. Can you think of a single Protestant country that has ever produced a dictator?

PLAYBOY: Germany was predominantly Protestant when Hitler ----

MALCOLM X: Another thing to think of--in the 20th Century, the Christian Church has given us two heresies: fascism and communism. Where did fascism start? Where's the second-largest Communist party outside of Russia? The answer to both is Italy. Where is the Vatican? But let's not forget the Jew. Anybody that gives even a just criticism of the Jew is instantly labeled anti-Semite. The Jew cries louder than anybody else if anybody criticizes him. You can tell the truth about any minority in America, but make a true observation about the Jew, and if it doesn't 't pat him on the back, then he uses his grip on the news media to label you anti-Semite. Let me say just a word about the Jew and the black man. The Jew is always anxious to advise the black man. But they never advise him how to solve his problem the way the Jews solved their problem. The Jew never went sitting-in and crawling-in and sliding-in and freedom-riding, like he teaches and helps Negroes to do. The Jews stood up, and stood together, and they used their ultimate power, the economic weapon. That's exactly what the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is trying to teach black men to do. The Jews pooled their money and bought the hotels that barred them. They bought Atlantic City and Miami Beach and anything else they wanted. Who owns Hollywood? Who runs the garment industry, the largest industry in New York City? But the Jew that's advising the Negro joins the NAACP, CORE, the Urban League, and others. With money donations, the Jew gains control, then he sends the black man doing all this wading-in, boring-in, even burying-in--everything but buying-in.

Never shows him how to set up factories and hotels. Never advises him how to own what he wants. No, when there's something worth owning, the Jew's got it. Walk up and down in any Negro ghetto in America. Ninety percent of the worthwhile businesses you see are Jew-owned. Every night they take the money out. This helps the black man's community stay a ghetto.

Sorry for the late night posting, folks (I had zero time all day) and I wanted to squeeze in this post before midnight, because tomorrow is Hitler's birthday, and while pointing out that Malcolm X was just a handshake away from Hitler is one thing, I'd hate to have people question my timing.

MORE: Another mention of the Grand Mufti appears on page 350 of The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Grove Press, Second Printing, New York 1965.):

As some of the poorest pilgrims heard me preach, so did some of the Holy World's most important personages. I talked at length with the blue-eyed, blond-haired Hussein Amini, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. We were introduced on Mt. Arafat by Kasem Gulick of the Turkish Parliament. Both were learned men; both were especially well-read on America. Kasem Gulick asked my why I had broken with Elijah Muhammad. I sad that I preferred not to elaborate upon our differences, in the interest of preserving the American black man's unity. They both understood and accepted that.

(The text is online here, and the "Hussein Amini" error is picked up and repeated here.)