In a just-released book titled, "Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam," Middle East scholars David G. Dalin and John F. Rothmann, describe the harrowing account of Haj Amin al-Husseini, a radical and virulent Palestinian imam, whom the British appointed grand mufti of Jerusalem – the highest Muslim religious authority in the land and which made him one of the most eminent leaders in the Middle East at that time.

"An appointment the British would live to regret, seeing it was not long before he turned on them, too," the authors write.

Husseini wielded a lot of power and influence back in the 1920s and was instrumental in negotiating a pact between Islamic radicals and German Nazi officials. According to the two authors of "Icon of Evil" the mufti of Jerusalem was a longtime admirer of National Socialism and a personal friend of Heinrich Himmler as well as of Adolf Eichmann – two of Adolf Hitler's closest collaborators.

As such, Husseini championed in favor of the final solution – the extermination of all Jews. The grand mufti of Jerusalem encouraged Muslims to join the Waffen SS, a unit that was responsible for the slaughter of 90 percent of Bosnia's Jews.

The authors describe Husseini as charismatic and passionate, demonstrably successful in his recruitment efforts.

"In his sermon at Sarajevo's largest mosque, he brought his audience to tears. To further the recruitment efforts, he wrote a book titled, "Islam and the Jews," which was distributed to Bosnian Muslim SS units during the war, as part of his efforts to incite the murder of Bosnian Jews.

To Himmler's delight, Husseini was eminently successful in these efforts: with his encouragement and incitement, the Bosnian Muslim Waffen-SS company that he recruited, the notorious "Handschar troops," slaughtered 90 percent – 12,600 – of Bosnia's 14,000 Jews.

Early on Husseini incited anti-British riots and supported raids against Jewish settlements. His anti-British and anti-Jewish rhetoric led in fact to the very first intifada in Palestine, as Husseini organized and instigated revolts against Jews living in Jerusalem in 1920, 1929 and 1936. Those eventually led to the Great Arab Revolt of 1937.

With the collapse of the Third Reich Husseini was forced to escape to Egypt and from there to Germany where Hitler, perhaps because of the Mufti's blonde hair and blue eyes, named him "honorary Aryan."

At the end of World War II the maverick mufti managed to escape leaving behind charges of war crimes, as he made his way to Egypt. It was in Egypt, according to the two authors, that Husseini turned to a new generation of Palestinian revolutionaries. Among the younger crop of revolutionaries was a young man, a cousin of the mufti, named Yasser Arafat.

Sixty years after the Holocaust, the legacy left behind by the former mufti of Jerusalem still lives on. Where he left off, others have taken the relay. In the 1920s it was Haj Amin al-Husseini who was ranked at the forefront of anti-Semitism. Today the baton of hate has been relayed to others.

To his supporters, write Dalin and Rothmann, Husseini was a hero of epic proportion: "He was the George Washington of the radical Islamic world. Much like Ataturk in Turkey and Nehru in India, the mufti had won great acclaim in his early years as a charismatic national leader who many foreign leaders believed would lead his people into statehood."

However, a very different, and according to the authors, more accurate view of Husseini was put forward by Edgar Ansel Mowrer, a Pulitzer prize-winning foreign correspondent and nationally syndicated columnist: "as a murderer, this man ranks with the great killers of history."

Of all the harm Husseini may have caused to the Jews in Palestine, in Bosnia and elsewhere, it was perhaps his statement of wanting "to throw the Jews into the sea" that cost him and the Palestinian cause the greatest damage. As the French saying goes, "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose."