PALESTINE: Long Live the Mufti

“What of it?” thought many an Englishman last week, as he read in the papers that the Grand Mufti of the Palestine Arabs had left London for home in a huff. What if the blighter was angry at Prime Minister MacDonald’s refusal to grant certain demands? Merely this—the Grand Mufti, of course, is a Mohammedan. No sooner did news of Britain’s snub to the Mufti reach troubled India (see above) than powerful ‘Mohammedan elements, previously lukewarm toward St. Gandhi, a Hindu, began to throw their influence on the side of his campaign for Independence. Shouts of “Long live the Mufti! Down with British rule in Palestine!” were raised by Mohammedan crowds at Bombay and Calcutta who know no more of the rights and wrongs of Palestine than of those, if any, in the moon.