{"title":"Palestine’s 1936 Great Revolt: A lie that divided Muslims and Christians | Dr. Omar Suleiman","slug":"palestines-1936-great-revolt","author":"Dr. Omar Suleiman","abstract":"Everything you thought you knew about the divide we see between Christians and Muslims is missing a crucial chapter. The 1936–1939 Great Palestinian Revolt, also known as the “Arab Revolt,” was one of the most powerful displays of Muslim-Christian solidarity in modern history. British authorities...","topics":["History","Politics & Practical Theology","Social Justice"],"published_date":"2026-04-30 23:39:29","video_url":"https://youtu.be/Ybfp2j4QMw0","transcript_summary":"This video challenges the widely accepted narrative that Muslim-Christian division caused the failure of Palestine's 1936 Great Revolt (Al-Thawrah Al-Kubra), the largest anti-colonial uprising of the 20th century. Presenting evidence such as a historical stamp depicting a church and mosque side by side, the video argues that Palestinian Muslims and Christians fought together against British colonial rule and Zionist settlement following the 1917 Balfour Declaration and 1920 British Mandate. It highlights unified resistance efforts, including a joint memorandum submitted to British authorities, a six-month general strike, and the leadership of figures like Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad (Abu Kamal) and Abdel Qadir al-Husseini, who protected both Muslim and Christian communities. The video details how British and Zionist forces employed divide-and-rule tactics, including propaganda leaflets and armed 'peace bands,' to fabricate sectarian conflict, citing the unresolved assassination of Christian labor leader Mishal Mitri as an example of violence falsely blamed on internal Muslim-Christian strife rather than external sabotage. Despite unified petitions and resistance, the revolt was crushed by 1939 through overwhelming British military force, martial law, and the dissolution of the Arab Higher Committee. The video concludes by connecting this historical erasure to modern anti-Muslim rhetoric and Islamophobic narratives that similarly reduce complex realities to caricatures of religious conflict, closing with the story of poet Nuh Ibrahim, who was killed by the British in 1938, as a symbol of the shared national solidarity that transcended religious lines in Palestine's fight for independence.","key_points":["The Great Revolt of 1936 (al-thawra al-kubra), launched against British colonial rule and accelerating Zionist settlement, was a unified Palestinian national uprising. Muslim and Christian leaders organized jointly through the Arab Higher Committee, sustained one of the longest general strikes in modern history at over six months, and mobilized farmers, workers, and merchants across confessional lines.","The widely repeated explanation that the revolt collapsed due to internal Muslim-Christian sectarian strife was a deliberate fabrication. British forces dispersed leaflets engineered to ignite suspicion between the two communities and, by 1937, deployed armed \"peace bands,\" recruited criminals directed to attack villages in ways designed to appear as Muslim-Christian violence. Palestinian Christian deaths at British hands were recorded as \"Christian\" rather than \"Arab\" in official tallies, shifting blame onto Muslims.","The historical record of Palestinian unity was systematically buried. Oral testimonies, photographs, and signed memorandums were suppressed, and Western historians later reframed the national uprising as an \"Arab revolt\" defined by internal division, a narrative the Palestinians consistently reject."],"chapters":[{"start_time":0,"title":"The Truth About Muslim–Christian co-existence in Palestine","end_time":48},{"start_time":48,"title":"The Poem That Proved Palestinian Unity","end_time":84},{"start_time":84,"title":"What happened in Palestine in April 1936?","end_time":206},{"start_time":206,"title":"1936 Palestinian General Strike Explained","end_time":260},{"start_time":260,"title":"The British-Blocked Memorandum in Palestine","end_time":295},{"start_time":295,"title":"Fellahin Resistance and Palestinian Unity","end_time":372},{"start_time":372,"title":"British Leaflets Used to Divide Muslims and Christians","end_time":400},{"start_time":400,"title":"Michel Mitri: the Christian they shot and blamed on Muslims","end_time":539},{"start_time":539,"title":"1937 Peace Bands: Disguised Forces Used to Crush the Revolt","end_time":632},{"start_time":632,"title":"Martial Law in Palestine and the Arab Higher Committee Ban","end_time":669},{"start_time":669,"title":"How Britain Crushed the Revolt and Controlled the Narrative","end_time":702},{"start_time":702,"title":"The Myth That Still Shapes Palestine Today","end_time":840}],"series_name":"Explained","url":"https://yaqeeninstitute.org/watch/series/explained/palestines-1936-great-revolt?utm_source=webmcp&utm_medium=ai-agent&utm_campaign=content-discovery"}