“Viscount Northcliffe, in an interview with a representative of the Sunday Pictorial, made the following observation:

He (Lord Northcliffe) passed to the Muhammadan question, commenting upon the “extraordinary ignorance” in Britain of what the word “Muhammadan” means. “By this time,” he remarked, “we realize that it is a dangerous thing to insult the Pope. Whatever our personal views may be, we have found that the supporters of the Pope have an unpleasant way of hitting back, whether it be in Ireland or elsewhere. It is true that among Muhammadans there is no one holding the precise position of the Pope, but a great many Muhammadans regard the Sultan of Turkey as their Caliph. The Muhammadans number between 250 million, which is the British estimate, and 400 million, which is the Muhammadan estimate. Why, there are even millions of Muhammadans in China. All the Muhammadans are united by ties of religion. When you give money to the Greeks to shoot Muslims in Asia Minor, Muslims everywhere snipe you or fight you, rather like the Irish Republican Army. And the Muslim has a wide fighting range. Ireland is by comparison a mere football field. If the British Empire helps the Greeks to kill Muslims somewhere beyond Smyrna in AsiaMinor, the Muslim will scupper you on the Indian frontier, snipe you in Bombay and bomb you in Cairo or Alexandria. I do not suggest that we should be in any way intimidated by Muslims or anybody else, but Ido urge the makers of our policy to remember that these 250 million people whose faith is in the sword have a horrible opportunity for hittingback.”

“Look at Palestine,” exclaimed Lord Northcliffe. “Do you know that we are on the verge ofstarting a war in Palestine? There is a population of about 700,000 in Palestine, mostly Arab Muslims, with a comparatively small proportion of Christians and Jews. In former times they all got along very well together, and the Muslims protected the Holy Places of Christ. During the war the Palestine Muslims assisted us. When I visited Palestine years ago I neither saw nor heard of any friction between Muhammadans, Jews and Christians. When I returned there last month I was met, to my great astonishment, by an armoured car and an escorting party, while overhead flew an aeroplane. I wondered whether I was in Ireland or on the Indian frontier. The reason of the need for these military measures is the mistake of the British Government in declaring that Palestine is to be ‘a National Home’ for the Jews. The Muslims simply say: ‘This is our home. We have been here for centuries. Wedo not want Bolshevist Jews or anybody else in our home.’ There is bound to be an upheaval soon in Palestine. I expect there would be a considerable upheaval in London if some distant Government suddenly announced that London was to become the ‘National Home’ of the Muslims or the Chinese. I imagine that the police force would have to be considerably increased when the immigrants arrived!”

“The Muhammadans,” he proceeded, “belong to many races, but it is probable that collectively their instincts are more warlike than ours. From Java, in the Dutch East Indies, right across the world to Morocco, on the Atlantic, Muhammadans resent what they consider to be the ill-treatment of their brethren in Palestine. Remember that apart from their many newspapers and other forms of propaganda, their missionaries outnumber those of all other denominations. Then about a hundred thousand of them meet every year in their sacred city of Mecca in Arabia. The immediate purpose of the Mecca pilgrimage is religious, but this immense assembly of Muhammadans from all parts of Asia and Africa talks much of temporal things. They talk about India and Egypt and Palestine, and about Gandhi and other specially British topics, on which they are much better informed than we are at home. Don’t imagine that because a man wears a turban or a tarboosh (fez) he is a fool or slow or unable to combine. We are gradually learning that these people are not so much unlike ourselves as we thought they were. Theylook different, but when they take to golf, lawn tennis, orcricket, they can compete with us on equal terms; and many of them are politicians as acute as the Irish. I release these few opinions in order simply to suggest quite delicately that we ought to be very, very careful in our relations with the great world of Islam.”

— The Sunday Pictorial, March 5th (1922)”