Mein Kampf in Arabic
Translations
Translations between 1934 and 1937
The first attempts to translate Mein Kampf into Arabic were extracts in various Arab newspapers in the early 1930s. Journalist and Arab nationalist Yunus al-Sabawi published translated extracts in the Baghdad newspaper al-Alam al-Arabi, alarming the Baghdadi Jewish community.[1] Lebanese newspaper Al Nida also separately published extractions in 1934.[2] The German consulate denied it had been in touch with Al Nida for these initial translations.[1]
Whether a translation published by the Nazi regime would be allowed, ultimately depended on Hitler.
Hitler wanted to avoid allowing any modifications, but accepted the Arabic book changes after two years. Grobba sent 117 clippings from al-Sabawi's translations, but Bernhard Moritz, an Arabist consultant for the German Government who was also fluent in Arabic, said the proposed translation was incomprehensible and rejected it. This particular attempt ended at that time.[2][1]
Subsequently, the
1937 translation
Al-Sadati published his translation of Mein Kampf in Cairo in 1937 without German approval.[1] According to Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, the Sadati translation did not receive wide circulation.[3] However, the local Arab weekly Rose al-Yūsuf then used passages from an original 1930 German version to infer that Hitler deemed the Egyptians a "decadent people composed of cripples."[2] The review raised angry responses. Hamid Maliji, an Egyptian attorney wrote:[4]
Arab friends:...The Arabic copies of Mein Kampf distributed in the Arab world do not conform to the original German edition since the instructions given to Germans regarding us have been removed. In addition, these excerpts do not reveal his [Hitler's] true opinion of us. Hitler asserts that Arabs are an inferior race, that the Arabic heritage has been pillaged from other civilizations, and that Arabs have neither culture nor art, as well as other insults and humiliations that he proclaims concerning us.
Another commentator,
The Egyptian journal al-Isala stated that "it was Hitler's tirades in Mein Kampf that turned anti-Semitism into a political doctrine and a program for action". al-Isala rejected Nazism in many publications.[5]
Attempts at revision
A German diplomat in Cairo suggested that instead of deleting the offending passage about Arabs, it would be better to add to the introduction a statement that "
Arslan's 960-page translation was almost completed when the Germans requested to calculate the cost of the first 10,000 copies to be printed with "the title and back of the flexible cloth binding... lettered in gold."
1963 translation
A new translation was published in 1963, translated by
1995 edition
The book was republished in 1995 by Bisan Publishers in Beirut.[8]
As of 2002, news dealers on Edgware Road in central London, an area with a large Arab population, were selling the translation.[8] In 2005, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, an Israeli think tank, confirmed the continued sale of the Bisan edition in bookstores in Edgware Road.[9] In 2007 an Agence France-Presse reporter interviewed a bookseller at the Cairo International Book Fair who stated he had sold many copies of Mein Kampf.[10]
Role in Nazi propaganda
One of the leaders of the
According to Jeffrey Herf, "To be sure, the translations of Hitler's Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion into Arabic were important sources of the diffusion of Nazi ideology and anti-Semitic conspiracy thinking to Arab and Muslim intellectuals. Although both texts were available in various Arabic editions before the war began, they played little role in the Third Reich's Arab propaganda."[2]
Mein Kampf and Arab nationalism
Mein Kampf has been pointed to as an example of the influence of Nazism for
In October 1938, anti-Jewish treatises that included extracts from Mein Kampf were disseminated at an Islamic parliamentarians' conference "for the defense of Palestine" in Cairo.[11][1][12]
During the Suez war
In a speech to the United Nations immediately following the
References
- ^ JSTOR 1571079.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-300-14579-3.
- ISBN 978-0-8047-6344-8.
- ISBN 978-0-253-22225-1.
- ISBN 978-0-8047-6344-8.
- ^ "كتاب أسود". Al-Hayat newspaper. Retrieved 1 October 2017.
- ^ Drißner Gerald (1 October 2017). "The Arabic verb: "to behave like Adolf Hitler"". Arabic for Nerds. Retrieved 1 October 2017.
- ^ a b Sean O'Neill and John Steele (19 March 2002). "Mein Kampf for sale, in Arabic". The Daily Telegraph. UK.
- ^ "Exporting Arabic anti-Semitic publications issued in the Middle East to Britain". Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. 10 October 2005. Archived from the original on 17 August 2011. Retrieved 7 August 2011.
- ^ "Massive Cairo book fair sets religious tone". Agence France-Presse. 2 February 2007. Archived from the original on 30 March 2012. Retrieved 2 August 2011.
- ISBN 978-1-929631-93-3.
- ISBN 978-0-521-13261-9.
- ISBN 9780399110696.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-829262-3.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-226-76388-0.
- ISBN 978-1-59311-298-1.