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This article is completely unacceptable and pointless, what about Mein Kampf in English, or Russian, or Japanese?

This article has obviously been created to connote Arab support of Adolf Hitler and Nazism. What about Mein Kampf in Afrikaans, English, French, Japanese, Russian, Ukrainian, etc. Why are should there not articles for those if there are for this? The answer: it's the same book in a translated language. The only reason this article exists is because of xenophobia towards Arabs and Muslims regarding the War on Terror and the Arab-Israeli conflict. This article is truly disgusting for Wikipedia to have and should be deleted immediately.--R-41 (talk) 19:51, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you could find information about this book being a bestseller in any places other than Arab countries or Turkey for this matter I'd be happy to write an article about that translation.--Mbz1 (talk) 19:56, 21 July 2011 (UTC)
For one, India, the Hindi translation sells at thousands of copies per year. See here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/07/02/ap/strange/main6639745.shtml. I also imagine that apartheid South Africa had strong sellings. But creating articles for each language translation is unnecessary, it is a translation of a book. Information about sales in certain regions or languages should be put in the Mein Kampf article itself.--R-41 (talk) 16:54, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Comments for improvement

As you can see by the edit history, I have made a number of small edits to this article that I believe improve it. I have a few other things I'd like to mention here, that I think will improve it further:

  • Remove this quote: "Only the select German people have the right to leadership and command because it is a supremely creative people, while the Jews and the Semitic people have never created anything." from the section "Reception of the 1973 translation. Taken literally, it presents the exact opposite of what al-isala seemed to really believe. Besides that, it doesn't really need to be there. The quote in the paragraph just above seems to set down al-isala's views pretty well.
  • Move, rename, or do something with the section "Reception of the new translation." As it is, it seems like most of that section doesn't deal specifically with that translation, but with Mein Kampf in Arabaic, in general.

99.160.58.243 (talk) 00:52, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Also, the caption of the image states "The front cover of the 1995 edition of Mein Kampf issued..." when, technically, that edition is just a reprint of the 1963 translation. As it is, people reading the caption may just assume the book was newly translated in 1995 -- like I did, even though I read the article through already. :D 99.160.58.243 (talk) 00:56, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
A couple more points: 1) The hyphens used to cordon off those parenthetical phrases should be switched... to mdashes or something... I dunno :D. And 2) Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to have a little section at the top that describes, very briefly, the history of Mein Kampf in general. I've seen this on plenty of these little send-off articles on major topics. 99.160.58.243 (talk) 04:53, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Title and legality

Two things should be here:

  • First, could we at least show the translated title in Arabic in the text? It appears to me to be something like Kafaaii ... I might have expected jihaadii, which would have been an interesting choice of words, especially from today's perspective.
  • Second, it should be noted that outside of the English translation no translation of Mein Kampf is currently legal since whoever it is in Germany that holds the copyright deliberately uses it to suppress the publication. Are Arabic translations in existence based on the ones from the 1930s, or new ones? It would be interesting to know. Daniel Case (talk) 02:19, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
The first point is a good idea and should really be put in the first line of the lede. We'll probably need someone who can read Arabic to do it though. The second point, however, is only important if there are references discussing it. If there is a lack of such sources on that part of the subject, you might just want to presume that it's the 1930s ones, though we wouldn't be putting that in without references as well. SilverserenC 02:53, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
In the dark world in which we live "reports" are sometimes made witch are not accurate. On this issue I would like to see some figures originating from a widely recognised body (publishing house etc) to back up the "reported" claims re. "best selling" status. Prunesqualor billets_doux 01:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Translation request

Can someone please provide a translation of this Hebrew article? It's cited for the publisher, so if someone could translate the part that discusses that (the second or third paragraph I think) it would be most helpful for verification. Thanks. ← George talk 00:43, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

The article, from Ynet, is based on this article from the Daily Telegraph. RolandR (talk) 19:00, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! Updated the article using the English source. ← George talk 19:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Recent edits to intro

Does the sentence: "Nazism served as a political model for Arab nationalists in the 1930s and early 1940s." really belong in the article intro? The article is about Mein Kampf in the Arab world, not Nazism generally in the Arab world ie there seems, to me, to be some unwarranted synthesis going on here. Also I would like to see a decent reliable citation supporting the REDFLAG statement that Mein Kampf "achieved best-seller status in the Palestinian territories." Has a trusted organisation really compiled an accurate list of best selling books in the occupied territories. If so I would like to know who they are, who is funding them, and where there findings are published. If the "best seller" claim is true then someone should be able to provide this information. Frankly I am not impressed with the current version of the intro which "leav[es] the reader with the bad taste of propaganda" (a phrase borrowed from Benny Morris writing about "Icon of Evil" which, regrettably, is cited in this article). I much prefer Ravpapa's version of the intro which is less contentious. Prunesqualor billets_doux 12:09, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I took a stab at rewriting that sentence to more closely match the sources cited. Regarding the "best-seller status", it might be best to take up that source at RSN? Not sure. ← George talk 21:19, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
I think the bestseller needs more details in the body (see original AFP report above, on which the whole legend is based), and probably needs to be removed from the lead as undue. It reminds me of I Fight Terrorists being a "best seller" according to CNN. FuFoFuEd (talk) 06:38, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Golda Meir

I see the source has been improved by George, adding Leng. The actual statement can be directly sourced to her biography, to substitute Leng or as an additional note. It occurs in Golda Meir, A land of our own: an oral autobiography, (ed.) Marie Syrkin, Putnam, 1973 p.96. Like the bestseller in Palestine meme, it looks odd. She made that speech before the UN in 1956, but where did they Egyptians get their huge number of copies to supply the troops with? The 1937 translation had limited circulation, and the new Egyptian edition only came out in 1963. It is one of those 'factoids' that don't tell us anything, while ratcheting up the heat. For Meir's remarks are so phrased that a few copies could be meant, or that this was government policy, and copies were found in the knapsacks of every captured soldier (though there is no known edition to cover the supply). She clearly phrases her statement to suggest that the source of those copies was the government, yet so far there is no explanation of how the Egyptian government could have acquired thousands of copies of Mein Kampf in 1956. These are not grounds for removing the statement of course, just a note to indicate how dicey these statements can be, and how poor, in terms of neutral information, articles that include them turn out to be. Nishidani (talk) 12:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I almost changed the reference to cite Meir directly, but I was only able to see mention of Mein Kampf on page 96, not page 93. The excerpt I could see[1] also didn't say anything about a speech in the UN. Does anyone have access to this book to provide an excerpt that supports the text in the article? I'm hesitant to replace the source until we can verify that the original source says what the other source attributes to it. ← George talk 19:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
I have added more context from that source (Leng). It seems pretty clear that she used that statement to support her declaration of Nasser a disciple of Hitler. The reader can infer what they want from that because the source leaves it hanging as well. Only unreliable (propaganda) sources like the Icon of Evil (see discussion at WP:RS/N) state the knapsack stuff as an incontrovertible fact; those don't belong. FuFoFuEd (talk) 21:02, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't have that book by Meir, but I do have a copy of My Life, published in London in 1975 (ISBN 029776995). On pages 251-3, Meir quotes at length from her 1956 UN speech. Inter alia, she quotes herself as saying: "The concept of annihilating Israel is a legacy of Hitler's war against the Jewish people, and it is no coincidence that Nasser's soldiers had an Arabic translation of Mein Kampf in their knapsacks" (p252). So it seems clear that she did indeed make this claim in 1956. This does not mean that the claim itself was true; particularly since it certainly implies that every Egyptian soldier was issued with a copy. RolandR (talk) 20:56, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Ah, that text matches the excerpt from Meir's autobiography. The visible excerpt was so small I didn't realize that it was from her speech directly. Updated the article with the original source (Meir). ← George talk 21:29, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Hey, you guys never watch movies on Friday evenings? :) Actually, I just put that in because I'm too lazy to edit the page. The Mein Kampf slur, and the Hitlerish-formation of the young officers around Nasser was, from memory, a thing bruited about after the Lavon Affair, which took wing when Israel had to defend itself against the American administration's claims that 1956 was an example of a 'preventive war' that destabilized respect for international law (:), some of us who are greybeards recalled this in 2003). I think if you check around you'll find that Ben-Gurion made a Knesset speech about this, before Golda Meir. The British never found any trace of Mein Kampf anywhere among the Egyptian gear they examined, but just took Israel's word for it. There was also mention from israeli sources that, together with copies of Mein Kampf, they found much toxic poisons in tankards readied to be thrown into Israel's water supplies. Again (I'm thinking of Joel Beinin's account which I read when editing the wiki page on the History of the Jews of Egypt) no proof was, I think, ever given of some of these extreme charges. But it was widely reported, became a meme, and we stick it on Golda Meir's UN speech. Ben-Gurion, Benny Morris wrote somewhere, had a note about this in one of his memos. Worth checking out. Sorry, I'd do it myself but it's late here, and I need to stave off the Audenesque collapse of my face by some sleep.Nishidani (talk) 21:43, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
I just did a quick check on the net, rather than books, and got this.

'After the war ended, Ben-Gurion said that he was not surprised that ʺin the materials found by our army in the Sinai Dessert, among the precious equipment of Egyptian officers, they found a translation of Hitlerʹs ʹMein Kampfʹ to Arabic.'Ilai Z. Saltzman,'Waging War, Thinking History. Ben-Gurion and the Sinai War of 1956,' (Haifa uni dissertation) p.12 Nishidani (talk) 21:54, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I've added something about the post-war Israeli history books, from a historiography source that looks reliable enough. Someone wanna create a bio for Elie Podeh? FuFoFuEd (talk) 22:06, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Major inconsistency

The cover illustration image says كفاحي, not جهادي!! I'm inclined to go with the first, since the second has religious connotations which many would probably find distracting or problematic... AnonMoos (talk) 14:12, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I changed it to the Arabic word from the cover, per your suggestion. Any idea how to transliterate that word? ← George talk 20:55, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Done. By the way the Arabic interwiki from the main Mein Kampf article is كفاحي (كتاب) (where the added word kitab is "book"): ar:كفاحي (كتاب) -- ... AnonMoos (talk) 21:06, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

"multiple issues" tag needed

Given the amount of controversy surrounding this article, in it's current state, surely a " This article has multiple issues" tag should be placed at the top, in order to alert readers about disputed material. Prunesqualor billets_doux 20:51, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Generalization

This is an unhistorical generalization.

Arab nationalists in the 1930s and early 1940s were admirers of Nazism

WP:OR? Arab nationalism is a huge topic that refuses to sit in any comfortable category. Many nationalists did look to German Nazism. Many looked to Italian fascism, which is not the same thing. Anyone affirming that inclusive generalization has not read the literature. The Egyptian press in the 193os was highly nationalist, and grew increasingly critical of both Nazism and Fascism, so where does that leave us?Nishidani (talk) 19:43, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Definitely shouldn't be using generalizations that way. You can see about using this source to be a bit more specific. The thing that Arab nationalists admired about Nazism was the language and rhetoric, the way it was used to control an entire nation. That's why they like Mein Kampf so much, because it is a book whose powerful language influenced millions. They likely disagree with the actions he took (such as the Holocaust), but they look toward the way he used language for inspiration. That's the impression i'm getting out of it, at least. That seems to be what's happening in modern India, with the youth buying copies of Mein Kampf because of the language and writing, not so much for the ideology. SilverserenC 20:41, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
As a putatively-exceptionless flat statement it's not too helpful. However, there were all too many examples of specific individuals active during the 1930's and 1940's who were open to such influences (such as Anton Saadeh, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, Haj Amin al-Husseini, etc. etc.) -- and there were also many others who, though they did not closely imitate or ally themselves with Hitler or Mussolini (and were certainly not willing to subordinate Arab nationalism to German or Italian nationalism!) nevertheless found an overall general ethnic "blood and soil" based approach to nationalism to be much more congenial than abstract ideas of formal democracy and treating all citizens equally, and were only too willing to listen to anti-Jewish declarations of Fascist origin. It's not entirely an accident that the literal translation of the Arabic word for "pan-Arab nationalism" قومية is "tribalism"! After the war, Arab governments saw no problem in sheltering figures such as Alois Brunner, Johann von Leers, etc. AnonMoos (talk) 21:06, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I've met one person in my life who is actually familiar with the book, and read it. This page is about Mein Kampf, not Arab nationalism, which is an extremely complex phenomenon. To associate all pro-German or pro-Italian nationalists in the Arab world with Mein Kampf, instead of the ideas and esp. the practices (shirt movements, etc) of European nationalist movements generally and their varied literature, is a highly instrumental political reading that misses too much. 'Arab' extends a long way, but francophone Arab nationalists were more likely to get their hypernationalist ideology from other sources. al-Husseini and al-Gaylani had never read Mein Kampf, or have I missed something? They certainly thought the overthrow of European colonialism in their countries could find an ally in Nazism and Fascism, just as the US and Great Britain thought an alliance with a known genocidal thug like Stalin could overthrow Nazism. But the details on the ground are all lost with such reductive clichés, and swept up in such silly generalizations. The pro-Nazi German Christians in Palestine were forbidden by the Reich from admitting any Arabs into their Nazi associations, etc. Articles should deal in details, not in generalizations, which by the way, in this example, are racist in their ontological suppositions (that an Arab if he was a nationalist would be attracted to Mein Kampf). Al Ahram was writing quite incisive critiques of Hitler before the war, and its readership was nationalist.
Look. The article has Ben-Gurion, sorry Golda Meir insinuating Mein Kampf was part and parcel of the Egyptian army's gear in 1956 when no available edition existed at that time. The British never found any such material, and fought on the same front. Dalin then says that many Egyptian soldiers carried a paperback in their packs in 1967 (really? In the desert, you sit in a trench and read stuff like that?). Then as soon as al-Qaeda blows up the Twin Towers, Arafat phones the printers in Ramallah to churn out an edition of Mein Kampf and this edition Palestinian edition became a best seller in the Arab world (sic! p.113, though the phrasing is ambiguous) etc.etc. All this, from notoriously bad sources (Dalin and co.,) requires extreme care, and since the several 'facts' reported should have been noticed broadly, we need to find the sources that noted them, not just copy and paste sentences from mediocre books whose prose is so bad all one understands is that the authors are intent on smearing, at whatever cost to clarity.Nishidani (talk) 21:40, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
As for sheltering Nazis, that is true, as it is of the United States, the Vatican, many South American States, and democratic Germany. But it has nothing to do with the topic of the page.Nishidani (talk) 21:54, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
'When Mein Kampf was republished by Yasser Arafat's Palestyinian National Authority in 2001, shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it achieved best-seller status throughout the Arab world.' p.113 Dalin
Would anyone like to construe this for me? The author is saying that immediately after the Twin Towers Attacks some printer in Palestine republished the text. The Dailt telegraph article talks of a Lebanese edition dated 1999. The third source J-weekly, when I click on it, gives me a page which then flips into a blank screen. Can we begin to iron out some of this mess? The historical source on Israeli textbook accounts of 1956 doesn't use the same language Ben-Gurion or Golda Meir used at the time. It talks of photos reproduced in textbooks in Israel showing a copy or two of Mein Kampf in Arabic ostensibly found in a military post (not grunts' knapsacks), during the Israeli invasion etc. (in my book all contemporary reports written in conditions of war, esp. by an invader, should be treated cum grano salis until reliable historians verify them. Information manipulation is a natural part of any war, as we all know.) Nishidani (talk) 22:07, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
There's no basic special affinity between Arab nationalism and Fascism, and overall Fascism was not a major influence on Arab nationalism (though influential in some specifics) -- but unfortunately over a period of a number of decades, many Arabs were not hindered by moral or other considerations from opportunistically allying themselves with Fascists or Nazis whenever they sought allies or intellectual support against the British, French, or Jews (which is where the whole phenomenon of "Mein Kampf in the Arabic language" comes from in the first place). AnonMoos (talk) 23:00, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
P.S. How do you know that Haj Amin al-Husseini didn't read Mein Kampf? It might have been considered useful background information relevant to the alliance he was pursuing... AnonMoos (talk) 23:05, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I used this source as the basis for this. It quotes Sami al-Jundi, one of the founding members of the Ba'ath party, as saying: "We were racialists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought, particularly Nietzsche's Thus spake Zarathustra, Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation and H.S. Chamberlain's Foundations of the Nineteenth Century which revolves on the race. We were the first to think of translating Mein Kampf." This didn't seem out of line with other sources, such as "Anti-Jewish feeling mounted in parts of the Middle East during the 1930s, as the Fascist and Nazi regimes and doctrines made increasing sense to many Arab nationalists."[2] But I'm not at all opposed to changes to the sentence (and would encourage editors to improve upon it). I think a couple key points missing from that are that (a) I've read sources that Arab nationalism was different from Nazism in that while both were anti-Jewish, Arab nationalism was pro-religion (pro-Islam), and (b) I also saw a source saying that the bigger influence on Arab nationalists was the Germans themselves, rather than their writings (I think it specifically mentioned Mein Kampf in that context). ← George talk 02:13, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Problems with this article

Many of the issues that have been raised on this talk page in the last week were already resolved in this version of the article. Specifically:

  • In that version, claims of an affinity by Arab nationalists to Nazism was carefully attributed. General statements like "Arab nationalists in the 1930s and early 1940s were admirers of Nazism" were eschewed.
  • Claims that Mein Kampf achieved bestseller status in the Palestinian territories all seem to stem from the same report - a report in Hayat El Jedida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian National Authority, which has since been completely blown out of proportion. The version I point to attributes the report to the original source, and reports it accurately.
  • The claims by Golda Meir and Dalin about Egyptian soldiers carrying Mein Kampf, while of dubious reliability, are still worthy of inclusion because, at least, Golda Meir is an important person and things she said should probably not be ignored. In that version of the article, the quotes appeared in a context which allowed to reader to decide on the reliability of the statements.

The arguments on this talk page suggest that some of the editors here are motivated by ideological positions regarding the Middle East conflict. Yet many of the changes that have been introduced to the article do not even obliquely support one side or the other, but simply serve to obfuscate and confuse. I therefore urge editors to reconsider their positions and their edits. Regards, --Ravpapa (talk) 08:43, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Addressing your points:
  • Everyone seems to be focusing on that sentence, so I've just removed it. I don't think the sentence is "wrong", but if editor don't want to include why the Arabic version of the book is notable (something WP:LEADs are supposed to do), so be it.
  • If there is evidence that the "bestseller" claims originated from a single source, then I'd say great, let's just cite that source. I haven't seen any evidence that they're all quoting the same source though.
  • I don't even know what this means. I don't see any quotes from Dalin or Meir in that version, and I'm not sure how the context is different. Maybe you could be more specific. ← George talk 09:02, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
George, I've never found any reason to challenge your judgement over the years, as a quiet observer. My objection is to a generalization which did not appear to closely paraphrase an authoritative source on the generic issue of 'Arab nationalism' in the 1930s and 40s. I read for nuance, and the implication of the sentence was 'Arab nationalist/30s-40s/think Hitler', which happens to be an identifiable POV.
Ravpapa. I have no problem with including Golda Meir at all. If anything I would prefer that it be added that Ben-Gurion also affirmed this as well. I've looked through several sources, seen it attributed to Ben-Gurion, to her, to Israeli immediate post-war publications. In all of these books, the claim of where this material was found varies considerably. It was found in (a) knapsacks (b) it was found at an enemy observation post (c) it was somekind of general issue for the troops (d) officers carried copies, (e) the British never found any such material etc. I don't like messy reports like this. I just think, with Bloch, that when you scent blood (as an historian), you drop everything and chase it down to the ogre's cave. You don't just leave it hanging in the air. If RS don't tell you, no need for OR. Just give the full picture of the 1956 Mein Kampf story, or register this as something editors should sarch RS for. p.s. I have no intention of editing this article. I'm limiting myself to a few prompts on this page. Nishidani (talk) 09:27, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
In retrospect, I probably overstepped the sources with that sentence, to the point of WP:OR. I'm fine with that, and I'm fine with removing the sentence. I do think we need something in the lead saying why the Arabic translation is notable though. People don't want to include the "bestseller" label, don't want to include information linking Arab nationalists to the book, and I'm questioning if the Arab critics of the book were even talking about the Arabic translation. What's left? ← George talk 09:37, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Surely the principle is 'include everything that is reliably sourced'. I don't think we can wish or want to putin or exclude anything here. Whether people like it or not, if the source is good, the material relevant, it goes in. I came here because I noted Dalin was being used. He gets virtually everything wrong, and is notorious for being an unreliable source. The passage I quoted from p.113 is a good example. Actually there's lots to be done. I've just read Wild's excellent paper, via your link. It has a lot of detail lacking here.Nishidani (talk) 09:50, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

George, I agree with you entirely. There is nothing notable about this article. It started out as a thinly veiled attempt to smear Arab nationalists. The attempt to delete it failed. I rewrote it in a vain attempt to give it some semblance of organization and purpose. That attempt failed. The article should be deleted. --Ravpapa (talk) 09:55, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

One possible solution might be to just rename the article to cover "Mein Kampf in the Arab world" or something. Then we could expand the topic to have not just a section on translations, but how Arabs viewed the original (or translations in English, French, etc. - see my comments in the section below). Even then, that might be too narrow a topic. Are there any articles like "Relations between Nazi Germany and the Arab world", or something similarly broad that could house this material? ← George talk 10:12, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Of course there are articles. There is the article on Mein Kampf which has an entire section on translations to other languages. There is Antisemitism in the Arab world. There is the article on Arab nationalism, which contains a section on Links with Nazism. Everything in this article should be included in those articles, if it isn't already.
This article exists for one reason only: because it is good to have a lot of articles denigrating your enemy. I have written about this phenomenon before, at User:Ravpapa/Tilt and User:Ravpapa/The Politicization of Wikipedia, which, in all modesty, I recommend to you. Regards, --Ravpapa (talk) 11:33, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Arab criticism of Mein Kampf

One point I think we need to discuss is the difference between Arabic translations of Mein Kampf, and Arab reactions to non-Arabic translations of Mein Kampf. Based on the title of the article, I'm assuming that the former is the intended topic of this article, but some of the article is discussing the latter. For instance, the article contains a sentence "Another commentator, Niqula Yusuf, denounced the militant nationalism of Mein Kampf as 'chauvinist'." Is Niqula Yusuf Arab? Is he (she?) talking about the Arabic translation of Mein Kampf? I'm guessing that this is the source for the sentence, and neither is clear to me. Thoughts? ← George talk 09:29, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Palestinian National Authority republished Mein Kampf?

The article makes the claim that "in 2001, the Palestinian National Authority republished Mein Kampf" I wonder if any one can substantiate this claim with a less biased, and controversial, source than Alan Dershowitz? Prunesqualor billets_doux 18:27, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

My mistake, it appears that Dershowitz only wrote the intro to "Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam" from which the "in 2001, the Palestinian National Authority republished Mein Kampf" claim was sourced. Here is the relevant sentence in the original:
"When Mein Kampf was republished by Yasser Arafat's Palestinian National Authority in 2001, shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, it achieved best-seller status throughout the Arab world."
Just about everything in that sentence strikes me as suspect. Where the PA running an international book publishing operation in 2001? Did they really publish a "best seller… throughout the Arab world" (a community comprising 360 million people)? If so would they choose such a controversial title to publish? Is the juxtaposition of 9/11 information based on any real linkage? I have an uneasy feeling that Wiki is regurgitating some dubious propaganda in this article. Prunesqualor billets_doux 07:18, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
I searched MEMRI for this very info. Could not find it. That's suspicious, as this does not appear to be something MEMRI would fail to report. --Frederico1234 (talk) 20:39, 25 July 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for trying Frederico 1234, I couldn't find any reliable back up for the - republished by the PA/best seller in the Arab world claims either. Could I make my position clear- I cannot edit the article because I am serving a ban- yet I consider the information suspect (I can find no reliable substantiation for the claims beyond the biased source provided). I have the feeling that Wiki credibility is being undermined by leaving in such dubious "information" sourced only from one rather biased origin. Prunesqualor billets_doux 01:47, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
Sentence removed. --Frederico1234 (talk) 06:07, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
@Frederico1234 Thanks Prunesqualor billets_doux 20:10, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Restored but modified with a source already found in the article. I assume there is no dispute that some (not all, surely) Palestinians dislike their Jewish neighbors so this shouldn't even be a contentious issue.Cptnono (talk) 07:09, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Reverted. The dispute is about the claim that the PA itself published the book. That is quite an extraordinary claim. Please do not revert without reading the discussion. --Frederico1234 (talk) 08:02, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Have you read the source? It isn't what you believe but what is verifiable. I don't know if the PNA would start printing books to make a point but I actually assume they would. You assume they wouldn't. The source says they did. Cptnono (talk) 08:09, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
I definitely have read the source. The source supports the claim. Noone has claimed otherwise. That's not what the discussion is about. --Frederico1234 (talk) 08:15, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
No, the discussion is about WP:V. If you do not like it you will have to find another source. I for example am looking into it instead of simply reverting. Did you know there was a reprint after 1995? Have you even attempted to look at more than just MEMRI? It doesn't matter, the claim is feasible and you are editing against a core Wikipedia policy. So I will give you 24hrs to find out who published the later edition and if you have not come up with anything I will be reverting. If you continue to revert without doing any work you will be edit warring and this will go to AE. Up to you.Cptnono (talk) 08:21, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
DYK that Al-Shurouq did the '95 edition? That is something that would be in the article if editors were actually looking for sources instead of removing them.Cptnono (talk) 08:26, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Oh snap. Getting closer to the answer. May not have been "published" but makes the same point. More to come (what is this, 5 min into a search?)....Cptnono (talk) 08:28, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
So about 15min into the search and disregarding the RS provided, it is clear where the '95 edition came from (with RS). It is very clear (but with questionable RS) that a version was distributed by the PNA in the early '00s. There might have also been an edition in '03 but that is less clear. So we have RS that says it as "PUBLISHED" by the PNA. I won't be adding it back in if you can find a source that says it was "DISTRIBUTED". If I find clear RS that says it was not published or that it was distributed I also will not add it back in. Care to take a better crack at it?08:37, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Here's an entry from Jewish Virtual Library: | "An Arabic translation of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf is being distributed by Al-Shurouq, a Ramallah based book distributor, to East Jerusalem and territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority (PA). According to Agence France Presse (Sept. 8), the book, previously banned by Israel, has been allowed by the PA". No word about the PA itself publishing the book.
I'll investigate it further later this day. --Frederico1234 (talk) 08:41, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Sweet. I actually will hold off more than 24hrs. I made a mention at the collaboration page (that rarely works) and a mention at the reference desk might also be a good bet. I am actually leaning towards it not being published but instead only distributed. However, editors love their verification over truth regardless of what we might see as responsible editorial control. Cptnono (talk) 08:52, 28 July 2011 (UTC)
Sorry for the delay. You don't happen to have the source available regarding the version supposed to have been "distributed by the PNA in the early '00s"? Is this the 2001 "educational pamphlet" mentioned by User:Ravpapa? --Frederico1234 (talk) 17:14, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Though I cannot say categorically that the PNA did not republish Mein Kampf in 2001, the contention is unbelievable. The PNA is not set up to publish 600-page books, and there would be no reason to do so when an Arabic version published by the Beirut firm of Bisan was readily available in West Bank and Gaza bookstores.

What the PNA did publish in 2001 was an educational pamphlet, including a quiz that was broadcast on the Palestinian radio, based largely on Mein Kampf and largely laudatory of Hitler. It is probably this pamphlet that the source is referring to.

I have added a sentence with the name of the Beirut publisher --Ravpapa (talk) 10:50, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Later: I would add that the quote from the Jewish Virtual Library above does not suggest that the PNA is distributing the book, but says that the independent book distributor Al-Shurouq is distributing it. the clause "controlled by the Palestinian Authority" refers to "territories" and not to Al-Shurouq. Therefore, Cptnono's suggestion that the PA "is only distributing the book, not publishing it" is also wrong. The PA is neither distributing nor publishing Mein Kampf. --Ravpapa (talk) 15:03, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Still later (in fact a day and a half later): The claim that Mein Kampf was a bestseller in the Palestinian territories in 1999 is also suspect, and in any case an exaggeration. The source of this claim - which has been quoted extensively all over the internet as well as in books - is an article in Hayat el Jedida, the official paper of the PNA, that in the month of August (only) it was number six on the bestseller list. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, there was no bestseller list in the Palestinian territories in 1999 (and still isn't), so how Hayat el Jedida knew this is a mystery. In any case, I am revising the article to reflect Hayat's actual claim. --Ravpapa (talk) 16:08, 29 July 2011 (UTC)
I gave you time to find sources. Now I am just going to add them myself.Cptnono (talk) 09:59, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Best Seller?

Where is the evidence? There's no citation supporting this that I can see. This article is on the main page, it should be well-sourced. 67.168.252.183 (talk) 03:13, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

See the section Reception of the new translation. Calliopejen1 (talk) 03:57, 4 August 2011 (UTC)
This is a very dubious claim which should not have got to the main page. The DYK hook should be changed to some uncontroversial fact. Does anyone know how to do that? --Frederico1234 (talk) 04:40, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I looked into the Dalin citation for this claim. The Dalin book cites a Foxman book, p. 198. The claim is not supported by the Foxman book, so I'm going to remove the Dalin citation. Calliopejen1 (talk) 14:31, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Turkey

Here's what the J weekly article cited has to say re. bestseller status: "Palestinian booksellers in the West Bank town of Ramallah report that "Mein Kampf" is rated sixth on their bestseller lists". Really? So all of these "Palestinian booksellers" (this might mean 2 it might mean a hundred the source doesn’t say) happen to rate the book as number six on their "bestseller lists"? Just who did these various Palestinian booksellers "report" this information to? Interestingly the other source provided (a Telegraph article written by Sean O'Neill and John Steele) also goes with the "sixth best selling" line but they refer to the whole of the Palestinian territories. Does the bizarre coincidence of this book falling as number six in bookshops best seller lists extend to the whole of Palestine, not just "the West Bank town of Ramallah"? It's bad enough that this suspect information appears in the article, but the "that the Arabic translation of Mein Kampf has been a bestseller in parts of the Middle East?" has now appeared in Wiki's prominent "did you know?" feature. Not a proud moment for Wiki. Prunesqualor billets_doux 20:37, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Doesn't that raise a red flag? The Turks don't normally speak Arabic, or do they? (only 1% according to Languages of Turkey) Perhaps it was aimed at religious die hards? FuFoFuEd (talk) 21:05, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
The source was blatantly abused, failing WP:V. It was talking of the Turkish language version, which is not the same language as Arabic. FuFoFuEd (talk) 21:20, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Sorry about the Turkey one, I didn't notice that. SilverserenC 23:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Egypt

On the contrary, Rachel Neuwirth is a very unreliable source, having lost several libel actions against activists she attempted to defame.[3][4][5]RolandR (talk) 12:28, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Arutz Sheva by itself isn't unreliable, just biased. An op-ed in Arutz Sheva compounds the problem a bit. The author, Rachel Neuwirth, doesn't have a Wikipedia article, and the only things that I can find that she's written are op-eds in Arutz Sheva and American Thinker, another biased (though not unreliable) source. Overall, the source would be reliable for Rachel Neuwirth's opinion, but what does her opinion of what is and isn't a best-seller in Egypt matter? The claim isn't exceedingly questionable, but questionable enough that I would think that, if it is true, it shouldn't be hard to find at least one good source to back it up. ← George talk 00:02, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Palestinian territories

Is it possible to maybe quantify what it means to be a bestseller? Sources that say "sixth most popular", "sold X thousand copies", and the like are good, but just saying that something is a bestseller doesn't mean anything. For example, one could say that Mein Kampf is a best seller on Amazon, but that would be misleading because it's only the 99,590th most popular book on the Amazon best sellers list (though still a "best seller"). ← George talk 23:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I think sixth most popular is pretty specific. It is #6 on the list. And most sources when discussing a book in other countries don't specify what it is on a bestseller list, they just say that it is a bestseller. We can only presume that it is decently high (low?) on the bestseller list to be important enough to print. We have no reason not to believe that. 23:39, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Sixth most popular is specific (as I wrote, that is a "good" source), but the op-ed you linked didn't say that. It just says generically it "is a best seller in the West Bank and throughout the Middle East". No numbers, nothing quantifiable, making it a source of limited value. If you want to add that "Russel Lemmons, a professor at Jacksonville State University, wrote in 2002 that an Arabic translation of Mein Kampf is "a best seller in the West Bank and throughout the Middle East", be my guest. I'm just hoping we can find better sources that better quantify what they're saying. ← George talk 00:10, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
Should I also include in that sentence others that have stated the same thing as Russel Lemmons, such as David Pryce-Jones, Paul Johnson, Sean O'Neill and John Steele, The Guardian (no author), Katie Engelhart, and Ron Swan? SilverserenC 03:55, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
How exactly do you determine best sellers in the Palestinian Authority area though? I don't think they have a committee or a New York Times-esque best seller list. I see no reason why these statements from the book sellers in Ramallah shouldn't be taken at face value. SilverserenC 23:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
There's a book (forgot which, duh), which said it was a survey (possibly small and informal) conducted by a book shop in the Palestinian territories. I'll try to find the ref. FuFoFuEd (talk) 04:19, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
Found it: [6] "The first list of best-selling books in the West Bank, compiled in 1999 by a bookshop in the town of Ramallah, found that Hitler's Mein Kampf was ..." FuFoFuEd (talk) 04:23, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
Then that should be added into the article. SilverserenC 04:24, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I found a copy of the 1999 AFP story: 

                'Mein Kampf' Makes it to Palestinian
                Bestseller List

                RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) -- Adolf Hitler's "Mein
                Kampf," the story of the Nazi leader's early
                "struggle," has made it on to the bestseller list in
                the Palestinian territories.

                The book occupies sixth place on the list of
                top-sellers compiled by the Dar El-Shuruq bookshop in
                the West Bank city of Ramallah -- but less than 10
                copies are being sold a week, bookshop owner Nicolas
                Akel said Wednesday.

                Akel attributed the popularity of "Mein Kampf" to the
                fact it had been banned from the Palestinian
                territories for many years during the Israeli
                occupation and has only recently been allowed in by
                Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

                Dar El-Shuruq's bestseller list is the only one in
                the West Bank or Gaza Strip and is itself a recent
                innovation.

                The two top spots are currently occupied by novels by
                Algerian writer Ahlam Mustaghani, while poets Mahmmud
                Darwish and Nizar Kabbani and scholar Edward Said are
                the enduring top sellers, Akel said.

-- FuFoFuEd (talk) 04:27, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Could that be Dar El-Shorouk? Or maybe [7] Arabic only? FuFoFuEd (talk) 04:41, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

In summery- It would appear then that:- in 1999, one bookseller, in the town of Ramallah, recorded that Mien Kampf was his sixth best selling book (despite selling less than ten copies a week). By some process of Chinese whispers (or possibly wilful exaggeration) this information has mutated to "[Mien Kampf] achieved bestseller status in the Palestinian territories". Prunesqualor billets_doux 09:42, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, the Chinese whispers element to that is pretty amusing, especially the version in Icon of Evil: [8] where not only the Palestinian Authority itself published the book, but it has been a bestseller in all Arab countries ever since. On the other hand, Dar El-Shuruq appears to be the largest bookshop in Ramallah :-) But of course AFP is part of Eurabia. :-/ FuFoFuEd (talk) 10:20, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
So can we cite the 1999 AFP story even if it isn't available publicly online? There's also another AFP article from 2007, "Massive Cairo book fair sets religious tone," which states:

The fair also has its darker sides, with anti-Christian polemics advocating conversion to Islam as the only solution to a flawed religion and of course plenty of editions of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" for sale.

"It makes up a big part of our success, especially among the 18 to 25 crowd," said Mahmud Abdallah of the Syrian-Egyptian Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi publishing house.

"Allowing the sale of books like 'Mein Kampf' is a total scandal," said Mohammed Arkoun, professor emeritus of Islamic history at the Sorbonne, for whom the Arab cultural production, at least as seen through the lens of the Cairo Book Fair, "reflects above all, a certain emptiness."

Plot Spoiler (talk) 03:26, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Plot Spoiler

You reverted George's self-revert on the generalization. Could you kindly cite the passage in Wild on which that catch-all generalization is based? Thanks.Nishidani (talk) 06:43, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Please remove "best seller" claim from the intro

I'm a musician. If I produce a CD, which goes on to be the sixth best selling CD in my local music shop, Would Wiki then allow the statement "Prunesqualer's CD has been a bestseller in the United Kingdom". That seems to me equivalent to the state of affairs in the intro where we have Mien Kampf "has been a bestseller in the Palestinian territories" which, upon examination (please note the "Best seller?" Section above) appears to be based on the fact that in 1999, one bookseller, in the town of Ramallah, recorded that Mien Kampf was his sixth best selling book (despite selling less than ten copies a week). In my opinion, if we don't want the article to be misleading, we should replace "has been a bestseller in the Palestinian territories" with what the most credible source says ie "in 1999, one bookseller, in the town of Ramallah, recorded that Mien Kampf was his sixth best selling book". Or better still drop all dubious mentions of "best seller" status from the intro (frankly, based on the discussions above I'm surprised this hasn't already been done). Prunesqualor billets_doux 13:13, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

To be exact, the bookseller reported it to be the sixth bestselling book during the month of August 1999. --Ravpapa (talk) 13:17, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
@Ravpapa- Correct. The bookseller even attributed that "popularity" to the fact that it had been previously banned from the Palestinian territories. Prunesqualor billets_doux 13:29, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Numerous reliable sources have described it as a bestseller. We report what reliable source say, and perhaps smile bemusedly at your personal analysis. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 16:23, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
@ Firkin Flying Fox. You are free to smile as bemusedly as you wish, but prehaps, while you are doing so you could spare some thought for the following facts:
  • Nobody seems to be able to find an official organisation which collects, and compiles, book sales information in the West Bank.
  • Non of the "numerous reliable sources" you mention offer up a primary source (or any source at all for that matter) from whence the got their "bestseller" information.
  • Those "reliable sources" that specify a bestseller ranking, place it at six, which happens to be the same ranking our Ramallah bookseller gave the book in 1999 (predating all of other sources). A strange coincidence? (in fact this has all the hallmarks of a mutating meme/Chines Whispers scenario).
Hopefully after reflecting on this information, you will reconsider your position. Prunesqualor billets_doux 19:29, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't know that anyone has looked for, much less "failed to find" an "official" organization which collects, and compiles, book sales information in the West Bank. FYI, The New York Times is not any "official" organization which collects, and compiles, book sales information in the US, it's just one private enterprise, that conducts a study. Wikipedia does not require that reliable sources state their primary sources - that's just a unique burden you personally wish to impose on info you don't like. We simply report what reliable sources say - and they say it is a bestseller. One of them also provided a 1999 ranking, which was 6th - clearly a best seller. Others, more recent (2002), simply say best seller. you seem to assume all the "reliable sources" (and its quite telling that you've put them in scare quotes) are basing their statement on the 1999 report - but you seem to be assuming a lot of things that are not in evidence. Again: we simply report what reliable sources say. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 19:46, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
@ Firkin Flying Fox. You dismissed my want of a primary source, describing it as "just a unique burden you personally wish to impose on info you don't like" (This incidentally does not assume good faith). In fact I merely pointed out that not one of the "reliable sources" provided any background on where they got the bestseller info from at all, let alone primary sources. And yes I will continue to use the quote marks because I believe, on this particular issue, that these sources are questionable. The fact is that Journalists often take their facts/information from other journalists , who may well in turn have borrowed from others etc. The evidence suggests that this is what has happened with this Palestinian bestseller information. As for "I don't know that anyone has looked for, much less failed to find an official organization…". You should note that the want of any evidence for such an organisation has been drawn attention too several times over the last week or so. Considering the incentive here ie. that if such an organisation where to be found it would considerably bolster the pro-bestseller case, the absence of such a find seems telling to me. Prunesqualor billets_doux 20:40, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
PS you mentioned "Numerous reliable sources" I wonder, in the interests of clarity, could you compile a list of these sources, as, apart from the 1999 Ramallah report (which seems to me the source of all the others), only one other (a Telegraph article by Sean O'Neill and John Steele) appears in the article. Prunesqualor billets_doux 20:55, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
PPS, on the matter of the 6th best seller meme, you claimed that "Others, more recent (2002), simply say best seller." In fact the (2002) piece cited in the article says: "Mein Kampf became the sixth best selling book in the Palestinian Authority area." Prunesqualor billets_doux 21:16, 7 August 2011 (UTC)


I dismissed your want of a primary source because it is not part of wikipedia policy. Since it is not policy, but you still request it, I have quite correctly described it as a unique burden you personally wish to impose. When you question the reliability of long-established mainstream news sources (including the AFP, among others) just because they published material you don't like, I do not have to assume good faith about your motives, especially when you have been topic banned for just this type of tendentious editing. What you speculate might have happened is amusing, not because it is implausible, but because it has no relevance to how we edit articles here, and you certainly don't apply this type of standards on other articles you've been active on, when the material there more closely conforms with you agenda. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 05:11, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
As far as sources, we have the following:
  • Bangor Daily News - May 31, 2002 - mainstream newspaper, from 2002, says "bestseller, provides no ranking (this addresses your 3rd point, btw), makes no mention of the AFP story
  • Ocala Star-Banner - Jul 23, 2002 - mainstream newspaper, from 2002, says "bestseller, provides no ranking (this addresses your 3rd point, btw), makes no mention of the AFP story
  • Macleans 2010 (!!) - mainstream news magazine, from 2010, says "bestseller", provides no ranking (this addresses your 3rd point, btw), makes no mention of the AFP story
All of these have already been provided to you, above, by silverseren, so your request to have them presented again is yet another reason why I am not assuming good faith with regards to your current edits, as this is the hallmark of stonewalling an tendentious editing. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 05:26, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
The first two are op-eds, so I wouldn't cite them. Not familiar with the third, so it might be worth a pass by RSN. You're mistaken, however, in that it does specify a ranking ("sixth"), but it looks reliable to me, and it identifies its source for the figure as AFP. ← George talk 05:33, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
You are correct that it mentions the AFP, but says this is for 2001, not 1999, so obviously not talking about the same 1999 AFP story. If anything, this just bolsters the notion that these best seller rankings have been compiled for more than one year, and that MK is a perennial best seller in the West bank. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 05:44, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Could be. I'd run the source by RSN. The author is a graduate student, so I'm not sure how it ranks. My point was that the first two sources are pretty useless. The best source so far (in my opinion) is the Telegraph article, though if we could find the 2001 AFP article the Maclean's piece talks about, that might be a good addition as well. I wouldn't draw any sort of "perennial best seller" conclusion from such little data though. ← George talk 05:54, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
So now we are questioning the academic credentials of journalists published in mainstream news magazines before we allow them to be used? Can you point to the relevant policy that requires this? Even if all we had was the AFP story, it would be more than enough. But we have the AFP, we have the Telegraph, we have Macleans, and we have multiple Op-Eds in mainstream publications (which are not useless) that say the same thing. It is high time to give this a rest. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 06:01, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
First, please kindly tone down the rhetoric and the battlegrounding. I haven't once suggested removing the best seller status, I've only tried to be sure that we're citing reliable sources, and that those reliable sources say what we cite them for; in that regard, I have no intention of "giving this a rest". The credentials of the author are part of what determine the reliability of a source (the relevant policy being WP:RS). I don't know that Maclean's is a "mainstream news magazine", but I also don't know that it's not - I've never heard of it, which is why I suggested passing it by RSN (a checkmark from RSN makes your case to use the source stronger). If we can trace the multiple sources back to one original, it makes the text far simpler to write, which is generally a good thing. ← George talk 06:12, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
WP:RS says nothing about looking into the academic credentials of journalists published by mainstream media. If you doubt Macleans is a reliable source, by all means, take it to the noticeboard. If all you care about is citing reliable sources that say "bestseller"- the original AFT article suffices. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 06:17, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Apparently you've only had time to skim WP:RS in your three days editing Wikipedia, so I'll help you out. Per the first paragraph in WP:RS, "The word 'source' as used on Wikipedia has three related meanings: the piece of work itself (the article, book), the creator of the work (the writer, journalist), and the publisher of the work (for example The New York Times, Cambridge University Press, etc.). All three can affect reliability." (emphasis mine) I'm not really considering Maclean's in any great detail, because it hasn't been added to the article. And since I'm not sure if it is reliable or not, I will not be adding it to the article. If you don't want friendly advice on how to strengthen the case for sources you want to cite, then feel free to ignore it. I have no problem with the original AFP source, it's just too bad it's not available anywhere online. ← George talk 06:33, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Updated the sentence to cite the original AFP source per your suggestion. ← George talk 06:44, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Why are editors concerned with this? RS clearly states that it was a bestseller. There should be nothing to be ashamed of if you support certain politicians and movements. Cptnono (talk) 03:22, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Because it is not a bestseller. This is a canard that was cooked up by people like Golda Meir and David Dalin to paint Palestinians as Nazis, and that has been repeated by irresponsible journalists who don't check facts. The fact is that one bookstore reported that during one month in 1999 it sold less than 10 copies of Mein Kampf, but that was still the sixth most popular title for the store. That fact has become inflated, through a series of misquotes and exaggerations, to turn Mein Kampf into a runaway bestseller in the Arab world.
This is precisely how subtle and clever propagandists run smear campaigns, and it pains me to see Wikipedia serving their interests. --Ravpapa (talk) 05:43, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
I hear you. I was pretty ticked off when enough RS was found to change history on another article (Gaza War). But we do verifiability and not truth here. So either you respect RS or you think we need to stop using it. The later will surely mean that Wikipedia is dead. RS is clear here and your assumptions simply aren't good enough to counter them. And don't forget that it is truth that some Arab nationalists promted the book. It might be against your beliefs but it is the way it is. Cptnono (talk) 09:46, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
It seems to me that you are serving the interests of those trying to hide the facts that MK is a best seller, by offering your personal speculation (already proved false) over what reliable sources say. Golda Meir, in particular seems to have pulled off quite a feat here - dead for 25 years before the AFP story came out, she nevertheless managed to insert subtle and clever propaganda into that article. Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 05:48, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
AND BTW, even the AFP story talks about 10 copies a WEEK. Why are you misrepresenting what it says? Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 05:50, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

You are right that the AFP report said 10 copies a week, and not a month.

There is no orderly tracking of bestsellers in the West Bank or in the Arab world at large, such as there is in European countries (though there is a move afoot to create one, see http://arablit.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/what-should-an-arabic-bestseller-list-look-like/). However, there are some reasonably good, if qualitative, estimates of bestselling books in Arab countries. See, for example, this list of bestselling titles at the Cairo book fair last year. 20 books are listed. Mein Kampf is not among them. Brightbooks, a British distributor of Arabic books, publishes this list of about 60 Arabic bestsellers. Mein Kampf is not there. Shokeir, a bookseller in Egypt, lists 20 bestselling titles. Again, Mein Kampf is not there.

Since there is no organized tracking of book sales in the Arab world, any statement that Mein Kampf is a bestseller is perforce conjecture. It is, moreover, conjecture completely unsupported by evidence.

The claim that Mein Kampf is a bestseller in the Arab countries is a lie, cooked up by propagandists, and repeated again and again until it has become a truth. It is a trick invented by Hitler himself. --Ravpapa (talk) 06:36, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

This is some kind of joke, right? You don't like the methodology used (a survey of one store in Ramallah), so to counter a claim (published, mind you, in AFP and in the Telegraph) that MK is a bestseller in the West bank, you proffer (1) some guy's personal blog, which explicitly says 'This list is certainly not authoritative... What follows represents the patrons of just one (albeit very fine) bookstore", in Egypt? and (2) a list of Arabic books sold in the UK (note the prices in pounds)? Do you expect to be taken seriously with arguments like that? Firkin Flying Fox (talk) 08:51, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I have modified the lead. The prose can detail "bestseller" or not but there is no doubt that it has enjoyed good sales in Arab communities.Cptnono (talk) 10:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I think your wording might be a little too vague, as it implies "most" (or at the very least "many") Arab communities, but we seem to only have the sources to support its popularity in a town in the West Bank, and a neighborhood in London. ← George talk 10:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Please let us be exact. Nobody said it is popular in a neighborhood of London. The Telegraph said it appeared in a store in London. The article did not say that the store sold a single copy. --Ravpapa (talk) 11:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm all about making it tighter. It is clear that it has done fine in a neighborhood in London, Egypt, and the PT. Whatever modifications are needed are cool by me but I thought removing "bestseller" would cool some tempers.Cptnono (talk) 10:37, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't think we have a source about sales in Egypt? Might have missed it in all the chatter. Also, please take a look at the section I opened below. Your thoughts on the contradiction I identified would be helpful. ← George talk 10:41, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
@ Cptnono- that wording seems reasonable to me. Thanks. Prunesqualor billets_doux 11:06, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
1)I am confused by the date thing so a going to ignore it until I look into it more. 2)Yes, London. Do you want more sources? They are easy to find so if you look for them yourself it will save me going through my browser's history and copy and pasting. 3)I am actually stoked you approve, PS. I don't like using "some" but right now it seems like the best solution. I assume it is only a place holder.Cptnono (talk) 12:41, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
@Cptnono- Re. " The book has sold well in some Arab communities." It seems to me, considering the evidence we have so far, to be the strongest statement that can reasonably be made about sales in the Arab world. I agree using "some" isn't ideal, and personally I think "sold well" is even more problematic (vagueness wise), but as a "place holder" I can live with it. PS- Just to clear up possible confusion- it is Ravpapa who has looked into, and is concerned about, the "London" business (though his points seem reasonable to me, I haven’t looked into the issue or commentated on it myself). Prunesqualor billets_doux 15:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Resolving the date of the AFP article

So there's a slight issue. This Guardian article from December 18, 2001, says "According to an Agence France Presse report on September 8, the book, previously banned by Israel, had been allowed by the PA and was sixth on the Palestinian bestseller list" - seemingly referring to a September 8, 2001 AFP article (which is what Cptnono added here). However, here is a copy of an AFP article titled "Mein Kampf" Makes it to Palestinian Bestseller List, which is dated September 8, 1999, but is hosted on an unreliable site. So which do we prefer? The Guardian article, a more reliable source, which hints at a 2001 date, or the reprint AFP article itself, hosted on a completely unreliable source (focused on "Bible Prophecy Research"), which has an exact date of 1999? ← George talk 10:31, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

This, this, and this (and several others) all give pretty well the same information as the Macleans.Ca source ("number six on the PA best-seller list" etc) however they all place the AFP report in 1999. Again all roads seem to lead back to our Ramallah bookseller. Prunesqualor billets_doux 11:04, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
This source specifies September 8th 1999 (the other sources I gave earlier are consistent with this as they give September the 10th 1999 as the date of a ZOA press release which cites the AFP report) Prunesqualor billets_doux 11:25, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
PS I suppose it is theoretically possible that the AFP issued another press release about MK sales in the PA (6th best seller etc) on the 8th of September 2001 exactly two years after the more substantiated 1999 release (containing the same information), however such a coincidence seems extremely unlikely to me. Prunesqualor billets_doux 15:51, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
It should be clear (I hope) to everybody by now that all of the reliable sources we have so far unearthed, about Mein Kampf being a best seller in the PA, are in fact (beyond any reasonable doubt anyway) sourced originally from the September 8 1999 AFP story. The later, second hand reuses of that information should be of no significance since they only represent filtering and rehashing of the original. What appear to be copies of the original, 1999, AFP wording can be found here, here and here. In our article we need to replace the incorrect "September 8, 2001" with the correct " September 8, 1999" . Our Wiki article, in it’s current state, does not fairly and accurately represent the information in the 1999 AFP document. For instance our article uses the grand term "book distributor" whereas the original talks only of a "bookshop owner". We should also give fair context by pointing out that the man was selling less than 10 copies a week. Prunesqualor billets_doux 20:43, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Edit to lead

I have removed from the lead the statement, attributed to the Stephen Wild article, that Arab nationalists were the first to suggest translating Mein Kampf. What Stephen Wild writes is that Arab nationalists werenot the first to suggest translating Mein Kampf. Here is the quote in full:

Sami al-Jundi writes: Whoever has lived during this period in Damascus will appreciate the inclination of the Arab people to Nazism, for Nazism was the power which could serve as its champion, and he who is defeated will by nature love the victor. In this fascination with Nietzsche, Chamberlain and Fichte, Hitler also found his place: We were racialists, admiring Nazism, reading its books and the source of its thought, particularly Nietzsche's Thus spake Zarathustra, Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation and H.S. Chamberlain's Foundations of the Nineteenth Century which revolves on the race. We were the first to think of translating Mein Kampf.
In al-Jundi's rather sweeping statement, at least the last assertion is incorrect. There had been translations of Mein Kampf into Arabic well before 1939.19 The same group from what was later to become the Baath-party searched Damascus for Alfred Rosenberg's Mythos des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts, and finally found a copy of Grosclaude's French translation mentioned above.

The claim that Arab nationalists supported Nazism is not germaine to this article. If you want to add information about this, I suggest you add it to Arab nationalism. --Ravpapa (talk) 15:19, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Best-seller and best-seller it is

  1. In the article named "The hate that will not die" Guardian states that on December 8,2001 Agence France-Presse reported that an Arabic translation of Mein Kampf "had been allowed by the Palestinian National Authority and was sixth on the Palestinian bestseller list";
  2. In 2007 U.S. News & World Report reported that "Translations of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kamp and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are steady bestsellers in all Arab countries".
  3. Cut-rate 'Mein Kampf' sells well in Turkey, spurring concerns" by Los Angeles Times (2005)
  4. "Reading 'Mein Kampf' in Cairo" by Jerusalem Post (2007)

Broccolo (talk) 18:23, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

  1. Good source, though it's pretty much on par with the other sources we have that cite the same Sept 8 1999 AFP report.
  2. This is an advertisement. No joke - the page has a note at the bottom that says "This message has been published and paid for by FLAME", which is a pro-Israel former branch of CAMERA.
  3. Turkey isn't an Arab country.
  4. Op-ed. ← George talk 21:17, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
@ George - You should also note two important details. Firstly- The Guardian article which Broccolo cites does not give a year for it's AFP sourced information. Much more importantly the date it does give is not "December 8", as Broccolo wrongly stated, but "September 8" which exactly coincides with the AFP September 8 1999 "Sixth best seller" story. Please read the discussions above on this subject. Prunesqualor billets_doux 21:39, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, that was my point. It's another source citing the same September 8 report. Also, I discovered that the second source is an advertisement in US News & World Report. ← George talk 21:47, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
@ George I know this may seem silly, but I would feel a lot more content, that you had accepted the above analysis/research, if you said "September 8 1999 report" rather than just "September 8 report" Prunesqualor billets_doux 01:27, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Ah, sorry, I thought that it was a given that I meant Sept 8 1999. That's the one that's in the article. ← George talk 04:20, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The lead

There are numerous problems with this article, but the lead is the biggest. The lead is comprised of a list of statements that are unmentioned and unsupported in the rest of the article, and some of which are completely irrelevant. What does Schindler's List have to do with Mein Kampf?

Here is my suggestion for the lead:

Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler's 900-page treatise developing his Nazi ideology of Aryan superiority, antisemitism and national socialism, has been translated into Arabic in a number of versions, from 1935 to the present. Over the years, it has been received by Arab communities throughout the Middle East and elsewhere with mixed views, ranging from praise to extreme condemnation. Some reports have claimed that the book was carried by Egyptian soldiers during wars against Israel, and that it has achieved bestseller status in Egypt and the Palestinian territories, while some Arab leaders and intellectuals have reviled the book as a racist tract against Arabs, as well as against Jews.

I suggest we move the Golda Meir quote and the bit about Egyptians carrying it in 1967 to the body of the article, where they belong. The editor who added the sentence about Schindler's list might consider adding it to the relevant article on Schindler or on the movie. It has no place here. --Ravpapa (talk) 11:30, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

@Ravpapa- I would agree with all of that. Your suggested intro text seems balanced, reasonable, and confines itself to the directly pertinent information. As such it seems a big improvement over the current wording. Prunesqualor billets_doux 23:00, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Three days later: Okay, I have done it. I rewrote the lead and reorganized the article so it has some coherence. I believe there are still problems, specifically with the recital of the history of the 1930s translations. I had trouble following the chronology in the article, and found conflicting stories in the original sources. So if anyone can make better sense of it than I, they are welcome.
I also removed the picture of the Mufti with Hitler, because I felt it was only peripherally relevant. However, it did serve to decorate the text somewhat, so if anyone feels strongly about it, feel free to restore it to the article. Regards, --Ravpapa (talk) 16:19, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

The first sentence of the article states that Mein Kampf "…has been translated into Arabic a number of times since the early 1930s". I can only find mention of two complete translations - the Al-Sadati and the Luis al-Haj translations (the Arslan translation, mentioned in the article appears not to have been completed or published). I suggest the following wording would more accurately reflect the facts:

"…has been translated into Arabic twice since the early 1930s (extracts from the book have also been translated on several occasions)."
PS If others don't consider the information in brackets to be notable enough for the intro I'm fine with that. Prunesqualor billets_doux 10:50, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

"It makes up a big part of our success"

Plot Spolier recently added the following, citing this source: Regarding the Arabic version of the book, an employee of the Syrian-Egyptian Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi publishing house said, "It makes up a big part of our success, especially among the 18 to 25 crowd."

The problem is that I don't read the source to be referring to Mein Kampf with the word "It", I read them to be talking about the fair. A broader quote for context is: "The fair also has its darker sides, with anti-Christian polemics advocating conversion to Islam as the only solution to a flawed religion and of course plenty of editions of Adolf Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' for sale. 'It makes up a big part of our success, especially among the 18 to 25 crowd,' said Mahmud Abdallah of the Syrian-Egyptian Dar al-Kitab al-Arabi publishing house." I don't think that we can infer that the speaker is talking about Mein Kampf with the word "It", but I'm holding off on reverting until I get feedback from others. Thoughts? ← George talk 22:00, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I understand the confusion at hand but with a little more background research, it is clear that Dar al-Kitab is in fact a publisher of Mein Kampf. We can therefore infer the individual is speaking about that book, despite the grammatical confusion.
I don't know, it seems to me equally likely (or even more likely) that the speaker is saying that the fair is good for sales of all books published by his publishing house. I assume that Mein Kampf isn't the only book that Dar al-Kitab publishes? Or is there anything indicating that Mein Kampf is the only book they sell at the fair? ← George talk 22:21, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
I can see how it could be read both ways. But since the quote is sandwiched between two lines about Mein Kampf I looks like the writer was putting in a quote specifically about the book. Cptnono (talk) 22:46, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
The "…Mein Kampf for sale" part appears at the end of a paragraph concerned with controversial titles for sale. It is followed, in a new paragraph, by the "It makes up a big part of our success, especially among the 18 to 25 crowd…"quote. This is followed by another new paragraph beginning "Allowing the sale of books like 'Mein Kampf' is a total scandal," (emphasis mine). The arrangement of information here, suggests we ascribe the "it" in the second paragraph to all of the material in the first ie the sale of controversial material, not just Mein Kampf. The phrase "like Mein Kampf" in the following paragraph puts this interpretation beyond reasonable doubt in my opinion. However any possible ambiguity could have been removed by the journalist providing clearer context for the " It makes up a big part…" quote (not a particularly fine example of the journalists' craft in my opinion). Prunesqualor billets_doux 23:21, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Totally agree regarding the poor journalism in that excerpt, and I completely understand the point you & Cptnono are making in favor of equating "it" to Mein Kampf in this situation, but the ambiguity just doesn't meet the threshold of "beyond reasonable doubt" for me (which is a very individual opinion). If I had to quantify the odds that the speaker was talking about Mein Kampf, I might put it at around 50%, whereas for me, "beyond reasonable doubt" is something like 90% or better certainty. I opened up an WP:RSN case on the topic, so please feel free to explain your reasoning for the benefit of the reviewers over there. ← George talk 23:28, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
@ George- prehaps you could re-read my post above (I guess I must have expressed myself very badly) I was not "in favor of equating "it" to Mein Kampf but quite the opposite. Prunesqualor billets_doux 23:58, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
Prune chooses to read "like" as in "similar to. I choose to read "like" as in "such as". The placement of the line in the story (surrounded by mention of the book) is the deciding factor for me.Cptnono (talk) 23:34, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
@ Cptnono- Honestly I don't get your point here. "like" and "such as" surly amount to the same thing in this context- ie they both signify Mien Kampf being used as an example, rather that the isolated subject of the matter. Prunesqualor billets_doux 23:49, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
George, I disagree with your assessment. There is ambiguity in phrase. Alone, without any additional information, I would place the likelihood that the phrase is referring to Mein Kampf at 60 percent. With the additional information I provided - the fact that the publisher does in fact publish Mein Kampf - I would place the probability at some 90 percent. Plot Spoiler (talk) 02:50, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
@Prunesqualer - Sorry, misunderstood what you had written. Makes more sense to me now.
@Plot Spoiler - I'm not understanding the weight you're putting behind the fact that Dar al-Kitab publishes Mein Kampf. As far as I can tell, Dar al-Kitab publishes a lot of other books, and a lot of other publishers print Mein Kampf. So how that makes it any more likely that the employee was referring to the book than the fair doesn't make sense to me. ← George talk 03:25, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Prune says he doesn't get it. I assume he does. All this nitpicking about words is pointless. The point of those lines in that source is obviously Mein Kampf. It is the way it is. And again, there is no reason to defend it. To pretend that there are not anti-Jew Arabs is silly. We know they exist. There is no reason to dance around the issue. Cptnono (talk) 03:37, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Read through that article again, and have to respectfully disagree. On third glance, I'm leaning towards thinking that the speaker actually used "It" in reference to 'the fair's darker side' (the subject of the preceding sentence), rather than either the fair itself or the single book. God I hate poorly written dribble. And that doesn't even address the issue that it doesn't say it's the Arabic version of Mein Kampf, as far as I can tell. Might take a break and look at it again tomorrow to see if I change my mind, cause getting a bit tired reading about this shit (Nazi books, that is). ← George talk 03:51, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
You never need to preface "disagree" with "respectfully" when discussing with me, dude. I completely disagree with you but I know that you honestly believe your reading of it edit:the source is correct. And as someone who has known plenty of dirtbags: I was never able to get through the English translation without getting bored and a little ticked off.Cptnono (talk) 03:58, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
@ Cptnono You said "Prune says he doesn't get it. I assume he does." Prehaps you would care to explain exactly what you meant by that. It sounds remarkably like you're calling me a liar and assuming bad faith. In fact whether you choose to believe it of not, everything I have said here has been sincere. On this particular issue, I think the evidence points to the "it" reffering to the fringe book market side of the festival, and I cannot for the life of me see how anyone can interpret the phrase "Allowing the sale of books like 'Mein Kampf' is a total scandal," as reffering only to Mein Kampf. Even if you are unable to follow this linguistic reasoning surly you accept that that section of the article was badly written. Why are we even considering the use of such ambiguous bilge as suitable source material for Wikipedia? Prunesqualor billets_doux 13:38, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
@ Cptnono- PS could you also please explain how your remark "To pretend that there are not anti-Jew Arabs is silly" is helpful in this debate. To the best of my knowledge nobody here has denied that there are some Arabs who dislike Jews, just as there are some Jews who dislike Arabs. Nobody is even challenging the claim that Mien Kampf was on sale at this festival (just as I suspect racist anti Arab tracts are sold at other venues). Prunesqualor billets_doux 13:57, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
I would be hapy to clarify. You know that "like" can be read different ways. You are not an idiot. You are choosing to disregard one reading of that. It doesn't meant hat you a liar but it certainly means that you are ignoring possibilities. I won't say why you are ignoring them since I don;t kn ow (you might full-on believe you are right or you might be cherrypicking- it doesn;t matter anyways so I am choosing to ignore the reasoning since it doesn't matter). And I expanded on "To pretend that there are not anti-Jew Arabs is silly" down below before seeing this comment. It looks like we are going out of our way to paint a prettier picture than reality. Some Arabs hate their neighbors. Some soccer players on your favorite team might suck. We are allowed to not defend those guys we may not like even if we like the whole of their fight. Some Palestinians hate Jews. Can you admit that without discounting the resistance overall?Cptnono (talk) 02:59, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Interesting that what was quoted by AFP in 2007 is untrue in 2011. Mein Kampf does not appear in the current list of published titles by Dar al-Kitab. Maybe they decided the 18-25 market is no longer of interest to them? --Ravpapa (talk) 14:49, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

This looks like the website of the American distributor. I imagine they don't want to highlight that their parent company publishes Mein Kampf...? Plot Spoiler (talk) 16:07, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Here via RSN, and I agree with George and Prunesqualor - sure, it's possible that the guy being quoted is referring to Mein Kampf, but to just decide that he is, when that's not what the source says, because, I don't know, we're brilliant and we can read minds, is a violation of WP:NOR. Plot Spoiler's addition to the article said "Regarding the Arabic version of the book." That's not in the source. We can't put it in and pretend it's from the source. This seems fairly self-evident. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 20:05, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
I think it is disgraceful that the line was removed but I won;t edit against consensus.Cptnono (talk) 18:41, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Why is it disgraceful? All that was removed was the opinion of one book fair organizer primarily because its unclear what "it" is referencing in his statement. That Mein Kampf was sold at the 2007 book fair in Cairo is still mentioned. Although why this is worthy of mention, I wonder. Lots of people sell and read Mein Kampf (including OXFAM [11]). It doesn't mean they subscribe to the views expressed therein. I've read a lot of books I don't agree with. I'm sure you have too. Tiamuttalk 19:04, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
I have no problem including the actual quote. The only problem I have is the part of the sentence that precedes the quote, but isn't supported by the source: "Regarding the Arabic version of the book". If we remove that statement before the quote itself, and modify the sentence before it to mention both Mein Kampf and "the fair's darker side" (using more encyclopedic terminology than the source preferably), then the term "It" becomes as ambiguous in the article as it is in the source itself. I think inheriting the source's flawed language worsens the article, but I'm not opposed to that approach as a compromise. ← George talk 10:40, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
I can't really see the point of including a quote in the article, when we and the readers will not know what the quote means. Sorry to be flippant but, the only place where that quote belongs, on Wiki, is in the article Ambiguity (ie used as an example). Prunesqualor billets_doux 17:34, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
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