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[[:File:The front cover of the 1995 edition of Mein Kampf issued by Beisan Publishers and sold in London.jpg|The front cover of the 1995 edition of Mein Kampf issued by Beisan Publishers and sold in London|thumb]]
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.
Translations in the 1930s
[edit]Translation efforts
[edit]The first attempts to translate Mein Kampf into Arabic started in early 1930s. The German-Nazi diplomat Fritz Grobba played a key role in preparing the first publications of the book's extracts that appeared in Arab newspapers in 1934.[1] Grobba, who in 1934 served as Ambassador to the Kingdom of Iraq, initiated a project to translate the complete book into Arabic. Grobba was familiar with Arabic culture, and suggested changing "Anti-Semitic" to "anti-Jewish"[1] A larger translation problem was presented in the chapter "Nation and Race." In this chapter of Mein Kampf, Hitler described the Aryan race as superior to all other races. Grobba suggested changing the first sentence in the chapter to "German racial legislation does not want to pass judgment on the quality and worth of other peoples and other races."[2]
It took two years for Hitler to accept the changes to his book in its Arabic version, but Bernhard Moritz, an Arabist consultant for German Government rejected the proposed translation, and this particular attempt ended at that time.[1][2]
Subsequently, the Ministry of Propaganda of Germany decided to proceed with the translation via the German bookshop Overhamm in Cairo.[2] The translator, Ahmad Mahmud al-Sadati, a Muslim and the publisher of one of the first Arabic books on National Socialism: "Adolf Hitler, za 'Tm al-ishtirdkfya al-watanlya ma' al-baydn lil-mas'ala al-yahudTya. (A.H., leader of National Socialism, together with an explanation of the Jewish question)."[2] The manuscript was presented for Dr. Moritz's review in 1937. Once again, he rejected the translation. Al-Sadati published his translation of Mein Kampf in Cairo 1937 without German approval.[2]
Reception of the 1937 translation
[edit]According to Yekutiel Gershoni and James Jankowski, The Sadati translation did not receive wide circulation.[3] However, a local Arab weekly published Hitler's quote from the book that the Arabs are a "decadent people composed of cripples."[1] The quote 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 nor art, as well as other insults and humiliations that he proclaims concerning us.
— Hamid Maliji
Another commentator, Niqula Yusuf, denounced the militant nationalism of Mein Kampf as "chauvinist."[3] 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":
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.
— Al-isala
al-isala rejected Nazism in many publications.[5]
Attempts at revision
[edit]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 "Egyptian people 'were differentially developed and that the Egyptians standing at a higher level themselves do not want to be placed on the same level with their numerous backward fellow Egyptians.'"[1] Otto von Hentig, a staff member of the German foreign ministry suggested that the translation should be redone in a more literary Arabic style. "A truly good Arabic translation would meet with extensive sympathy in the whole Arabic speaking world from Morocco to India," he wrote[1]. It should be written in a style "that every Muslim understands: the Koran."[1] Eventually the translation was sent to Shakib Arslan. Arslan, who lived in Geneva, Switzerland, was an editor of La Nation arabe. He also was a confidant of Haj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian Arab nationalist and Muslim leader in the British Mandate of Palestine, who met with Hitler.[1]
The 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."[2] On 21 December 1938 the project was rejected by German Ministry of propaganda because of the high cost of the publications.[1][2]
1963 translation
[edit]A new translation was published in 1963, translated by Luis al-Haj, a Nazi war criminal originally named Luis Heiden who fled to Egypt after World War II. The book was republished in 1995 by Beisan Publishers in Beirut[6].
Reception of the new translation
[edit]The distribution of Mein Kampf has been pointed to by Israelis and their supporters to link Nazism to the Israel-Arab conflict. In a speech to the United Nations immediately following the Suez Crisis in 1956, Golda Meir claimed that the Arabic translation of Mein Kampf was found in Egyptian soldiers' knapsacks.[7] David Dalin, Conservative Rabbi and Jewish historian, claimed that Egyptian soldiers carried it also during the 1967 Six-Day War.[8]
Hayat El Jedida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian National Authority, reported that the book was among the top six titles in the Palestinian territories during the month of August 1999.[9] This edition has become a perennial best seller in many Islamic countries. It is also on sale in Turkey. In 2002 in London, the translation was being sold in Edgware Road, a neighborhood in central London with a significant Arab population.[10]
Mein Kampf and Arab nationalism
[edit]According to Stefan Wild of the University of Bonn, Hitler's philosophy of national socialism - of a state headed by a single, strong, charismatic leader and a submissive and adoring people - was a model for the founders of the Arab nationalist movement. Arabs favored Germany over other European powers, because "Germany was seen as having no direct colonial or territorial ambitions in the area. This was an important point of sympathy," he wrote.[2] They also saw German nationhood - which preceded German statehood - as a model for their own movement.
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] National socialism was part of the philosophical basis for the establishment of the Ba'ath Party dictatorships in Syria and Iraq, for the Young Egypt movement, and for other pan-Arab national parties.[2] In his introduction to the 1963 translation, translator al-Haj addresses this feeling by presenting Hitler as a jihadist - an Arab freedom fighter. "What springs to mind is Hitler's jihad as a soldier and his summons to action to achieve the aims of his party and his community."[12]
References
[edit]- ^ a b c d e f g h i Jeffrey Herf (30 November 2009). Nazi propaganda for the Arab world. Yale University Press. pp. 24–26. ISBN 9780300145793.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Stefan Wild [in German] (1985). National Socialism in the Arab near East between 1933 and 1939 (PDF). Brill Publishers.
- ^ a b Yekutiel Gershoni and James Jankowski (21 October 2009). Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the 1930. Stanford University Press. p. 180. ISBN 0804763445.
- ^ Emily Benichou Gottreich, Daniel J. Schroeter (1 July 2011). Jewish Culture and Society in North Africa. Indiana University Press. p. 309. ISBN 0253222257.
- ^ Yekutiel Gershoni and James Jankowski (21 October 2009). Confronting Fascism in Egypt: Dictatorship versus Democracy in the 1930. Stanford University Press. p. 157. ISBN 0804763445.
- ^ "לונדון: הסתערות על "מיין קאמפף" בערבית" ("Run on Mein Kampf in Arabic in London"), Itim news agency, published by Ynet, 19 March 2002
- ^ Russell J. Leng (16 June 2000). Bargaining and Learning in Recurring Crises The Soviet-American, Egyptian-Israeli, and Indo-Pakistani Rivalries. University of Michigan Press. p. 146. ISBN 0472067036.
- ^ David G. Dalin, John Rothmann, Alan Dershowitz (31 August 2009). Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam. Transaction Publishers. p. 113. ISBN 9781412810777.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "איך מוצג היטלר בחידון פלסטיני? בלי השואה" ("How is Hitler presented in a Palestinian quiz?"), Ynet, 5 December 2010.
- ^ Sean O'Neill and John Steele (19 March 2002). "Mein Kampf for sale, in Arabic". The Daily Telegraph. UK.
- ^ Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cüppers (1 July 2010). Nazi Palestine: The Plans for the Extermination of the Jews in Palestine. Enigma Books. pp. 31–37. ISBN 1929631936.
- ^ David Patterson (18 October 2010). A Genealogy of Evil: Anti-Semitism from Nazism to Islamic Jihad. Cambridge University Press. p. 104. ISBN 0521132614.