Arabic and other editions of Mein Kampf are popular across the Muslim world

Hitler book is a top-selling Eid present among ‘educated’ Dhaka Muslims. Meanwhile, the BBC manages the astonishing editorial feat of managing to produce the entire article without mentioning the word ‘Jew’ or Anti-Semitic’:

Booksellers touting their wares amid the heavy traffic in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, have discovered an unusual best-seller.

Adolf Hitler’s autobiography manifesto Mein Kampf is selling as well as Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Lost Symbol.

The street vendors in Dhaka are found at every major road junction and intersection.

Most of the sellers are young boys and many compete with beggars to attract the attention of motorists.

Last week, Mein Kampf did unusually well because many bought the book to give it away as an Eid present.

‘All the rage’

Mabul, 15, is among many boys who risk the chaos of Dhaka’s roads to earn a living selling pirated copies of popular paperbacks.

Among his offerings are The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama, the 9/11 Commission Report – Omissions and Distortions by David Ray Griffin, The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy and copies of Mein Kampf (volumes one and two).

“For some reason Hitler’s book is all the rage among educated people – on a typical day I can sell as many as five or six,” Mabul told the BBC.

Hitler is not as popular as Dan Brown or Amartya Sen among Dhaka’s motorists and their passengers, but there is a constant demand for his book.

“I think it’s because many people have seen Hitler in films and want to know more about him.”

Mabul the Dhaka street bookseller with a copy of his 'wares'

Mabul earns up to 1,000 taka ($8) a day in his job, usually working eight hours a day for six days a week.

He says that the best time to sell books is when traffic is at its heaviest, in the morning and evening rush hours.

When it is gridlocked, some people appear to buy his books because they are bored and there is nothing else to do.

Career path

Nearly all the books Mabul sells are photocopies of books he has bought from dealers – and in some cases the photocopying is not of the highest quality.

The maps in his Lonely Planet guide to Bangladesh, for example, are difficult to read and of poor quality.

Yet despite the dubious legality of his career path, Mabul and his friend Aminul – who has the use of only one arm – typify the entrepreneurial spirit for which many Bangladeshis are renowned.

“If I didn’t do this job I would have no income – it’s as simple as that,” said Aminul, as he proffers a copy of Monica Ali’s latest novel.

“It’s not easy being disabled and selling books in a Dhaka traffic jam. Several times we come close to getting run over.”

There is little surprise in the news that a book by Adolf Hitler is a bestseller in Bangladesh, or any other Muslim country for that matter. Hitler is widely revered by Islamists for what he did to the Jewish people.

Arabic and other editions of the book continue to be published and sell well across the Muslim world (it can be found even in Arab districts here in London, if one looks hard enough and in the right places.

The remarkable thing about this article is the way in which the BBC presents the reader with a human interest story; weaving a subtle web of pathos and ironic humour to justify (and almost sympathise with) the open selling of this manual of Nazi genocide – the blueprint of the Führer und Reichskanzler‘s Final Solution.

They present the dilemma of the disabled young innocent, who either sells books or starves; and suggested –  without supporting evidence –  that his clients, the rush hour drivers of Dhaka, were probably driven by little more than rush-hour ennui.

For the uninitiated, a couple of illustrative quotations:

“The Jews were responsible for bringing negroes into the Rhineland with the ultimate idea of bastardising the white race which they hate and thus lowering its cultural and political level so that the Jew might dominate.”

“The Jewish youth lies in wait for hours on end…spying on the unsuspicious German girl he plans to seduce…..he wants to contaminate her blood and remove her from the bosom of her own people. The Jew hates the white race and wants to lower its cultural level so that the Jews might dominate.”

– Adolf Hitler, ‘Mein Kampf’

The only potential crime alluded to in the article is the possibility that Mabul, the disabled young bookseller, may have been violating intellectual property laws by having copies of the books made up and photocopied.

The words Jew, Anti-Semitism and Holocaust are not even mentioned. All the more ironic, then, to learn that the direct Arabic translation of the work’s title is ‘My Jihad’.

Characteristically perhaps, the heavily pro-Islam BBC chose to omit this particularly salient point, too.

Incredible.

[Source: BBC Online]

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