_full_journalsubtitle: International Journal for the Study of Modern _full_abbrevjournaltitle: WDI _full_ppubnumber: ISSN 0043-2539 (print version) _full_epubnumber: ISSN 1570-0607 (online version) _full_issue: 2 _full_issuetitle: 0 _full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien J2 voor dit article en vul alleen 0 in hierna): Book Reviews _full_alt_articletitle_running_head (rechter kopregel - mag alles zijn): Book Reviews _full_is_advance_article: 0 _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0

244 Die Welt des 59 (2019) 244-246 Book Reviews

Frank Schellenberg, Zwischen globalem Erinnerungsdiskurs und regionaler Perspektive. Der deutsche Nationalsozialismus in den Debatten arabischer Intellektueller seit dem Ende des Kalten Krieges. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2018, 392 pp. ISBN 978-3-95650-400-6 (Print). [„Between a Global Discourse of Memory and a Regional Perspective. German National in the Debates of Arab Intellectuals since the End of the Cold War.“]

This book consists of two parts. The first part (“National Socialism in Memory and Historical Writings”) sketches the murder of six million European Jews perpetrated by Hitler’s Germany in condensed form and the current state of research as far as the Arab reaction to National Socialism is concerned. The potential of multiple, overlapping conflicts between the State of (since 1948) and the without a state is increasingly becoming more dan- gerous and confusing. This is made manifest in the “discourses of memory” by the author. The author correctly highlights the “great discord among research- ers and the magnitude of their reciprocal condemnations” (p. 51); these facts are not always acknowledged, yet inevitably both structure his entire book. The second part of the book (“National Socialism in Selected Works of Arab Intellectuals”) is dedicated to the equally meticulous, as well as wide-ranging, representations of three contemporary Arab intellectuals whose works on Na- tional Socialism and Arabs, or Palestinians in particular, were published be- tween 1998 and 2011. These divergent and often highly specific perspectives around Antizionism and , Arab identity and the Palestinian nar- rative of suffering had not previously been translated, but they are now avail- able in the German language for the first time. Schellenberg has worked with great, sometimes verging on pedantic, care. An English translation of this work would be a good addition. The three authors selected by Schellenberg are: 1. Saleh Zahreddin (b. 1951, Lebanon): Al-ḫalfīya al-tārīḫīya li-muḥākamat Rūǧīh Ġārawdī (Beirut 1998) – (“The Historical Background of the Trial against Roger Garaudy”; Schellenberg, pp. 221-37). Saleh Zahreddin has published more than 50 publications (including on the Armenian genocide, among many other subjects). In his book al-ḫalfiyya he praises the French intellectual Roger Garaudy (1913-2012) in the highest notes. Garaudy, successively a Protestant, Catholic, Communist, Marxist, Socialist, and Antizionist, converted to Islam in 1982. His book Les mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne (1995) was highly controversial in , while its denial of was received enthusiastically in most parts of the Arab world. The book received not only the Libyan Ghadhdhafi-Prize but the highly lucrative Faysal-Prize bestowed by the Saudi King as well. Gilbert

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/15700607-00592P12Die Welt des Islams 59 (2019) 244-246 _full_journalsubtitle: International Journal for the Study of Modern Islam _full_abbrevjournaltitle: WDI _full_ppubnumber: ISSN 0043-2539 (print version) _full_epubnumber: ISSN 1570-0607 (online version) _full_issue: 2 _full_issuetitle: 0 _full_alt_author_running_head (neem stramien J2 voor dit article en vul alleen 0 in hierna): Book Reviews _full_alt_articletitle_running_head (rechter kopregel - mag alles zijn): Book Reviews _full_is_advance_article: 0 _full_article_language: en indien anders: engelse articletitle: 0

Book Reviews 245

Achcar, author of the book The Arabs and the Holocaust. The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (London 2010), responded cautiously to Zahreddin’s widely circu- lated book in honor of Garaudy by labeling it a mere “calamity” (p. 260). Meir Litvak / Esther Webman, From Empathy to Denial. Arab Responses to the Holo- caust (New York 2009), (p. 340 fn. 60; Schellenberg p. 225), however, are right in calling Zahreddin’s book “one of the still numerous Arab attempts to expose the mass execution of the European Jews as a myth.” 2. Abdel Wahhab al-Masiri (b. 1938, Egypt): al-Ṣahyūnīya wa-l-nāzīya wa- nihāyat al-tārīḫ (Cairo 1997) – (“, and the End of History”; Schellenberg, pp. 239-66). Abdel Wahhab al-Masiri (“Elmessiri”) was a member of the Egyptian Com- munist Party until the late 1950s and then fled to the USA, where he lived for many years. He is a productive and erudite author, familiar with Heidegger and Derrida. Because of this, he belongs to the small circle of the “most engaged Arab intellectuals who dismiss the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a forgery” (Schellenberg, p. 257). Ultimately, however, al-Masiri places the blame for the responsibility of the murder of the European Jews by the Nazis squarely at the feet of the Zionists. It is thus no wonder that he, too, lauds Garaudy with the utmost praise. 3. Hazem Saghiya (b. 1951, Lebanon): Qaḍāyā qātila (Beirut 2012) and Qawmiyū al-mašriq al-ʿarabī. Min Drayfus ilā Ġārawdī (Beirut 2000) – (“Deadly Affairs” and “The Nationalists of the Arab East – From Dreyfus to Garaudy”; Schellenberg, pp. 267-83). Hazem Saghiya calls himself „a prominent liberal journalist“ and an „anti- totalitarian.“ His books and articles reveal the writing of a “democratic Socialist with a liberal spirit” (Schellenberg, p. 270). This makes him one of the few Arab authors working on the Holocaust who are able to ignore Arab prejudices around the subject. His works, Schellenberg concludes, “can be judged in large part as a differentiated and fundamentally constructive contribution to the theme of memory” (Schellenberg, p. 331). Indeed, Schellenberg worked with great precision. I think, however, that the historical and contemporary perspectives of Arabs and Israelis on the subject of National Socialism and the Holocaust, the nakba and the visions of a Pales- tinian state, are by and large no longer productive. The two acceptable Israeli and Arab positions have been defined by the works of Meir Litvak / Esther Webman and Gilbert Achcar mentioned above. Despite this, it still cannot be denied that the books written, in Arabic by Arabs, on the subject of the Holocaust are highly polemic to this day and fre- quently reach levels of absurdity, as evident in Saleh Zahreddin’s book refer- enced above. By contrast, books or articles written by Arabs in English (e.g.,

Die Welt des Islams 59 (2019) 244-246