A Salafi Student, Orientalist Scholarship, and Radio Berlin in Nazi Germany: Taqi al-Din al-Hilali and His Experiences in the West

Abstract

In recent years, two methods of research have been developed for the study of Arab-Nazi encounters.1 A group of historians try to “contextualize authoritarian and totalitarian trends in the Arab world within a broad political spectrum, choosing subaltern perspectives and privileging the analysis of local voices in the press over colonial archives and the voices of grand theoreticians.”2 Such relations should be seen within the scope of the interaction between memory, politics, and the history of Arab-Nazi encounters and experiences.3 On the other side, some people argue for an inherent and structural affinity between Arab nationalism and Pan-Islamism on the one hand, and Nazi racist ideologies and anti-Semitism against the Jews on the other.