Admirers of the work of Hans-Hermann Hoppe will be pleased by some news from our friend Youssif Almoayyed, an outstanding supporter of the Mises Institute who lives in Bahrain. Youssif informs us that books by Hans have been translated into Arabic and are selling very well. His A Short History of Man was brought out by a small Iraqi publisher from Mutanabbi Street, a historic center in Baghdad for paper making, book binding and bookselling, now known as an intellectual center. The book sold very well in Iraq and has already covered its costs, even though the publisher hasn’t engaged very actively in distributing it. Youssif notes that complete freedom of the press now prevails in Iraq, with no government censorship, although publishers of controversial books risk physical attacks from offended private citizens or groups.
Hans’s more famous book Democracy: The God That Failed sold half its print run within two months and a pirated edition is already available. When the book was released in Bahrain at a book exhibition, the first day of which was marked by a solar eclipse, it was a hit, in part owing to the endorsement of a noted Bahraini intellectual and historian. Some who saw the word “God” in the title feared the book was blasphemous, but readers soon discovered that Hans meant by it only his intention to denounce democracy as idolatrous. The book has no quarrel with Allah, fortunately for its fate in the Arab world.
Arabic readers now have a chance to study the thought of this most provocative and insightful libertarian theorist. It only remains to add, though Youssif is too modest to say so, that he himself has done a great deal to bring the libertarian message of Hans Hoppe, as well as that of Mises and Rothbard, to Bahrain and the wider Arabic world. For that he deserves our profound gratitude.
9:40 pm on January 21, 2020
