Are German WWII broadcasts in Arabic still having an effect? (updated)

"Between 1939 and 1945, shortwave radio transmitters near Berlin broadcast Nazi propaganda in many languages around the world, including Arabic throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and Persian programs in Iran. English-language transcripts of the Arabic broadcasts shed light on a particularly dark chapter in the globalization of pernicious ideas. The transcripts' significance, however, is not purely historical. Since September 11, 2001, scholars have debated the lineages, similarities, and differences between Nazi anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of Islamic extremists and present anti-Semitism of Islamic extremists. These radio broadcasts suggest that Nazi Arabic-language propaganda helped introduce radical anti-Semitism into the Middle East, where it found common ground with anti-Jewish currents in Islam." Jeffery Herf, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 22 November 2009.
     University of Maryland Professor Jeffrey Herf's latest book is Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World, Yale University Press, 2009.
     Attention graduate students of mass communication and history. Here is a good topic for a seminar paper. Professor Herf draws a line between Nazi broadcasts to the Arab world and present "anti-Semitism of Islamic extremists." How Many Arabs in the pre-war-to-WWII era has shortwave radios? If only elites had access to shortwave radios, then some sort of two-step flow was involved. Imams addressing their congregations would be a plausible second step in that flow. But is that what happened?
     Update: Agostino Pendola writes: "In reference to your comment on how many Arabs had SW radio in the early '40s, I quote a passage from 1941 New Statement, as reported in George Orwell's War Broadcast Introduction by W.J. West- (Penguin, London, 1985). 'The listening public in India must not be judged with the number of Indians with radio sets since considerable groups of Indians listen-in to every private set and coffee shop set'. Probably the same thing could be said for Arabs. Even in Italy at the times people used to listen to radio in groups." After I wrote my comment above, I realized that I should have mentioned group listening. But I also realized that on of my good readers would make that point for me. Posted: 27 Nov 2009 Permalink Print