| Submit your comments on this article |
| International-UN-NGOs |
| Arabic is now a major language post-9/11 |
| 2006-03-21 |
| There can be few subjects that unite Norwegian army officers, Uzbek religious students, Korean contractors and would-be CIA agents. A perhaps unintended consequence of the September 11 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington is that the Arabic language has become one. For different reasons the events triggered by September 11 have sparked an upsurge in the numbers of students learning Arabic across the world. This in turn has translated into booming business for Cairo, traditionally the centre of learning in the Middle East for both religious students and foreign diplomatic services. Language schools and university departments in Cairo that were considering closure five years ago are now struggling to keep up with an exponential rise in demand. "I couldn't have imagined when we opened that we would have all these students. I feared we would close in six months. But, praise Allah, George W. Bush has been doing our business well," said Raafat Amin, director of Kalimat, a school formed by a group of teachers after the British Council closed its own Arabic course. Several teachers and students said the biggest driver of demand had been the reality US and other western countries only recently woke up to: that the world was not as unipolar as they had believed it might be in the aftermath of the cold war. In the new world order, Arabic has joined Mandarin to become what Russian was to the cold war. The CIA at one point had to advertise its own embarrassing deficit by appealing for Arabic- language speakers on its website. Army officers from countries that sent troops to Iraq alongside the US in 2003 are still mostly ill-equipped to speak to Iraqi hearts and minds in a language that can take five years of study to master. They form some of the droves of students enrolling in immersion courses in Cairo language schools. Administrators at Cairo's burgeoning language schools sniff an opportunity to consolidate the trend in the recent US shift to "transformational diplomacy" announced by Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, and heralding a new proactive, hands-on kind of diplomat. But it is not only diplomats and would-be CIA agents, driven by a steep increase in US government funding for language students and the near certainty of employment afterwards, who are turning up in numbers. A group of Norwegian officers at Kalimat, who had studied for two years at home before spending an intensive two months in Cairo, said they could find themselves using their Arabic in a UN peace- keeping operation in Sudan. Barbara Hassib, managing director of Cairo's International Language Institute, where enrolment numbers have been rising 25 per cent each year, says demand from western countries has been accompanied by a steady increase in students from Korea and Japan. Other colleges said the Chinese are also turning up in small but growing numbers as Chinese business, energy and diplomatic interests in the Middle East expand. Alongside the established institutions are now a good number of charlatan outfits, as well as private tutors who have specialised in training expatriate spouses to haggle for vegetables and direct Cairo taxis. Just as spectacular is the rise in demand derived from the Islamic revival that has accompanied America's more aggressive foreign policy in the Muslim world. This has drawn back growing numbers of students from non-Arab parts of the Muslim world, from Indonesia, Africa and such central Asian republics as Uzbekistan. Waleed al-Gohary, the founder of Fajr, one of only two schools with govern- ment authorisation, says the number of students passing through his three schools in Cairo has risen from below 500 in 2000 to nearly 3,000 last year. Unlike the other schools, which tend to mix colloquial and standard Arabic, Fajr, meaning dawn, teaches only the classical language of the Koran. As such it tends, although not exclusively, to cater for religious students preparing to attend Cairo's Al Azhar university, the centre of religious learning in the Sunni Muslim world. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #10 I think JFM is the one who's right there, his Algeria example being particulary valid, as re-arabization (though imported customs, cf. that somali writer bitterly complaining about the rapid arabization of Somalia in an old RB story, and mainly the classical arab teaching) and re-islamization go hand in hand. Btw, IIRC, back in 1982, the socialist gvt was basically bankrupted thanks to its well thought and realistical policies; the late president François Mitterrand then asked for and received a $4 billions loan (around 40 billions francs or something like that at the time, I think, quite a large sum) from Saudi Arabia. The quid pro quo was that classical arabic was to be teached to the muslim immigrés kids in french schools during special classes supposedly to help them better know their roots (remember, the Eurabia agreement supposedly impose to avoid integration and maintain the arabic/muslim identity of the migrants), plus radicals were to be put in charge of "french" islam (that's when Algeria, Morocco, and all sent their muslim brotherhood imams to form the french muslim clerics, and that the basis for the UOIF, french muslim brotherhood, were set). Well, the funny part is that many of the maghrebins/north africans (this term being more correct, "maghreb" meaning western Arabia and being the conqueror's name for the land) in France are actually berbers, who do not speak, at least as their native language, arabic... and yet, they were forcibly "arabized" by the french authorities... disgusting... and anyway, algerians, tunisians,... speak a local version of arabic which differed much from the classical arabic taught. JFM is quite right, teaching arabic is part of a cultural hegemony Grand Plan. This is NOT innocent! |
| Posted by: anonymous5089 2006-03-21 16:17 |
| #9 Sorry. Beurs. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-03-21 15:50 |
| #8 The Reformation resulted from the Catholic bible being translated into local tongues. When people can read a thing for themselves, they form their own ideas about it. When all these people can read the Quran for themselves, and understand the spittle-filled speeches without waiting for MEMRI translations, the Islamists will find themselves well and truly screwed. And when a Miss Gentle of Dubai(?)University comes to Rantburg to argue that Islam is a religion of peace, and encounters arguments in Classical Arabic better than her own from people who understand her holy book considerably better than she does, either her dear little head will explode or she'll have to rethink her dangerous prejudices. (I forgot -- in the history of Mrs. Davis, there was a third person involved: Murat of Turkey, with whom there was either a fight over the female, or a classical menage -- I was never quite certain. My apologies to all.) The Muslims think they own Arabic, just as for a long time the Church owned Latin. Now Latin belongs to the scholars, and Arabic will belong to our hard-headed troops. However, it is a concern in places like France, where it is intended to be part of the mandatory school curriculum as part of the Conquest. Of course, the Buers will find the learning as difficult as the French do -- since it isn't their native tongue, either. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2006-03-21 15:49 |
| #7 LiberalHawk Pleaaaaaase. The first thing Wahabists do when tey set their sights in a couuntry is to propose to teach Arabic. They did it in Chechnya, they did it in Afghanistan. Ilplicit in Islamism is te idea that you are not a real Muslim (and that means not a real human being) if you don't speak Arabic. Look at how Mullah Omar became Bin Laden's toy because the later coulsd speak classic Arabic. Also in history, North Africa was corced to speak Arabic. Like in speak Ara&bic or... Alos the Algerian government who has ever played the card of Islamism to keep in power has set its goals in eradicating the use of both French an dn Berberic. In fact it also wants to end with Algerian Arabic: it wants people speaking classic Arabic ie Arabic from VII century. Finally the resistance to islamization ever passes by resistance to teh AZrabic language. In Algeria the activists of Berberic tend to hate Islam and a number either have becvaome agnostic and in some cases converted to Christianism. In Turkey Mustafga Kemal abolished the use of Arabic letters , of Arab-inspired laws or garments and last but not least forced the use of Turkish for prayers. So the fact that Arabic is making inroads is a bad omen. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-03-21 15:27 |
| #6 Hahahaha! *applause* re: Arabic -- hey, gotta learn what they're saying when the cameramen aren't English. |
| Posted by: Edward Yee 2006-03-21 11:42 |
| #5 Spot on, LH. And I'll add that the Soviets crammed Russian language down the throats of Eastern European students for decades and advanced their cause not one inch. |
| Posted by: Dreadnought 2006-03-21 10:19 |
| #4 "The terrible thing is language is a conduit of culture. Arabic spreading everywhere can only mean islamic influence also spreading" Middle eastern Jews spoke arabic for centuries, without becoming muslims. The great work of medieval Jewish philosophy, the Guide to the Perplexed, was written in Judeo-Arabic (is to Arabic, as Yiddish is to German) Israeli Jews learn arabic in school. Hasnt turned them into muslims, or into soft on the arabs. I once was on a bus traveling through the desert in Israel. In the back was a bunch of Moroccan Jewish "youth". They began singing songs, one of which (I was told) was a chant "Begin, King of Israel" which they sang in Arabic. They were fluent in Hebrew, but I think they liked that song, which they sang to piss off arabs. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2006-03-21 09:46 |
| #3 The Arabic language is a conduit for anti-culture. It is completely infested with Allan worship-isms Inshallan, alhumdallan, bismallan If you say these words too many times, Allan plants a worm in your brain. Before too long you will be memorize Quor'n, an recite an then you will accept miracle of clear signs, this revelation from Allan. GROW YOUR BEARD, INFIDEL especially your naked wimmens, bump head on ground five times, always use three stones for toilet AND STOP using dirty toothbrush, when blessed profit, (pigs be upon him) use only special allan twig. Then you will finally experience true freedom, that amerykkken dont understand, because you will be free from desire for freedom, because we are all allan slaves, see? |
| Posted by: Admiral Allan Ackbar 2006-03-21 08:34 |
| #2 While Bin Laden was plotting and planning he was asleep at the wheel This is a lie: Bill Clinton was not asleep, Monica was keeping him awake. |
| Posted by: JFM 2006-03-21 07:11 |
| #1 The terrible thing is language is a conduit of culture. Arabic spreading everywhere can only mean islamic influence also spreading we can thank Bill Clinton's regime for this. While Bin Laden was plotting and planning he was asleep at the wheel. |
| Posted by: anon1 2006-03-21 05:01 |