|
Arabic is
the language of the Qur’an, the address of Allah Most High to all
humanity. Millions of Muslims read its text daily in a wide variety
of contexts. Arabic has the distinction of being a literary language
par excellence throughout the Arab and Muslim world, developed
directly from Qur’anic Arabic and used in an array of forms
ranging from poetry and theology to public policy and news media.
The modern standard form of literary Arabic is one of the official
languages of the United Nations. The Arabic alphabet has been
adopted by Muslim peoples throughout history, and has been used to
write local languages as diverse as Malay, Farsi and Turkish, with
Arabic words giving these and other languages their distinct Islamic
flavour. In addition to its religious and literary forms, Arabic is
a living spoken language, with myriad oral forms also closely
related to Qur’anic Arabic intermingled with local dialects and
idioms.
From its provincial origins in old Arabia, Arabic has become
a major world language, and the main reason for this transformation
is Islam.
From the
beginning of the Qur’an’s revelation, the Jews and mushrikeen of
old Arabia, although often awestruck by its rhetorical and spiritual
intensity, attempted to destroy the integrity of Islamic Arabic.
This hatred of Arabic, because it is the language of the Qur’an,
continued through the ages, with the enemies of Islam in all times
and places attempting to corrupt Arabic and separate Muslims from
the language of the Qur’an, and thereby from the Qur’an.
Colonial powers, encouraged by Christian missionaries, succeeded in
persuading or forcing Muslims in Africa and Asia to abandon the
Arabic alphabet and adopt Latin scripts instead. One of the first
official acts of the Kemalist secularisers in Turkey was the
fabrication of a Roman alphabet for Turkish, while outlawing Arabic,
even to the point of commissioning the call to prayer in Turkish.
Although the Kemalists did not succeed in completely purging Turkish
of all Arabic words (little would have been left if they had), the
alphabet change effectively severed Turkish Muslims from generations
of Islamic research, scholarship, literature and culture.
Throughout
the twentieth century, Western-oriented schools and universities in
the Arab and Muslim world insisted on using English and other
colonial languages as their languages of instruction, and slowly the
definition of an "educated" person became one who was
educated in a colonial language. At the same time, catering to
nationalist and modernist sentiments in the Arab world,
Western-style universities also insisted on "updating"
Arabic, with local Christians colonizing the language with Western
words and secularising definitions and concepts present in the
language from before.
In recent years American-style universities
have proliferated in the Arab world, especially in the oil-rich Gulf
sheikdoms. Run by Western expatriates who recruit faculty-members
from the ranks of missionaries, often with the blessings of the
local elite, these universities are slowly whittling away at
literary Arabic, replacing it with literary English. Many
expatriates are repulsed by any form of Arabic, but the shrewder
ones encourage the local colloquial forms, which are not written and
often not intelligible to other Arabic-speakers, but which give Arab
students a false sense of security that they are not forgetting
their native tongue. In reality, language is inseparable from modes
of thought and feeling and giving up one’s language for another
means changing one’s thinking. Similarly, improving thought and
understanding is best and most easily achieved by improving the
quality of the language one uses (this goes for any language), which
to be most effective should be intelligible for as large an audience
as possible. However, the end result of being "educated"
in Western universities is that Arab graduates can carry on academic
conversations in standard English, but appear provincial when
speaking Arabic dialects.
The assault
on Arabic through education goes back for more than a century, yet
until recently it had generally been limited to local educated
elites. However, a new assault on Arabic comes in the form of
satellite television, which reaches far more Arabic speakers than
missionaries and universities ever hoped for or dreamed of.
Currently, most Arab states have at least one satellite public or
private channel, offering a variety of programmes ranging from
religion and news to ‘entertainment’ and sports. Although some
of these channels utilize the standard forms of literary Arabic as a
tongue that is intelligible to all Arabs, the phenomenon of
promoting colloquial forms has become more common.
When Cairo was
the "Hollywood" of the Arab world, colloquial Egyptian
became widespread and is now understood by most Arabs, because of
the success of Egyptian film and music during the Nasserist period.
More recently, colloquial Lebanese is gaining ground as a media
language. Popular Lebanese satellite channels such as LBC and Future
TV feature talk-show hosts and announcers speaking very local and
even slang forms of colloquial Lebanese, interspersed with faddish
English words like "cool" and "okay." Owned and
operated by the regional elite (Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri
and members of the Saudi royal family, for instance), the Lebanese
stations are currently at the forefront of the constant effort to
change and degrade Arabic, and Lebanese broadcasters are slowly
gaining footholds in other national channels as well.
The assault
on language is just one part of a larger agenda. Recently, a
satellite TV owner boldly proclaimed, "I will invade the Gulf
with sex; give me ten years." Seductive images of scantily-clad
Lebanese singers and talk-show hosts already foreshadow this vision,
but surely the worst is yet to come. Coupled with the seductive
imagery, one finds the proliferation of colloquial and even tawdrier
forms of Arabic. A case in point is the new satellite TV show, Zen
TV, which is produced in Dubai but broadcast daily on Hariri’s
Future TV. Seedy-looking Lebanese boys and girls frolic and cavort,
while bantering in their local slang about American movies, pop
music, fast computers and the latest fashion fads. A recent poll at
a Gulf university found that within its first year Zen TV gained a
sizeable following among the region’s youth. Recently the station
has recruited local girls for its programmes, expanding the line-up
beyond Lebanese Arabs, but regardless of their backgrounds the hosts
of such talk-shows have the common habit of corrupting media Arabic
with irreverent slang and fashionable Americanisms.
Allah has
promised to protect the Qur’an, but it may be up to Muslims to
protect the Arabic language, especially in its literary form.
Qur’anic and literary Arabic are under assault by the enemies of
Islam, who cannot bear the fact that the language of revelation from
Allah Most High is still alive and relatively well among Muslims and
Arabs, more than fourteen centuries after the Qur’an came down.
Their hatred of Islam and of the Qur’an is the main reason for
their assault on Arabic, and they have powerful local proxies to
help in the task of corrupting or reformulating Arabic. Their
current focus is on native speakers of Arabic, and by way of
‘education’ and satellite television, the enemies of Allah are
slowly making progress in their satanic quest. It is not too late to
thwart them, but major efforts are necessary. Certainly Muslims and
Arabs who still revere the Qur’an, must take notice of these plots,
and develop alternative forms of education and communication, in
order to counter this diabolical onslaught. |
