Does Anyone Speak Arabic? by Franck Salameh

n August 2010, Associated Press staffer Zeina Karam wrote an article, picked up by The Washington Post and other news outlets, that tackled a cultural, and I arguably political, issue that had been making headlines for quite some time in the Middle East: the question of multilingualism and the decline of the Arabic language in polyglot, multiethnic Middle Eastern societies.1 Lebanon was Karam’s case study: an Eastern Mediterranean nation that had for the past century been the testing grounds for iconoclastic ideas and libertine tendencies muzzled and curbed elsewhere in the Arab world.2 However, by inquiring into what is ailing the Arabic language—the nimbus and supreme symbol of “Arabness”—the author aimed straight at the heart of Arab nationalism and the strict, linguistic orthodoxy that it mandated, putting in question its most basic tenet: Who is an Arab?

ian writer and the spiritual father of linguistic ARABIC AND ARABISM Arab nationalism:

For most of the twentieth century, Arabs, Every person who speaks Arabic is an Arab. Arab nationalists, and their Western devo- Every individual associated with an Arabic- tees tended to substitute Arab for Middle speaker or with an Arabic-speaking people is Eastern history, as if the narratives, storylines, an Arab. If he does not recognize [his and paradigms of other groups mattered little Arabness] … we must look for the reasons or were the byproduct of alien sources far re- that have made him take this stand … But moved from the authentic, well-ordered, har- under no circumstances should we say: “As long as he does not wish to be an Arab, and as monious universe of the “Arab world.”3 As long as he is disdainful of his Arabness, then such, they held most Middle Easterners to be he is not an Arab.” He is an Arab regardless of Arab even if only remotely associated with the Arabs and even if alien to the experiences, language, or cultural proclivities of Arabs. In the words of Sati al-Husri (1880-1967), a Syr- 1 Zeina Karam, “Lebanon Tries to Retain Arabic in Polyglot Culture,” The Washington Post, Aug. 16, 2010. For more on Arabic language decline, see Mahmoud al-Batal, “Identity and Language Tension in Lebanon: The Arabic of Local News at LBCI,” in Aleya Rouchdy, ed., Language Contact and Lan- guage Conflict in Arabic: Variations on a Sociolinguistic Theme Franck Salameh is assistant professor of Near (London: Curzon Arabic Linguistics Series, 2002); Al-Ittijah al-Mu’akis, Al-Jazeera TV (Doha), Aug. 1, 2000, Aug. 28, Eastern studies at Boston College and author of 2001; Zeina Hashem Beck, “Is the Arabic Language ‘Perfect’ or Language, Memory, and Identity in the Middle ‘Backwards’?” The Daily Star (Beirut), Jan. 7, 2005; Hashem Saleh, “Tajrubat al-Ittihad al-‘Urubby… hal Tanjah ‘Arabiyan?” East: The Case for Lebanon (Lexington Books, Asharq al-Awsat (London), June 21, 2005. 2010). He thanks research assistant Iulia 2 Fouad Ajami, “The Autumn of the Autocrats,” Foreign Padeanu for her valuable contributions to this Affairs, May-June, 2005. 3 Elie Kedourie, “Not So Grand Illusions,” The New York essay. Review of Books, Nov. 23, 1967.

Salameh: Arabic Language / 47 training in it. On the other hand, Arabic is also a multitude of speech forms, contemptuously re- ferred to as “dialects,” differing from each other and from the standard language itself to the same extent that French is different from other Ro- mance languages and from Latin. Still, Husri’s dictum, “You’re an Arab if I say so!” became an article of faith for Arab nationalists. It also con- densed the chilling finality with which its author and his acolytes foisted their blanket Arab label on the mosaic of peoples, ethnicities, and languages that had defined the Middle East for millennia prior to the advent of twentieth-century Arab nationalism.5 But if Husri had been intimidating in his A rigid and unforgiving under- advocacy for a forced Arabization, his disciple standing of the role of Arabic as a Michel Aflaq (1910-89), founder of the Baath means of developing Arab nation- Party, promoted outright violence and cruelty alism appeared frequently in the against those users of the Arabic language writings of Baath Party founder who refused to conform to his prescribed, Michel Aflaq. He promoted violence overarching, Arab identity. Arab nationalists against those users of the Arabic must be ruthless with those members of the na- language who refused to conform to tion who have gone astray from Arabism, wrote his prescribed, overarching, Arab Aflaq, identity: “hatred unto death, toward any individuals who embody an idea they must be imbued with a hatred unto death, contrary to Arab nationalism.” toward any individuals who embody an idea contrary to Arab nationalism. Arab nationalists must never dismiss opponents of Arabism as mere individuals … An idea that his own wishes, whether ignorant, indiffer- is opposed to ours does not emerge out of ent, recalcitrant, or disloyal; he is an Arab, nothing! It is the incarnation of individuals but an Arab without consciousness or feel- who must be exterminated, so that their idea ings, and perhaps even without conscience.4 might in turn be also exterminated. Indeed, the presence in our midst of a living oppo- This ominous admonition to embrace a nent of the Arab national idea vivifies it and domineering Arabism is one constructed on an stirs the blood within us. And any action we assumed linguistic unity of the Arab peoples; a might take [against those who have rejected unity that a priori presumes the Arabic language Arabism] that does not arouse in us living itself to be a unified, coherent verbal medium, emotions, that does not make us feel the orgas- used by all members of Husri’s proposed na- mic shudders of love, that does not spark in us tion. Yet Arabic is not a single, uniform language. quivers of hate, and that does not send the blood coursing in our veins and make our pulse It is, on the one hand, a codified, written stan- beat faster is, ultimately, a sterile action.6 dard that is never spoken natively and that is accessible only to those who have had rigorous

5 Franck Salameh, Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East: The Case for Lebanon (Lanham, Md.: Lexington 4 Abu Khaldun Sati Al-Husri, Abhath Mukhtara fi-l-Qawmiyya Books, 2010), pp. 9-10. al-‘Arabiya (Beirut: Markaz Dirasat al-Wihda al-‘Arabiya, 1985), 6 Michel Aflaq, Fi Sabil al-Ba’ath (Beirut: Dar at-Tali’a, p. 80. 1959), pp. 40-1.

48 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY FALL 2011 Therein lay the foundational tenets of Arab ethnic and linguistic heritage. nationalism and the Arabist narrative of Middle Cultural anthropologist Selim Abou argued Eastern history as preached by Husri, Aflaq, and that notwithstanding Lebanon’s millenarian his- their cohorts: hostility, rejection, negation, and tory and the various and often contradictory brazen calls for the annihilation of the non-Arab interpretations of that history, the country’s en- “other.” Yet despite the dominance of such dis- dogenous and congenital multilingualism—and turbing Arabist and Arab nationalist readings, by extension that of the the Middle East in both its modern and ancient entire Levantine littoral incarnations remains a patchwork of varied cul- —remains indisputable. Modern Standard tures, ethnicities, and languages that cannot be He wrote: tailored into a pure and neat Arab essence with- Arabic is codified out distorting and misinforming. Other models From the very early and written of Middle Eastern identities exist, and a spir- dawn of history up to but never the conquests of Alex- ited Middle Eastern, intellectual tradition that spoken natively. challenges the monistic orthodoxies of Arab na- ander the Great, and from the times of Alex- tionalism endures and deserves recognition and ander until the dawning validation. of the first Arab Empire, and finally, from the coming of the Arabs up until modern times, the territory we now call Lebanon—and this THE ARABIC is based on the current state of archaeologi- LANGUAGE DEBATE cal and historical discoveries—has always practiced some form of bilingualism and Take for instance one of the AP article’s polyglossia; one of the finest incarnations of 7 interviewees who lamented the waning of the intercultural dialogue and coexistence. Arabic language in Lebanese society and the rise So much, then, for linguistic chauvinism in the numbers of Francophone and Anglophone and language protectionism. The Arabic lan- Lebanese, suggesting “the absence of a com- guage will survive the onslaught of multilingual- mon language between individuals of the same ism but only if its users will it to survive by country mean[s] losing [one’s] common iden- speaking it rather than by hallowing it and by tity”—as if places like Switzerland and India, each refraining from creating conservation societies with respectively four and twenty-three official, that build hedges around it to shield it from des- national—often mutually incomprehensible— uetude. Even avid practitioners of multilingual- speech forms, were lesser countries or suffered ism in Lebanon, who were never necessarily tal- more acute identity crises than ostensibly cohe- ented or devoted Arabophones, have tradition- sive, monolingual societies. In fact, the opposite ally been supportive of the idea of preserving is often true: Monolingualism is no more a pre- Arabic in the roster of Lebanese languages— condition or motivation for cultural and ethnic albeit not guarding and fixing it by way of mum- cohesiveness than multilingualism constitutes mification, cultural dirigisme, or rigid linguistic grounds for national incoherence and loss of a planning. Though opposed in principle to Arab common identity. Irishmen, Scotsmen, Welsh, nationalism’s calls for the insulation of linguis- and Jamaicans are all native English-speakers tically libertine Lebanon “in the solitude of a but not Englishmen. The AP could have ac- troubled and spiteful nationalism … [and] lin- knowledged that glaring reality, which has been guistic totalitarianism,” Lebanese thinker Michel a hallmark of the polyglot multiethnic Middle Chiha (1891-1954) still maintained that: East for millennia. This, of course, is beside the fact that for many Lebanese—albeit mainly Christians—multilingualism and the appeal of Western languages is simply a way of heeding 7 Selim Abou, Le bilinguisme Arabe-Français au Liban (Paris: history and adhering to the country’s hybrid Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), pp. 157-8. Salameh: Arabic Language / 49 Arabic is a wonderful language … the lan- million native Arabophones—or even of a pal- guage of millions of men. We wouldn’t be try one million such Arabic speakers—without who we are today if we, the Lebanese of the oversimplifying and perverting an infinitely com- twentieth century, were to forgo the pros- plex linguistic situation. The languages or dia- pect of becoming [Arabic’s] most accom- lects often perfunctorily labeled Arabic might plished masters to the same extent that we indeed not be Arabic at all. had been its masters some one hundred This is hardly a modern aberration devised Languages or years ago … But how by modern reformists fancying dissociation from dialects often can one not heed the the exclusivity of modern Arabism and its mono- reality that a country lithic paradigm. Even Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), perfunctorily such as ours would be the fourteenth-century Muslim jurist and labeled Arabic literally decapitated if polymath and arguably the father of modern so- might not be prevented from being ciology, wrote in his famous 1377 Prolegomena bilingual (or even trilin- Arabic at all. that only the language of Quraish—the Prophet gual if possible)? … [We Muhammad’s tribe—should be deemed true Ara- must] retain this lesson bic; that native Arabs learn this speech form natu- if we are intent on pro- rally and spontaneously; and that this language tecting ourselves from self-inflicted deafness, which would in turn lead us into mutism.8 became corrupt and ceased being Arabic when it came into contact with non-Arabs and assimi- Another fallacy reiterated in the AP article lated their linguistic habits. Therefore, he argued, was the claim that “Arabic is believed to be spoken as a first language by more than 280 million the language of Quraish is the soundest and purest Arabic precisely due to its remoteness people.”9 Even if relying solely on the field of from the lands of non-Arabs—Persians, Arabic linguistics—which seldom bothers with Byzantines, and Abyssinians … whose lan- the trivialities of precise cognomens denoting guages are used as examples by Arab philolo- varieties of language, preferring instead the gists to demonstrate the dialects’ distance overarching and reductive lahja (dialect/accent) from, and perversion of, Arabic.10 and fusha (Modern Standard Arabic, MSA) dichotomy to, say, the French classifications of Thackston has identified five dialectal clus- langue, langage, parler, dialecte, langue ters that he classified as follows: “(1) Greater vérnaculaire, créole, argot, patois, etc.—Zeina Syria, including Lebanon and Palestine; (2) Karam’s arithmetic still remains in the sphere of Mesopotamia, including the Euphrates region folklore and fairy tale, not concrete, objective of Syria, Iraq, and the Persian Gulf; (3) the Ara- fact. Indeed, no serious linguist can claim the bian Peninsula, including most of what is Saudi existence of a real community of “280 million Arabia and much of Jordan; (4) the Nile Valley, people” who speak Arabic at any level of native including Egypt and the Sudan; and (5) North proficiency, let alone a community that can speak Africa and [parts of] the … regions of sub-Sa- Arabic “as a first language.” haran Africa.”11 He acknowledged that although Harvard linguist Wheeler Thackston—and these five major dialectal regions were speckled before him Taha Hussein, Ahmad Lutfi al- with linguistic varieties and differences in ac- Sayyed, Abdelaziz Fehmi Pasha, and many oth- cent and sub-dialects, “there is almost complete ers—have shown that the Middle East’s mutual comprehension [within each of them]— demotic languages are not Arabic at all, and consequently, that one can hardly speak of 280

10 Ibn Khaldun, al-Muqaddimah (Beirut: Dar al-Qalam, 1977), p. 461. 8 Michel Chiha, Visage et Présence du Liban (Beirut: Editions 11 Wheeler M. Thackston, Jr., The Vernacular Arabic of the du Trident, 1984), p. 49-52, 164. Lebanon (Cambridge, Mass.: Dept. of Near Eastern Languages 9 Karam, “Lebanon Tries to Retain Arabic.” and Civilizations, Harvard University, 2003), p. vii.

50 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY FALL 2011 that is, a Jerusalemite, a Beiruti, and an Aleppan may not speak in exactly the same manner, but each understands practi- cally everything the others say.” However, he wrote,

When one crosses one or more major boundaries, as is the case with a Baghdadi and a Damascene for instance, one begins to encounter difficulty in comprehension; and the For some Arabs, like these Beirutis enjoying a night out on the town, farther one goes, the multilingualism and the appeal of Western languages is a natural less one under- corollary to their country’s hybrid ethnic and linguistic heritage. The stands until mutual territory now known as Lebanon has historically practiced some form comprehension dis- of polyglossia and was once a shining representative of intercultural appears entirely. To coexistence in the Middle East. take an extreme example, a Moroccan and an Iraqi can no more understand each other’s dialects than Even Taha Hussein (1889-1973), the doyen can a Portuguese and Rumanian.12 of modern Arabic belles lettres, had come to this very same conclusion by 1938. In his The Fu- In 1929, Tawfiq Awan had already begun ture of Culture in Egypt,14 he made a sharp dis- making similar arguments, maintaining that the tinction between what he viewed to be Arabic demotics of the Middle East—albeit arguably tout court—that is, the classical and modern related to Arabic—were languages in their own standard form of the language—and the sun- right, not mere dialects of Arabic: dry, spoken vernaculars in use in his contempo- rary native Egypt and elsewhere in the Near East. Egypt has an Egyptian language; Lebanon has a Lebanese language; the Hijaz has a Hijazi For Egyptians, Arabic is virtually a foreign lan- language; and so forth—and all of these language, wrote Hussein: guages are by no means Arabic languages. Each of our countries has a language, which is its Nobody speaks it at home, [in] school, [on] own possession: So why do we not write the streets, or in clubs; it is not even used in [our language] as we converse in it? For, the [the] Al-Azhar [Islamic University] itself. language in which the people speak is the People everywhere speak a language that is language in which they also write.13 definitely not Arabic, despite the partial resemblance to it.15

12 Ibid. 13 Israel Gershoni and James Jankowski, Egypt, Islam, and the 14 Taha Hussein, The Future of Culture in Egypt (Washing- Arabs: The Search for Egyptian Nationalism, 1900-1930 (New ton, D.C.: American Council of Learned Societies, 1954). York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 220. 15 Ibid., pp. 86-7.

Salameh: Arabic Language / 51 To this, Thackston has recently added that when cliché that the decline of Arabic—like the failure Arabs speak of a bona fide Arabic language, of Arab nationalism—was the outcome of West- they always mean ern linguistic intrusions and the insidious, colonialist impulses of globalization. “Many Classical [or Modern Standard] Arabic: the Lebanese pride themselves on being fluent in language used for all written and official com- French—a legacy of French colonial rule,” Karam munication; a language that was codified, stan- wrote, rendering a mere quarter-century of dardized, and normalized well over a thou- French mandatory presence in Lebanon (1920- sand years ago and that has almost a millen- 46) into a period of classical-style “French colo- nium and a half of uninterrupted literary legacy behind it. There is only one problem with nial rule” that had allegedly destroyed the foun- [this] Arabic: No one speaks it. What Arabs dations of the Arabic language in the country speak is called Arabi Darij (“vernacular Ara- and turned the Lebanese subalterns into imita- bic”), lugha ammiyye (“the vulgar language”), tive Francophones denuded of their putative or lahje (“dialect”); only what they write do Arab personality.18 they refer to as “true [Arabic] language.”16 Alas, this fashionable fad fails to take into account that French colonialism in its Lebanese And so, even if context differed markedly from France’s colonial Modern Standard Ara- experience elsewhere. For one, the founding fa- Middle Easterners bic were taken to be the thers of modern Lebanon lobbied vigorously for are steering clear Arabic that the AP was turning their post-Ottoman mountain Sanjak into of Arabic in speaking of, it is still pa- a French protectorate after World War I.19 And tently false to say, as alarming numbers with regard to the Lebanese allegedly privileg- does Karam, that MSA is ing the French language, that too, according to but not due to anybody’s “first,” native Selim Abou, seems to have hardly been a Western influence. “spoken language”—let colonialist throwback and an outcome of early alone the “spoken … first twentieth-century French imperialism. In his 1962 language [of] more than Le binlinguisme Arabe-Français au Liban, 280 million people.” Even Edward Said, a notori- Abou wrote that the French language (or early ously supple and sympathetic critic when it comes Latin variants of what later became French) en- to things Arab, deemed Arabic, that is MSA, the tered Mount-Lebanon and the Eastern Mediter- “equivalent of Latin, a dead and forbidding lan- ranean littoral at the time of the first Crusades guage” that, to his knowledge, nobody spoke (ca. 1099).20 Centuries later, the establishment besides “a Palestinian political scientist and poli- of the Maronite College in Rome (1584) and the tician whom [Said’s] children used to describe as liberal (pro-Christian) policies of then Mount- ‘the man who spoke like a book.’”17 Lebanon’s Druze ruler, Fakhreddine II (1572- 1635), allowed the Maronites to further strengthen their religious and their religion’s an- FOREIGN IMPOSITION cillary cultural and linguistic ties to Rome, Eu- OR SELF AFFLICTION? rope, and especially France—then, still the “el- der daughter” of the Catholic Church. This un- Playing into the hands of keepers of leashed a wave of missionary work to Lebanon— the Arab nationalist canon—as well as Arabists and wherever Eastern Christianity dared flaunt and lobbyists working on behalf of the Arabic its specificity—and eventually led to the found- language today—the AP article adopted the

18 Karam, “Lebanon Tries to Retain Arabic.” 16 Thackston, The Vernacular Arabic of the Lebanon, p. vii. 19 See, for instance, Meir Zamir, The Formation of Modern 17 Edward Said, “Living in Arabic,” al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo), Lebanon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). Feb. 12 - 18, 2004. 20 Abou, Le bilinguisme Arabe-Français au Liban, pp. 177-9.

52 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY FALL 2011 ing of schools tending to the educational needs Yet, irreverent as they had been in shun- of the Christian—namely Maronite—communi- ning Arabic linguistic autocracy and foster- ties of the region. Although foundational courses ing a lively debate on MSA and multilingual- in Arabic and Syriac were generally taught at those ism, Lebanon and Egypt and their Arabic tra- missionary schools, European languages includ- vails are hardly uncom- ing French, Italian, and German were also part of mon in today’s Middle the regular curriculum. French, therefore, can be East. From Israel to Qatar A Druze poet and argued to have had an older pedigree in Lebanon and from Abu Dhabi to than suggested by Karam. And contrary to the Kuwait, modern Middle academic called classical norms in the expansion and transmis- Eastern nations that on Israel to do sion of imperial languages—the spread of Arabic make use of some form away with the included—which often entailed conquests, mas- of Arabic have had to public school sacres, and cultural suppression campaigns, the come face to face with French language can be said to have been adopted the challenges hurled at system’s willingly by the Lebanese through “seduction” their hermetic MSA and Arabic curricula. not “subjection.”21 are impelled to respond It is true that many Lebanese, and Middle to the onslaught of im- Easterners more generally, are today steering pending polyglotism and linguistic humanism clear of Arabic in alarming numbers, but con- borne by the lures of globalization. trary to AP’s claim, this routing of Arabic is not In a recent article published in Israel’s lib- mainly due to Western influence and cultural eral daily Ha’aretz, acclaimed Druze poet and encroachments—though the West could share academic Salman Masalha called on Israel’s Edu- some of the blame; rather, it can be attributed, cation Ministry to do away with the country’s even if only partially, to MSA’s retrogression, public school system’s Arabic curricula and de- difficulty, and most importantly perhaps, to the manded its replacement with Hebrew and En- fact that this form of Arabic is largely a learned, glish course modules. Arabophone Israelis cultic, ceremonial, and literary language, which taught Arabic at school, like Arabophones is never acquired natively, never spoken na- throughout the Middle East, were actually taught tively, and which seems locked in an uphill a foreign tongue misleadingly termed Arabic, struggle for relevance against sundry sponta- wrote Masalha: neous, dynamic, natively-spoken, vernacular languages. Taha Hussein ascribed the decay The mother tongue [that people] speak at and abnegation of the Arabic language prima- home is totally different from the … Arabic rily to its “inability of expressing the depths of [they learn] at school; [a situation] that per- one’s feelings in this new age.” He wrote in petuates linguistic superficiality [and] leads to intellectual superficiality … It’s not by 1956 that MSA is chance that not one Arab university is [ranked] among the world’s best 500 universities. This difficult and grim, and the pupil who goes to finding has nothing to do with Zionism.23 school in order to study Arabic acquires only revulsion for his teacher and for the language, Masalha’s is not a lone voice. The abstruse- and employs his time in pursuit of any other occupations that would divert and soothe his ness of Arabic and the stunted achievements of thoughts away from this arduous effort … those monolingual Arabophones constrained to Pupils hate nothing more than they hate acquire modern knowledge by way of Modern studying Arabic.22 Standard Arabic have been indicted in the United Nations’ Arab Human Development reports—a

21 Ibid., pp. 191-5. 22 Taha Hussein, “Yasiru an-Nahw wa-l-Kitaba,” al-Adab 23 Salman Masalha, “Arabs, Speak Hebrew!” Ha’aretz (Tel (Beirut), 1956, no. 11, pp. 2, 3, 6. Aviv), Sept. 27, 2010.

Salameh: Arabic Language / 53 series of reports written by Arabs and for the of translation. Yet, from all source-languages benefit of Arabs—since the year 2002. To wit, combined, the Arab world’s 330 million people the 2003 report noted that the Arabic language translated a meager 330 books per year; that is, is struggling to meet the challenges of modern “one fifth of the number [of books] translated in times Greece [home to 12 million Greeks].” Indeed, from the times of the Caliph al-Ma’mun (ca. 800 CE) to [and] is facing [a] severe … and real crisis in the beginnings of the twenty-first century, the theorization, grammar, vocabulary, usage, “Arab world” had translated a paltry 10,000 documentation, creativity, and criticism … books: the equivalent of what Spain translates The most apparent aspect of this crisis is the in a single year.25 growing neglect of the functional aspects of But clearer heads are prevailing in Arab [Arabic] language use. Arabic language skills in everyday life have deteriorated, and Arabic countries today. Indeed, some Arabs are taking … has in effect ceased to be a spoken lan- ownership of their linguistic dilemmas; feckless guage. It is only the language of reading and Arab nationalist vainglory is giving way to prac- writing; the formal language of intellectuals tical responsible pursuits, and the benefits of and academics, often used to display knowl- valorizing local speech forms and integrating for- edge in lectures … [It] is not the language of eign languages into national, intellectual, and cordial, spontaneous expression, emotions, pedagogic debates are being contemplated. Ar- daily encounters, and ordinary communica- abs “are learning less Islam and more English in tion. It is not a vehicle for discovering one’s the tiny desert sheikhdom of Qatar” read a 2003 24 inner self or outer surroundings. Washington Post article, and this overhaul of Qatar’s educational system, with its integration And so, concluded the report, the only of English as a language of instruction—“a to- Arabophone countries that were able to circum- tal earthquake” as one observer termed it—was vent this crisis of knowledge were those like being billed as the Persian Gulf’s gateway to- Lebanon and Egypt, which had actively pro- ward greater participation in an ever more com- moted a polyglot tradition, deliberately protected petitive global marketplace. But many Qataris the teaching of foreign and Persian Gulf Arabs hint to more pressing languages, and instated and more substantive impulses behind curricu- math and science cur- The Arabs’ failure lar bilingualism: “necessity-driven” catalysts ricula in languages other aimed at replacing linguistic and religious jingo- to modernize may than Arabic. ism with equality, tolerance, and coexistence; be a corollary Translation is an- changing mentalities as well as switching lan- other crucial means of of their language’s guages and textbooks.26 transmitting and acquir- inability to This revolution is no less subversive in ing knowledge claimed nearby Abu Dhabi where in 2009 the Ministry conform to the the U.N. report, and of Education launched a series of pedagogical exigencies of given that “English rep- reform programs aimed at integrating bilingual resents around 85 per- modern life. education into the national curriculum. Today, cent of the total world “some 38,000 students in 171 schools in Abu knowledge balance,” Dhabi [are] taught … simultaneously in Arabic one might guess that “knowledge-hungry coun- and English.”27 tries,” the Arab states included, would take heed And so, rather than rushing to prop up and of the sway of English, or at the very least, would protect the fossilized remains of MSA, the de- seek out the English language as a major source

25 Ibid., pp. 66-7. 24 Arab Human Development Report 2003 (New York: United 26 The Washington Post, Feb. 2, 2003. Nations Development Programme, 2003), p. 54. 27 The National (Abu Dhabi), Sept. 15, 2010.

54 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY FALL 2011 bate that should be engaged in today’s Middle East needs to focus more candidly on the utility, functionality, and practicality of a hallowed and ponderous language such as MSA in an age of nimble, clipped, and profane speech forms. The point of reflection should not be whether to protect MSA but whether the language inherited from the Jahiliya Bedouins—to paraphrase Egypt’s Salama Musa (1887-1958)—is still an adequate tool of communication in the age of information highways and space shuttles.28 Ob- viously, this is a debate that requires a healthy dose of courage, honesty, moderation, and prag- matism, away from the usual religious emotions and cultural chauvinism that have always stunted and muzzled such discussions.

Taha Hussein, considered the “dean of LINGUISTIC modern Arabic literature,” recognized SCHIZOPHRENIA the futility of thinking of classical Arabic as one unified and unifying language. AND DECEIT “Nobody speaks it at home,” he wrote, “[in] school, [on] the streets, or in clubs Sherif Shubashy’s book Down with … People everywhere speak a Sibawayh If Arabic Is to Live on!29 seems to language that is definitely not Arabic, have brought these qualities into the debate. despite the partial resemblance to it.” An eighth-century Persian grammarian and father of Arabic philology, Sibawayh is at the root of the modern Arabs’ failures according to … and relegating them to cultural bondage.”30 Shubashy. Down with Sibawayh, which pro- In a metaphor reminiscent of Musa’s de- voked a whirlwind of controversy in Egypt and scription of the Arabic language, Shubashy other Arab countries following its release in 2004, compared MSA users to “ambling cameleers from sought to shake the traditional Arabic linguistic the past, contesting highways with racecar driv- establishment and the Arabic language itself out ers hurtling towards modernity and progress.”31 of their millenarian slumbers and proposed to In his view, the Arabs’ failure to modernize was a unshackle MSA from stiff and superannuated corollary of their very language’s inability (or norms that had, over the centuries, transformed it unwillingness) to regenerate and innovate and into a shrunken and fossilized mummy: a ceremo- conform to the exigencies of modern life.32 But nial, religious, and literary language that was perhaps the most devastating blow that never used as a speech form, and whose hallowed Shubashy dealt the Arabic language was his de- status “has rendered it a heavy chain curbing the scription of the lahja and fusha (or dialect vs. Arabs’ intellect, blocking their creative energies MSA) dichotomy as “linguistic schizophrenia.”33

28 Salama Musa, Maa Hiya an-Nahda, wa Mukhtarat Ukhra 30 Choubachy, Le Sabre et la Virgule, pp. 10, 16-8. (Algiers: Mofam, 1990), p. 233. 31 Shubashy, Li-Tayhya al-Lugha al-‘Arabiya, p. 18. 29 Sherif al-Shubashy, Li-Tahya al-Lugha al-‘Arabiya, Yasqut 32 Choubachy, Le Sabre et la Virgule, pp. 17-8; Shubashy, Li- Sibawayh (Cairo: Al-Hay’a al-Misriya li’l-Kitab, 2004); Cherif Tahya al-Lugha al-‘Arabiya, p. 14. Choubachy, Le Sabre et la Virgule: La Langue du Coran est- elle à l’origine du mal arabe? (Paris: L’Archipel, 2007). 33 Shubashy, Li-Tahya al-Lugha al-‘Arabiya, pp. 125-42.

Salameh: Arabic Language / 55 For although Arabs spoke their individual MSA from dialects. Foreigners who are countries’ specific, vernacular languages while versed in MSA, having spent many years at home, at work, on the streets, or in the mar- studying that language, are taken aback ketplace, the educated among them were con- when I speak to them in the Egyptian dia- strained to don a radi- lect; they don’t understand a single word I say in that language.36 cally different linguistic Standard Arabic personality and make This “pathology” noted Shubashy, went use of an utterly differ- is a symbiotic almost unnoticed in past centuries when illit- ent speech form when eracy was the norm, and literacy was still the bedmate of Islam reading books and news- preserve of small, restricted guilds—mainly the and the tool of papers, watching televi- ulema and religious grammarians devoted to the its cultural and sion, listening to the ra- study of Arabic and Islam, who considered their dio, or drafting formal, own linguistic schizophrenia a model of piety literary tradition. 34 official reports. and a sacred privilege to be vaunted, not con- That speech form, cealed. Today, however, with the spread of lit- which was never spontaneously spoken, eracy in the Arab world, and with the numbers Shubashy insisted, was Modern Standard Ara- of users of MSA swelling and hovering in the bic: a language which, not unlike Latin in rela- vicinity of 50 percent, linguistic schizophrenia tion to Europe’s Romance languages, was dis- is becoming more widespread and acute, crip- tinct from the native, spoken vernaculars of the pling the Arab mind and stunting its capacities. Middle East and was used exclusively by those Why was it that Spaniards, Frenchmen, Ameri- who had adequate formal schooling in it. He cans, and many more of the world’s transparent even went so far as to note that “upward of 50 and linguistically nimble societies, needed to percent of so-called Arabophones can’t even use only a single, native language for both their be considered Arabs if only MSA is taken for acquisition of knowledge and grocery shopping the legitimate Arabic language, the sole true 35 whereas Arabs were prevented from reading and criterion of Arabness.” Conversely, it was a writing in the same language that they use for grave error to presume the vernacular speech their daily mundane needs?37 forms of the Middle East to be Arabic, even if As a consequence of the firestorm un- most Middle Easterners and foreigners were leashed by his book, Shubashy, an Egyptian conditioned, and often intimidated, into view- journalist and news anchor and, at one time, ing them as such. The so-called dialects of Ara- the Paris bureau-chief of the Egyptian al-Ahram bic were not Arabic at all, he wrote, despite the news group, was forced to resign his post as fact that Egypt’s deputy minister of culture in 2006. The book caused so much controversy to a point like many other Arabs, I have bathed in this linguistic schizophrenia since my very early that the author and his work were subjected to childhood. I have for very long thought that a grueling cross-examination in the Egyptian the difference between MSA and the dia- parliament where, reportedly, scuffles erupted lects was infinitely minimal; and that who- between supporters and opponents of ever knew one language—especially Shubashy’s thesis. In the end, the book was MSA—would intuitively know, or at the denounced as an affront to Arabs and was ul- very least, understand the other. However, timately banned. Shubashy himself was ac- my own experience, and especially the evi- cused of defaming the Arabic language in dence of foreigners studying MSA, con- rhetoric mimicking a “colonialist discourse.”38 vinced me of the deep chasm that separated

36 Shubashy, Li-Tahya al-Lugha al-‘Arabiya, pp. 125-6. 34 Ibid., p. 125. 37 Ibid., pp. 126-8, 130; Choubachy, Le Sabre et la Virgule, 35 Choubachy, Le Sabre et la Virgule, p. 119. p. 121.

56 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY FALL 2011 A deputy in the Egyptian parliament—repre- senting Alexandria, Shubashy’s native city— THE LATIN PRECEDENT accused the author of “employing the discourse and argumentation of a colonialist occupier, However understandable, this onslaught seeking to replace the Arab identity with [the was largely unnecessary. For all his audacity, occupier’s] own identity and culture.”39 Ahmad spirit, and probity, not to mention his provoca- Fuad Pasha, advisor to the president of Cairo tive dissection of the linguistic and cultural co- University, argued that the book “was added nundrum bedeviling the Arabs, Shubashy failed proof that, indeed, the Zionist-imperialist con- to follow his argument to its natural conclu- spiracy is a glaring reality,”40 aimed at disman- sion, and his proposed solutions illustrated the tling Arab unity. Muhammad Ahmad Achour hang-ups and inhibitions that had shackled and wrote in Egypt’s Islamic Standard that dissuaded previous generations of reformers. Like Taha Hussein, Salama Moussa, and Shubashy has taken his turn aiming another Tawfiq Awan, among others, Shubashy seemed arrow at the heart of the Arabic language. at times to be advocating the valorization and Yet, the powers that seek to destroy our adoption of dialectal speech forms—and the language have in fact another goal in mind: discarding of MSA. But then, no sooner had The ultimate aim of their conspiracy is none he made a strong case for dialects than he other than the Holy Qur’an itself, and to promptly backed down, cause Muslims to eventually lose their iden- as if sensing a sword tity and become submerged into the ocean of of Damocles hanging Big language globalization.41 over his head, and re- unification Even former Egyptian president Husni nounced what he would movements have Mubarak felt compelled to take a potshot at now deem a heresy and been met with an affront to Arab his- Shubashy in a speech delivered on Laylat al- failure, wars, Qadr, November 9, 2004, the anniversary of the tory and Muslim tradi- night that Sunni Muslims believe the Prophet tion—in a sense, resub- genocides, and Muhammad received his first Qur’anic revela- mitting to the orthodox- mass population tion. Mubarak warned, ies of Arab nationalists movements. and Islamists that he I must caution the Islamic religious scholars had initially seemed against the calls that some are sounding for keen on deposing. the modernization of the Islamic religion, so His initial virulent critiques of the Arabic as to ostensibly make it evolve, under the language’s religious and nationalist canon not- pretext of attuning it to the dominant world withstanding, his best solution ended up rec- order of “modernization” and “reform.” This ommending discarding dialects to the benefit trend has led recently to certain initiatives of “reawakening” and “rejuvenating” the old calling for the modification of Arabic vocabu- language. There were fundamental differences lary and grammar; the modification of God’s between Latin and MSA, Shubashy argued: chosen language no less; the holy language in which he revealed his message to the Arabic is the language of the Qur’an and Prophet.42 the receptacle of the aggregate of the Ar- abs’ scientific, literary, and artistic patrimony, past and present. No wise man 38 See, for example, Muhammad al-Qasem, “Li-Tahya al- would agree to relinquish that patrimony Lugha al-‘Arabiya … wa Yasqut Sibawayh… Limatha?” Islam under any circumstances.43 Online, July 10, 2004. 39 Choubachy, Le Sabre et la Virgule, p. 181. 40 Ibid., p. 190. 41 Ibid., pp. 189-90. 42 Ibid., p. 190. 43 Shubashy, Li-Tahya al-Lugha al-‘Arabiya, pp. 133-4.

Salameh: Arabic Language / 57 In fact, contrary to Shubashy’s assertions, been doing in their daily lives. this was a dilemma that Europe’s erstwhile us- Latin, nevertheless, persisted and endured, ers (and votaries) of Latin had to confront be- especially as the language of theology and phi- tween the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. losophy, in spite of the valiant intellectuals who For, just as MSA is deemed a symbiotic bedmate fought on behalf of their spoken idioms. Even of Islam and the tool of its cultural and literary during the seventeenth and eighteenth centu- tradition, so was Latin the language of the ries, students at the Sorbonne who were caught church, the courts of Europe, and Western lit- speaking French on university grounds—or in erary, scientific, and cultural traditions. Leav- the surrounding Latin Quarter—were castigated ing Latin was not by any means less painful and risked expulsion from the university. In- and alienating for Christian Europeans than the deed, the Sorbonne’s famed Latin Quarter is abandonment of MSA believed to have earned its sobriquet precisely might turn out to be for because it remained a sanctuary for the lan- Successful Muslims and Arabs. Yet guage long after the waning of Latin—and an language a number of audacious ivory tower of sorts—where only Latin was tol- unification fifteenth-century Euro- erated as a spoken language. Even René movements pean iconoclasts, un- Descartes (1596-1659), the father of Cartesian daunted by the linguis- logic and French rationalism was driven to normalize speech tic, literary, and theologi- apologize for having dared use vernacular forms already cal gravitas of Latin or- French—as opposed to his times’ hallowed and spoken natively. thodoxy, did resolve to learned Latin—when writing his famous trea- elevate their heretofore tise, Discours de la Méthode, close to a cen- lowly, vernacular lan- tury after Du Bellay’s Déffence. guages to the level of legitimate and recognized Descartes’ contemporaries, especially lan- national idioms. guage purists in many official and intellectual One of the militant pro-French lobbies at circles (very much akin to those indicting the forefront of the calls for discarding Latin to Shubashy and his cohorts today), censured the benefit of an emerging French language was Descartes, arguing French to be too divisive a group of dialectal poets called La Brigade— and too vulgar to be worthy of scientific, philo- originally troubadours who would soon adopt sophic, literary, and theological writing. Yet, an the sobriquet La Pléiade. The basic document undaunted Descartes wrote in his introduction: elaborating their role as a literary and linguistic avant-garde was a manifesto titled Déffence et If I choose to write in French, which is the illustration de la langue Françoyse, believed language of my country, rather than in Latin, to have been penned in 1549 by Joachim Du which is the language of my teachers, it is Bellay (1522-60). The Déffence was essentially because I hope that those who rely purely on their natural and sheer sense of reason will be a denunciation of Latin orthodoxy and advo- the better judges of my opinions than those cacy on behalf of the French vernacular. Like who still swear by ancient books. And those Dante’s own fourteenth-century defense and who meld reason with learning, the only ones promotion of his Tuscan dialect in De vulgari I incline to have as judges of my own work, eloquentia—which became the blueprint of an will not, I should hope, be partial to Latin to emerging Italian language and a forerunner of the point of refusing to hear my arguments Dante’s Italian La Divina Commedia—Du out simply because I happen to express them Bellay’s French Déffence extolled the virtues of in the vulgar [French] language.44 vernacular French languages and urged six- teenth-century poets, writers, and administra- tors to make use of their native vernacular—as opposed to official Latin—in their creative, lit- 44 René Descartes, Discours de la méthode (Paris: Edition erary, and official functions, just as they had G.F., 1966), p. 95.

58 / MIDDLE EAST QUARTERLY FALL 2011 Yet, the psychological and emotive domi- MSA is the preserve of a small, select num- nance of Latin (and the pro-Latin lobby) of sev- ber of educated people, few of whom bother enteenth-century Europe remained a powerful using it as a speech form. Conversely, what deterrent against change. So much so that we refer to as “dialectal Arabic” is in truth a Descartes’ written work would continue vacil- bevy of languages differing markedly from one country to the lating between Latin and French. Still, he re- other, with vast differ- mained a dauntless pioneer in that he had dared ences often within the There are few put into writing the first seminal, philosophical same country, if not Arabs doing treatise of his time (and arguably the most influ- within the same city and ential scientific essay of all times) in a lowly popu- neighborhood … Need- critical work on lar lahja (to use an Arabic modifier.) He did so less to say, this pathol- Standard Arabic not because he was loath to the prestige and ogy contradicts the exi- who do not end philosophical language of his times but because gencies of a sound, the French vernacular was simply his natural lan- wholesome national up being cowed guage, the one with which he, his readers, and life! [And given] that into silence. his illiterate countrymen felt most comfortable true nations deserving of the appellation re- and intimate. It was the French lahja and its quire a single common and unifying national lexical ambiguities and grammatical peculiari- language … [the best solution I can foresee to ties that best transmitted the realities and the our national linguistic quandary] would be to challenges of Descartes’ surroundings and inoculate the dialectal languages with elements worldviews. To write in the vernacular French— of MSA … so as to forge a new “middle as opposed to the traditional Latin—was to MSA” and diffuse it to the totality of Arabs function in a language that reflected Descartes’ … This is our best hope, and for the time own, and his countrymen’s, cultural universe, being, the best palliative until such a day when intellectual references, popular domains, and more lasting and comprehensive advances can historical accretions. be made towards instating the final, perfected, integral MSA.46

CONCLUSION This is at best a disappointing and desul- tory solution, not only due to its chimerical am- This then, the recognition and normaliza- bitions but also because, rather than simplify- tion of dialects, could have been a fitting con- ing an already cluttered and complicated linguis- clusion and a worthy solution to the dilemma tic situation, it suggested the engineering of an that Shubashy set out to resolve. Unfortunately, additional language for the “Arab nation” to he chose to pledge fealty to MSA and classical adopt as a provisional national idiom. To expand Arabic—ultimately calling for their normalization on Shubashy’s initial diagnosis, this is tanta- and simplification rather than their outright re- mount to remedying schizophrenia by inducing placement.45 In that sense, Shubashy showed a multi-personality disorder—as if Arabs were himself to be in tune with the orthodoxies in want of yet another artificial language to preached by Husri who, as early as 1955, had complement their already aphasiac MSA. already been calling for the creation of a “middle Granted, national unification movements Arabic language” and a crossbreed fusing MSA and the interference in, or creation of, a national and vernacular speech forms—as a way of bridg- language are part of the process of nation building the Arabs’ linguistic incoherence and bring- ing and often do bear fruit. However, success in ing unity to their fledgling nationhood: the building of a national language is largely

46 For the full text of Husri’s address, see Anis Freyha, al- Lahajat wa Uslubu Dirasatiha (Beirut: Dar al-Jil, 1989), pp. 45 Shubashy, Li-Tahya al-Lugha al-‘Arabiya, pp. 142, 184-5. 5-8.

Salameh: Arabic Language / 59 dependent upon the size of the community and ing Sibawayh meant also deposing the greatest the proposed physical space of the nation in ques- Arabic grammarian, the one credited with the tion.47 In other words, size does matter. Small codification, standardization, normalization, and language unification movements—as in the spread of the classical Arabic language—and cases of, say, Norway, Israel, and France—can later its MSA descendent. Yet, calling for the and often do succeed. But big language unifica- dethroning of one who was arguably the found- tion movements on the ing father of modern Arabic grammar, and in the other hand—as in the same breath demanding the preservation, inocu- It is society and cases of pan-Turkism, lation, and invigoration of his creation, is con- communities of pan-Slavism, pan-Ger- tradictory and confusing. It is like “doing the manism, and yes, pan- same thing over and over again and expecting users that Arabism—have thus far different results,” to use Albert Einstein’s famous decide the fate been met with not only definition of insanity. Or could it be that per- of languages. failure but also devastat- haps an initially bold Shubashy was rendered ing wars, genocides, and timid by a ruthless and intimidating MSA estab- mass population move- lishment? After all, there are few Arabs doing ments. Moreover, traditionally, the small lan- dispassionate, critical work on MSA today, who guage unification movements that did succeed do not ultimately end up being cowed into si- in producing national languages benefitted from lence, or worse yet, slandered, discredited, and overwhelming, popular support among members accused of Zionist perfidy and “Arabophobia.” of the proposed nation. More importantly, they Salama Musa,49 Taha Hussein,50 and Adonis51 sought to normalize not prestige, hermetic, (writ- are the most obvious and recent examples of ten) literary languages, but rather lower, de- such character assassinations. graded speech forms that were often already Ultimately, however, it is society and com- spoken natively by the national community in munities of users—not advocacy groups, lin- question (e.g., Creole in Haiti, Old Norse in Nor- guistic guilds, and preservation societies—that way, and modern, as opposed to biblical He- decide the fate of languages. As far as the sta- brew in Israel).48 tus and fate of the Arabic language are con- Shubashy’s call of “down with Sibawayh!” cerned, the jury still seems to be out. meant purely and simply “down with the classical language” and its MSA progeny. Overthrow-

49 Ibrahim A. Ibrahim, “Salama Musa: An Essay on Cultural 47 Ronald Waurdhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics Alienation,” Middle Eastern Studies, Oct. 1979. (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2002), pp. 353-74. 50 “Taha Hussein (1889-1973),” Egypt State Information Ser- 48 John Myhill, Language, Religion, and National Identity in vice, Cairo, accessed June 10, 2011. Europe and the Middle East (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: 51 See Adonis, al-Kitab, al-Khitab, al-Hijab (Lebanon: Dar John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2006), pp. 9-12. al-Adab, 2009), pp. 9, 14, 16-9.

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