A Tale of Two Discontents: Abdullah al-Qasimi and Nawal El Saadawy

"The most cruel of punishments is to be given a contrarian mind in a society that does not protest."

"Truly, talent without learning

remains like a genius idea without application

a window and a seeing eye.

It lives in permanent darkness."

"Our ideas are not accountable for our mistakes, but we are accountable for the mistakes of our ideas."

"How great and difference and how long the distance between man's morals in theory and man's morals in conduct and character!"

"Truly, what is demanded of the men of religion is the conservation of the antiquity of thought, and not impeccable conduct."

"Truly, the worst thing about the men of religion is that they tolerate corrupt men and do not tolerate thinkers."

"Truly, those who impose on us a specific code of conduct will most definitely impose on us specific pattern of thought and a specific doctrine or specific religion or specific teachings and perspectives, that is, they impose in us the conviction in those things."

"Truly to dissent in your manners from society is something you cannot do, and perhaps some of the time you can't will it. And truly, to dissent in your thoughts or in your doctrine or in your beliefs or in your manners is something that make you wretched and have you tongue-lashed, and they could lampoon you, or turn you into a defendant."

"Truly, if man is incapable of being what he wants [to be], he will go and do what he doesn't want [to do]. If he is incapable of victory, he will go and manufacture defeat."

"If those who spearheaded revolutions lived in conditions and levels better than they would find, they would not have revolted."

"I wish, no I demand, that this cry or chant or glorification be written over every Arab pulpit, on the cover of every Arab book, on the first page of every Arab newspaper, and on every Arab mouth and pen:

O dimwitted lie! 

O barefaced and shamed hypocrisy! 

O ignorant stupidity! 

O stupid ignorance! 

O obscene and sterile neigh! 

O fall from grace! 

O intellectual, mental, moral, artistic and expressional disgrace! 

Verily, for you is all glory and authority!"

Abdullah al-Qasimi, first known Saudi atheist, 1907-1996

"Can a man believe that a woman can look into his insides and explore his deepest being? 

Can he believe that a woman can make her body subservient to her heart and her mind?

That he can look in her eyes without her blinking? 

That he can hold her hand without her shaking? 

That he encloses her with him by four walls, and she gives him nothing, and leaves him, and moves on while saying, 'No, you're not the man that I want'? 

Can a man realize that there is a woman that can inspect him and test him, and then he fails on the test?"

"She converses with herself as though she were another person, a splitting of the personality that a person uses to cure severe pain, under the delusion that the pain will happen to someone else and not her."

"If four walls closed around me with a man that I don't want to give a touch, I won't give him [a touch]...and if I wanted to give myself to a man, I will give myself [to him] in front of the world without sneaking and embezzlement."

"No..no...truly this mistake I fell into does not fit with all this punishment...it does not fit! Every person makes mistakes...life encompasses right and wrong...even so, we do not know right except by making mistakes...mistakes are not weakness or stupidity, but persistence in making mistakes is weakness and stupidity."

"Why didn't God create me as a bird flying in the air like that pigeon, and made me a girl? God has made me think that He preferred birds to girls."

"Humans lose their dignity when they are unable to provide for themselves."

"Is it possible that honor is an anatomical attribute that a person is either born with or without? And if the hymen is a sign of a girl's honor, what is the sign of the man's honor?"

"Woman has been deceived in this age more than she has been deceived in any other ages. This is because, the truth is that, her lowly position and the infringement on her rights has now been wrapped in superficial respect, etiquette, gentle manners with other people. And because of this external wrap, woman has not seen that her position is still lowly."

"Woman has begun to abandon her value as a human being and the sincerity of her feelings to attain the honor of apparent society. Woman has learned fakeness, and has learned to deal with society [in the same manner that] it deals with her. She has learned how to please men and have sex with him without losing her virginity. She has learned how to sell herself to the wedding knot and to repress her love forever or to practise it in secrecy."

"Repression is the cause behind the masochism of woman and the sadism of man. And from this repression springs pathological love, pathological literature, that sings the praises of pains and deprivation and torment." 

"Truly, Freud imagined that the hysteria of those women or their loud screaming from pain or grief is due their sadness over the loss of the male organ forever. And he forgot that those women were screaming and howling because of the long and sharp needles that were pricked on their bodies by witch-hunters looking for the marks of Satan."

"Humans don't die in prison from starvation or heat or cold or beatings or diseases or vermin, but die from waiting.

"Waiting turns time into timelessness, thing into nothing, meaning into meaninglessness."

"Deprivation makes the strings of our nerves strained, so we can play on it. As for satisfaction, it makes it laxed, and no melody comes out of it."

"Truly the morals standards that society puts down has to be applied to everyone regardless of gender or color or social class, and the society that believes in chastity as a moral value must apply this value to every individual in society. As for applying to one gender without the other or one social class without the other, this indicates that chastity is not a moral value but a law that is imposed by the preexisting social order."

"The honor of a person, man or woman, is sincerity: sincerity in thought and sincerity in feelings and sincerity in actions. The honorable person is the one who does not live a double life: one in public and another in secret."

"Femininity is the assertion of woman in life and her ability to use her body and mind and soul to the highest ability, and manhood is the assertion of man in life and his ability to use his body and mind and soul to the highest ability."

"A woman, no matter how attractive her body is, loses her femininity if she is stupid or weak-willed or pretentious or a liar."

"People, from fear of humiliation, are in humiliation."

"Truly the mature character is the only one that can desire freedom and strive for it without fearing it, for freedom frightens the immature and dependent person."

"I knew for the first time how victory is. Fear does nothing but defeat, and victory is never without courage."

"It is perhaps better for a person to face the world without any facts at all, than to face it with wrong facts that corrupt his nature and natural intelligence."

"Did not the cultured elite make ruin in every generation? Were they not hypocritical and deceptive in defining who the peasant was, during the days of Abdel-Nasser? Then the cultured elite and the wealthy and the writers entered the People's Assembly under the name of "peasants"? And so did the Salafis and Islamists enter Parliament under the name of God and the ballot and Sharia."

"The ruling political power is the one that defines for the people what is sacred and what is profane, what is legal and illegal, what is legitimate and illegitimate. As for truth, it is buried in history, so that the people own history-writing for themselves, so the devastated mother owns the pen, and writes by herself the history of her life."

"Childrearing in our homes has failed to produce live conscience, the system of civil and religious education has failed to evolve the male and female into sophisticated personalities. 

The sophisticated person is distinguished by the ability to overcome individual and collective responsibility, over appetites of food and sex and domination. 

The sophisticated person is not the repressed, the obsequious towards power, the tyrant over the state and family."

"We have gotten used to consuming this fake media and history, and now we no longer know the essential issues from the insignificant issues. We are addicted to this pseudo-knowledge or false mass consciousness as the youth are addicted to marijuana and heroin."  

"Medicine is not a commodity, and success is not wealth and fame. Medicine is granting health to all in need: health without strings attached or preconditions; success is to give from myself to others."

Nawal El Saadawy, Egyptian women's rights activist

END.

Blackface in Lebanon

Three Lebanese girls dressed for Halloween as their own maids. Gratitude is not an Arab thing, it seems.

Those girls have been named and shamed, but why is Israel becoming more popular in Africa and Europe? Answering that question demands a long period of anguish and sadness from the Arab on the street, that culminates in enlightment and self-hatred of the Arab.

**

Racism on Halloween

By Joey Ayyoub (Hummus for Thought)

Three very sophisticated Lebanese women clearly thought this was an appropriate costume for Halloween. After all why not? Why not dress up as black maids? It’s not like trying to dress up as Lebanon’s quasi-slaves can’t have some entertainment value. ‘Heik heik’ they’re already degraded to the level of sub-human, why not at least get a laugh?

I’m just trying to figure out what could have possibly gone through their minds, but I can’t seem to find anything remotely sensible. This is as degrading as what Life bar tried to do almost two years ago. Dehumanizing, disgraceful and just pathetic. The good news is that Filipinos didn’t seem to be the main target here. But I guess they had some black makeup around and simply had to use it, so Ethiopians and Sri Lankans were the lucky winners. I don’t know which nationality was the target here, but anyway our racists use “Sirlankyyeh” (literally: Sri Lankan woman) for all female migrant workers – No, I’m not kidding.

Now I know that it’s very likely that at least one person reading this would know who these three women are. I don’t want their names. I don’t really care. Just let them know that their faces have now gone viral.

Hummus for Thought

[Now for some senseless comments:]

I can’t really find what’s the big deal, and i never support racism acts especially in our country, but what they did is nothing of the sort! What if someone showed up as Michael Jordan or Barack Obama? Would you have the same reaction? They’re both as real as you and me; but one is a more common sighting in lebanon.

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Get a life all of you i wonder if a black person painted himself as a white guy what do you call that !!!? Just enjoy and let the others enjoy the core of it is fun not any racist point. Lebanese people got nothing except trends one day lets defend the bugs rights another day lets defend gods right you made us sick the human nature survived all these years without any rights. So please don’t show off about you’re defending this or that that won’t make you popular!!

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The writer of this article is the racist for interpreting this HALLOWEEN COSTUME in this manner. What if kobe bryant dressed like a common white lebanese and grew a mustache ? will he be interpreted as a racist for dressing like a terrorist ?? pff people like you need to jump off a cliff for spreading such unbiased hate

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It is a very normal costume, i don’t see what is the big deal about it. Stupid bloggers and people want to pretend that they care about others. I am sure in normal life they are the most racist people. Get a life bit….

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Hahahaha #shattifgood !!! Big deal get over it. Any of the haters bloggers blogging against this probably have maids as well. Take a joke, don’t dramatize it.

[Meaning described here:]

It’s basically a way of mopping that involves tossing bucketfuls of water onto the floor (usually outdoors) and sweeping or pushing out the water and all the dirt…what a hashtag, huh?

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Maybe before you talk about racism you should consider the fact that you just posted someones picture without their knowledge and permission.. I think maybe you should respect their right to privacy before you call them racists and slander them online :)

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“Three very sophisticated lebanese woman” .. AND a man (on the right).. don’t be sexist

Ahmed Matar: A Relevant Selection

AHMED MATAR

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The Watchman’s Poem

I thought about writing a poem

That does not waste the watchman’s time;

That does not strain the neck of the caliphs;

That all the news agencies

do not fear to publish;

And that is, without the slightest fear,

In the possession of every reader.

And for that, I readied my pens

And placed my papers in front of me,

And I gathered all the opinions.

Then…with all the restraint of anxiety,

I signed off the page with my signature

And left the page blank!

I reviewed the script diligently,

Then some mistakes appeared to me…

Then I rubbed off the whiteness of the page

And got rid of the signature!

iiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiii iiiiiiiiiiii

This is the fear of the oppressed:

that they are being watched whenever and wherever,

and should they displease their masters with even uttered words,

their masters will put them through hell

to keep them silent and never uttering the obvious truth.

Such oppression has more to with character and habit,

while power dynamics and wealth come second.

Imagine the oppressed given the power of the state.

What will he do with it?

His character will tell.

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The Bull in the Yard

The bull has fled from the cattle yard, the bull has fled,

Then the bullocks raged in the yard,

Crying about the escape of the procession’s leader,

And on the remains were formed,

A court and an assembly,

Then a speaker said: “Judgment and Fate!”

And a speaker: “Most verily, he has disbelieved!”

And a speaker: “To the blackening fire (he goes)!”

And some said: “Give him a last chance.

Perhaps he might return to the field.”

And in concluding the assembly,

They redistributed his harness, and jelled his barley.

And after a year, an interesting event occurred.

The bull did not come back, but the yard followed behind him.

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A Tear Over the Corpse of Freedom

I do not write poetry, for poetry writes me,

I want silence so I can live, but what I cast forth utters me

And I cast forth nothing but sadness over sadness over sadness,

Should I write that I am alive in my coffin?

Should I write that I am free, while even the letter is shackled in slavery?

Verily, a temptress has been broadcasted,

Whose name in the Arab lands is

“ruining”

And “terrorism”

And “defamation of the divine laws”

But its name…by God!

But its name is originally “freedom”.

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The Thief

The thief left us a note

Over the straw mat,

And he brought with it:

May God curse the emir

He left nothing else to steal

…But the snore!

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Nightmare

The Nightmare is standing in front of me.

Wake up from your sleep.

You are not asleep.

Therefore, this is not a nightmare.

But you are looking at the face of the governor!

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The Mayor’s Dog

The dog of Our Honorable Mayor

Bit me one day, and died.

Then the security guard called for me to be executed

When the death certificate proved

That the mayor’s dog was poisoned.

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Cuss-out

The boy said to the donkey: “You idiot!”

The donkey said to the boy: “You Arab!”

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END.

Arabic is not our language!

Excerpts from Franck Salameh's "Does anyone speak Arabic?"

A groundbreaking article, that references more than it states, yes, but it brings together ideas that I have never thought of before.

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STATEMENT 1:

Arabic is not a single, uniform language. It is, on the one hand, a codified, written standard that is never spoken natively and that is accessible only to those who have had rigorous training in it. On the other hand, Arabic is also a multitude of speech forms, contemptuously referred to as “dialects,” differing from each other and from the standard language itself to the same extent that French is different from other Romance languages and from Latin.

COMMENT 1:

What a language!

**

STATEMENT 2:

Monolingualism is no more a precondition or motivation for cultural and ethnic cohesiveness than multilingualism constitutes grounds for national incoherence and loss of a common identity. Irishmen, Scotsmen, Welsh, and Jamaicans are all native English-speakers but not Englishmen.

COMMENT 2:

A Jamaican has no identity crisis, he is simply Jamaican. His accent and patois, his ska and reggae and dub and dancehall, his Rastafarianism, his mainstream Protestant faith, the beautiful island that he calls home, is how the world sees him. And in some or all of that, he takes pride. He or she is usually full of life and vigor, and is not affected by neurosis or sensitivity to his own dignity. If you asked him where he is originally from, he’ll tell you either from common folklore that he is from mother Africa, or he’ll tell you about a DNA test he took to figure out his ancestry; and he won’t lie about the results, which usually points to West African nations. However, he never calls himself an Englishman simply because he speaks English, and never calls himself half-English, or talks about his “English composition and African composition”*, despite Jamaicans having trace Anglo-Saxon and European mixture!

*would be extremely depressing and frustrating to hear a Jamaican talk like that. That is our reality.

**

STATEMENT 3:

Even Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), the fourteenth-century Muslim jurist and polymath and arguably the father of modern sociology, wrote in his famous 1377 Prolegomena that only the language of Quraish—the Prophet Muhammad’s tribe—should be deemed true Arabic; that native Arabs learn this speech form naturally and spontaneously; and that this language became corrupt and ceased being Arabic when it came into contact with non-Arabs and assimilated their linguistic habits. Therefore, he argued, “the language of Quraish is the soundest and purest Arabic precisely due to its remoteness from the lands of non-Arabs—Persians, Byzantines, and Abyssinians … whose languages are used as examples by Arab philologists to demonstrate the dialects’ distance from, and perversion of, Arabic.”

COMMENT 3:

Little wonder that Sudanese Arabic is one of the most corrupted languages in the Arab world, if our lands belong to that part of the world.

Arabic in itself is a language group, much like Slavic and Bantu. And in the group are Mudar (the language of Muhammad), Dhofari, Socotri and a few other remnants. Today, the Mudar dominates the rest, and all that’s left are a few languages. Why? Because Muhammad dominated the entire Arabian peninsula by AD 632.

Gulf Arabic is a dialect of the standard Mudar, influenced by the native Nabatean language; just like Southern Levantine Arabic and Egyptian Arabic. It is like a Frenchman speaking English, that is, with a French accent, and with numerous phrases and mannerisms brought over into his English speech. The Gulf Arabic of Kuwait and Qatar and the Emirates is highly arcane to those who don’t speak it, in addition to being unpleasant to listen to. I struggle to understand an Emirati when he speaks in Arabic.

Yemeni Arabic is a dialect group, as the dialect in Ta’izz is very different from the one spoken in Aden is very different from the one spoken in Hadramawt. What fascinates me is the words they use to express themselves. Baghä (want – simple past verb) becomes 3äyiz (I am in need of – noun derived from verb “3äza”) and Däyir (I am looking for - noun derived from verb “dawwara”); S.ära (become) is replaced by Bigat (to remain – used as “to become”); Shinou (what) is used instead of the Hejazi Eysh or Wesh; kida (like it) is used frequently like a preposition; and so on. Those dialects are corrupt by Mudar standards, because the Yemenis who submitted to Islam during Muhammad’s lifetime spoke languages of their own, Arabic languages.

And in the same manner, the Levantine dialect cluster is Mudar spoken by a speaker of Aramaic, as is Iraqi Arabic. Egyptian Arabic, however, is a Yemeni dialect spoken by former speakers of Coptic. It is probably the most corrupted dialect after Sudanese and Tchadian Arabic, both Yemeni dialects as well.

Sudanese Arabic should be called Nubian Arabic. It is one of Yemen’s dialects spoken by a Nubian, that is, with a Nubian twist, with many words and phrases imported from old Nubian dialects. It spread to Darfur and Tchad, creating Tchadian Arabic, Nubian Arabic with a Fur and Zaghawa twist; and to South Sudan as a lingua franca, creating Juba Arabic, that is Nubian Arabic as spoken by a Dinka, Nuer or Shilluk. To my surprise, a few Beja clans speak Nubian Arabic as a first language.

Aa-y is the Sudanese Arabic word for yes, which in Nöbïn corresponds to Eyyo. It comes from an old Nubian dialect no doubt, and is a source of amusement and mockery from other Arabic speakers. Still, they can’t pronounce it properly like we do. Zöl (man) is the hallmark word of Sudanese Arabic, so much that Gulf Arabs call us zoal instead of rajjäl (their word for man). Kadïsa, the Sudanese Arabic for cat, comes from the Nöbïn kadïs. Samih. (nice or pleasant) and Samh.a (beautiful and pretty) come from tasämuh. (tolerance and forgiveness), and the two former words are not found anywhere in the Arab world, to my knowledge. I fancy that it is a remnant of our pre-Islamic ancestors.

Bani Juhayn and Bani Abbas lived and were allowed in live and Alodia and Makuria by Nubian kings, who for sure at one point softened towards Arabs. The last names al-Abbasi and al-Juhani, as well as well as many other Yemeni and Hejazi last names, are found all over historical Nubia and Gezira. These two tribes originated from south Yemen. So little wonder about our dialect.

And for a language to improve, it must import words from time to time. What the Arabs don’t understand is that language is a means of expression, and expression is not an end in itself, and therefore language is not an end in itself. And the spoken and written manifestation of language, that uses words to compose sentences to express outer reality and inner feelings, must submit to reality and inner form. Window dressing entire sentences while saying nothing useful is not the way to expression.

**

STATEMENT 4:

In 1929, Tawfiq Awan had already begun making similar arguments, maintaining that the demotics of the Middle East—albeit arguably related to Arabic—were languages in their own right, not mere dialects of Arabic: “Egypt has an Egyptian language; Lebanon has a Lebanese language; the Hijaz has a Hijazi language; and so forth—and all of these languages are by no means Arabic languages. Each of our countries has a language, which is its own possession: So why do we not write [our language] as we converse in it? For, the language in which the people speak is the language in which they also write.”

[…] Even Taha Hussein (1889-1973), the doyen of modern Arabic belles lettres, had come to this very same conclusion by 1938. In his The Future of Culture in Egypt,14 he made a sharp distinction between what he viewed to be Arabic tout court—that is, the classical and modern standard form of the language—and the sundry, spoken vernaculars in use in his contemporary native Egypt and elsewhere in the Near East. For Egyptians, Arabic is virtually a foreign language, wrote Hussein: Nobody speaks it at home, [in] school, [on] the streets, or in clubs; it is not even used in [the] Al-Azhar [Islamic University] itself. People everywhere speak a language that is definitely not Arabic, despite the partial resemblance to it.

COMMENT 4:

Until 2012, I have in my life ever heard an Egyptian man speak in Standard Arabic. Whatever the situation, no matter how formal, he spoke in Egyptian Arabic. Hosni Mubarak spoke in Egyptian Arabic, the sheikh of al-Azhar University speaks in Egyptian Arabic, the person on the street speaks in Egyptian Arabic, and media from music to soap operas to punditry is expressed whenever possible in Egyptian Arabic. The only Egyptians who use Standard Arabic consistently for formal settings are the Salafi sheikhs, that is, Arab wannabes. I have heard attempts by Egyptians to speak in Standard Arabic, and it comes out as a hodge-podge of Egyptian and Standard Arabic. I have also never heard an Egyptian pronounce the letter ‘j’ in the Arabic language, and in speaking other languages, the French ‘j’ comes out instead.

But strangely, when they write anything, on a book or newspaper or a piece of paper, or read their constitution or laws out loud, they do so in Standard Arabic!

And Taha Hussein is right. The difference between English spoken at home and spoken in parliament is choice of words, even if one must use a sweeter accent in parliament. There isn’t one language for home and one language for the classroom.

**

STATEMENT 5:

Taha Hussein ascribed the decay and abnegation of the Arabic language primarily to its “inability of expressing the depths of one’s feelings in this new age.” He wrote in 1956 that MSA is “difficult and grim, and the pupil who goes to school in order to study Arabic acquires only revulsion for his teacher and for the language, and employs his time in pursuit of any other occupations that would divert and soothe his thoughts away from this arduous effort … Pupils hate nothing more than they hate studying Arabic.”

COMMENT 5:

Learning Arabic is torment and anguish. Five minutes into the lesson, one is abused and humiliated several times by the teacher, because like a bloodthirsty human-sacrifice-demanding Mayan deity, the language must be revered by people who are still learning the language, by not making mistakes while they learn to speak it! (I am seething in rage right now, so hold on.) I would recommend learning the language from an Israeli teacher, and good if he is an Arab, than from someone who is filled with rage and terror, and abuses and mocks his own students for mishandling his hollow vase-like language. Really, find a European linguist who specializes on the language, or an Israeli teacher, and let him/er teach you Arabic. Plus, I’d learn Nöbïn, a Nubian dialect similar to the one spoken by my ancestors, and one which I naturally gravitate towards.

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STATEMENT 6:

[…]In a recent article published in Israel’s liberal daily Ha’aretz, acclaimed Druze poet and academic Salman Masalha called on Israel’s Education Ministry to do away with the country’s public school system’s Arabic curricula and demanded its replacement with Hebrew and English course modules. Arabophone Israelis taught Arabic at school, like Arabophones throughout the Middle East, were actually taught a foreign tongue misleadingly termed Arabic, wrote Masalha: “The mother tongue [that people] speak at home is totally different from the … Arabic [they learn] at school; [a situation] that perpetuates linguistic superficiality [and] leads to intellectual superficiality … It’s not by chance that not one Arab university is [ranked] among the world’s best 500 universities. This finding has nothing to do with Zionism.”

COMMENT 6:

Is it easier and more convenient to learn Hebrew or English? Well.

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STATEMENT 7: THE RESULT OF ARABO-CLUSTER-*&^%

To wit, the 2003 report noted that the Arabic language is struggling to meet the challenges of modern times [and] is facing [a] severe … and real crisis in theorization, grammar, vocabulary, usage, documentation, creativity, and criticism … The most apparent aspect of this crisis is the growing neglect of the functional aspects of [Arabic] language use. Arabic language skills in everyday life have deteriorated, and Arabic … has in effect ceased to be a spoken language. It is only the language of reading and writing; the formal language of intellectuals and academics, often used to display knowledge in lectures … [It] is not the language of cordial, spontaneous expression, emotions, daily encounters, and ordinary communication. It is not a vehicle for discovering one’s inner self or outer surroundings.

[…] Yet, from all source-languages combined, the Arab world’s 330 million people  translated a meager 330 books per year; that is, “one fifth of the number [of books] translated in Greece [home to 12 million Greeks].” Indeed, from the times of the Caliph al-Ma’mun (ca. 800 CE) to the beginnings of the twenty-first century, the “Arab world” had translated a paltry 10,000 books: the equivalent of what Spain translates in a single year.

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STATEMENT 8:

In a metaphor reminiscent of Musa’s description of the Arabic language, Shubashy compared MSA users to “ambling cameleers from the past, contesting highways with racecar drivers hurtling towards modernity and progress. …But perhaps the most devastating blow that Shubashy dealt the Arabic language was his description of the lahja and fusha (or dialect vs. MSA) dichotomy as “linguistic schizophrenia.”

            For although Arabs spoke their individual countries’ specific, vernacular languages while at home, at work, on the streets, or in the marketplace, the educated among them were constrained to don a radically different linguistic personality and make use of an utterly different speech form when reading books and newspapers, watching television, listening to the radio, or drafting formal, official reports.

…[Shubasi notes that]…Why was it that Spaniards, Frenchmen, Americans, and many more of the world’s transparent and linguistically nimble societies, needed to use only a single, native language for both their acquisition of knowledge and grocery shopping whereas Arabs were prevented from reading and writing in the same language that they use for their daily mundane needs?

[THE REACTION:]

As a consequence of the firestorm unleashed by his book, Shubashy, an Egyptian journalist and news anchor and, at one time, the Paris bureau-chief of the Egyptian al-Ahram news group, was forced to resign his post as Egypt’s deputy minister of culture in 2006. The book caused so much controversy to a point that the author and his work were subjected to a grueling cross-examination in the Egyptian parliament where, reportedly, scuffles erupted between supporters and opponents of Shubashy’s thesis. In the end, the book was denounced as an affront to Arabs and was ultimately banned. Shubashy himself was accused of defaming the Arabic language in rhetoric mimicking a “colonialist discourse.”

A deputy in the Egyptian parliament—representing Alexandria, Shubashy’s native city—accused the author of “employing the discourse and argumentation of a colonialist occupier, seeking to replace the Arab identity with [the occupier’s] own identity and culture.”

Ahmad Fuad Pasha, advisor to the president of Cairo University, argued that the book “was added proof that, indeed, the Zionist-imperialist conspiracy is a glaring reality,”

Muhammad Ahmad Achour wrote in Egypt’s Islamic Standard that Shubashy has taken his turn aiming another arrow at the heart of the Arabic language. Yet, the powers that seek to destroy our language have in fact another goal in mind: The ultimate aim of their conspiracy is none other than the Holy Qur’an itself, and to cause Muslims to eventually lose their identity and become submerged into the ocean of globalization.

Even former Egyptian president Husni Mubarak felt compelled to take a potshot at Shubashy in a speech delivered on Laylat al-Qadr, November 9, 2004, the anniversary of the night that Sunni Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad received his first Qur’anic  revelation. Mubarak warned, “I must caution the Islamic religious scholars against the calls that some are sounding for the modernization of the Islamic religion, so as to ostensibly make it evolve, under the pretext of attuning it to the dominant world order of “modernization” and “reform.” This trend has led recently to certain initiatives calling for the modification of Arabic vocabulary and grammar; the modification of God’s chosen language no less; the holy language in which he revealed his message to the Prophet.”

…

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STATEMENT 9:

[…] ...Husri who, as early as 1955, had already been calling for the creation of a “middle Arabic language” and a crossbreed fusing MSA and vernacular speech forms: “|MSA is the preserve of a small, select number of educated people, few of whom bother using it as a speech form. Conversely, what we refer to as “dialectal Arabic” is in truth a bevy of languages differing markedly from one country to the other, with vast differences often within the same country, if not  within the same city and neighborhood … Needless to say, this pathology contradicts the exigencies of a sound, wholesome national life! [And given] that true nations deserving of the appellation require a single common and unifying national language … [the best solution I can foresee to our national linguistic quandary] would be to inoculate the dialectal languages with elements of MSA … so as to forge a new “middle MSA” and diffuse it to the totality of Arabs …This is our best hope, and for the time being, the best palliative until such a day when more lasting and comprehensive advances can be made towards instating the final, perfected, integral MSA.”

COMMENT 9:

I realized that my own dialect, Nubian Arabic, is seaming with potential, that is, to become an eloquent language for higher expression, with more vivid descriptions and more subtle statements. However, I wish to learn a surviving dialect of Nubian, and develop that one instead, into a higher Nubian language, borrowing from Coptic and Greek, and using the former Greek letters instead of Arabic ones (which is extremely impractical). If that cannot be done, we’ll have to stick with Arabic instead.

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WORD OF THANKS:

I am indebted to Hanibaal Atheos for name-dropping Franck Salameh. Most of the article consists of references to other works, yet the article in itself is groundbreaking and revolutionary. I have never viewed the Arabic language in such light, and I know now for sure, that the Egyptian Taha Hussein deserves his great name.