The period following Arab independence, that is, after the First and Second World Wars, was characterized by a wave of Arabization practices—linguistic, intellectual, cultural, and even political, Consequently, foreign languages were deliberately neglected in schools, while Arabic was artificially promoted with the aim of “instilling nationalism.” To be truly patriotic, one had to be an Arab nationalist, and therefore, one had to restrict oneself to using Arabic and neglect foreign languages to avoid contamination by heresy and apostasy, This was based on the assumption that Arabic was sacred and exceptionally rich in vocabulary compared to other languages, without understanding the detrimental effects of excessive vocabulary, such as what is known as “linguistic stagnation.” When a language gives hundreds of names for a horse or a camel, it is considered “stagnation” in linguistics! Nor was there any awareness of the harm of venerating a language, both in terms of hindering its development and its ability to carry and transmit evolving ideas, Considering a language as a sacred, frozen entity, a mere part of identity, freezes that identity, Those who wish to honor this language must enrich it with scientific content, Hebrew, for example, was once dead but was revived after being enriched with scientific knowledge. !.
This deliberate neglect of foreign languages was accompanied by a scientific and cognitive backwardness, from which the peoples of this region still suffer today, The sciences carried by the Arabic language were not sufficient to broaden the scientific horizons of school and university students,The weak grasp of foreign languages hindered the acquisition of more science and knowledge from foreign sources,The source of science in this era is foreign societies, and science is written in the language of these societies, Whoever wants to benefit from these sciences must master those languages, and whoever is not able to do so remains outside the scientific sphere and drowns in the swamp of cognitive ignorance.
After realizing that neglecting foreign languages hinders the acquisition of scientific knowledge, the relevant ministries began changing school curricula regarding languages, Arabic education remained as it was, and interest in foreign languages increased, This was done silently in some countries such as Syria, and in other countries, such as Morocco, there was an explicit official declaration of the failure of Arabization, The failure of Arabic in education led to the issuance of laws and resolutions from the Moroccan House of Representatives regarding the teaching of scientific subjects in a foreign language.
For students of science in Arab societies, Arabic has become a foreign language, meaning that with regard to scientific aspects it is incomprehensible, Who among us understands the meaning of the word “shatir” and “mash’ur” and the “kamikh” between them (the sandwich)? Does the general public understand the meaning of “inoculation” or the meaning of “secularism” and many other things? Furthermore, Arabic is characterized by a large difference between the spoken language and the written language. Thus, Arabic has become a bilingual language, meaning that for those who are proficient in the spoken colloquial dialect but not in the written language, Arabic has become a strange foreign language.
In the Middle East, there are approximately 180 million illiterate people out of a population of 450 million, For them, written Arabic is a foreign language, This partly explains the lack of interest in reading among Arabs, The average Arab reads two pages a year, while a European, Israeli, Hungarian, or Spaniard reads around 50 books annually,This also explains the phenomenon of dyslexia, defined as the inability to read 120 words per minute, Those who cannot read at this speed are considered to have dyslexia, For these reasons, Arabic has become an obstacle for non-illiterate readers, This, and several others, is why Atatürk changed the language of Turkey to the Latin alphabet, Taha Hussein held a similar view, considering Arabic an impediment and a hindrance,Its impediment stemmed from its sanctity, which prevents it from being subject to scientific inquiry, at the very least requiring criticism and skepticism, Taha Hussein distinguished between literature and religious proselytizing, Language is not part of religion, nor is it for proselytizing, Language is not part of identity, and when it becomes rigidly sacred, it freezes that identity,Language must be free. “And it automatically expresses a civilization, Here we ask why the majority of the scholars of the early Islamic period were of Persian origin! There are many answers, including what was reported by Al-Jawahiri, that the Arabic language was not associated with any civilization since its inception, unlike the Persian language, which was associated with a civilization from the beginning.”
Arabic entered the conquered lands, and religion was an incubator for this language, Religion gave Arabic some sanctity on the basis that it was the language of the book of religion,Attaching Arabic to this book earned it a great deal of fame, but it froze and became petrified because of it, that is, because of its sanctity, Because the language was rigid, it was no longer able to create thought or even express a new, developed thought, but rather it suppressed thought by limiting and reducing it to the size of a book of 600 pages, This language could not carry more than what was on those pages.
There have been several ways and spontaneous attempts to escape the grip of the book and its six hundred pages, including the move to colloquial Arabic, which was oral and became written, as we observe on social media pages, where there are many who write in colloquial Arabic, We feel that it is easier for them to express themselves in colloquial Arabic, and their presentation of their ideas in colloquial Arabic may be clearer and more accurate,What they lack in terms of vocabulary, they brought from the mother tongue of these words, that is, they were infused with foreign words, This development is a reality that should be taken seriously and dealt with on this basis, It is impossible to write a newspaper in the language of Ibn Abdullah’s book, and even Ibn Abdullah would not understand what is written in the language of a newspaper in this era.
The language of Ibn Abdullah’s book has no relation to the language we speak, and some even write, Here we ask, what is the fate of a language called classical and sacred? When the written and spoken language distances itself from the language of this book, then the language of the book becomes an unwritten and unspoken language, What is the value of a language that is not intended for speaking and writing? Then this language becomes a museum piece, a dead relic!
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