M. Bitar, Ruba Mansour
Every language has a certain load, and the Arabic language has its load, which is predominantly sacred, For example, the call to prayer must be recited in Arabic, It is also said that Arabic was the language of Adam, or that it is the language of the Creator, and thus it became sacred, The language with its weight is like the camel with what it carries, What is the effect of sanctification on Arabic?
There is no doubt that sanctification raised its moral status, but it reduced its value and practical capabilities, Sanctification restricted it, hindered its development, and put it in a crisis with the possibilities of its use, Language is not exclusively for conveying Al-Mutanabbi’s poetry, but for use in evolving and changing aspects of life, Here, sanctification stands as an obstacle to the language and reduces the possibilities of its use, The accumulation of this characteristic, i.e., the decrease in possibilities of use, led to a gradual and increasing decrease in its functional tasks, until the language became out of service, i.e., it turned into a museum piece, Charging the language with the sacred was harmful to it, for the fixed, frozen sacred is the poison on which and by which the language dies.
The whole thing is a burden! This is the state of the language in general and in short, Among the burdens of Arabic were the concepts of holy jihad and its appendages such as conquests and other such offshoots, Jihad is an obligation and a condition for the completion of the religion, and under the banner of jihad, holy violence is practiced, so that it is theoretically possible to consider jihad as a sixth pillar of the religion, Jihad is more important than prayer, To disguise, jihad is justified as being “in the way of God,” while jihad in reality is not in the way of God, but rather in the way of the Sultan, and for the sake of spoils, theft, captivity and the virgins of Paradise.
The Arabic language carries the concepts of holy jihad, which allows for the establishment of an authority alongside the authority of the state, and thus a mini-state within the state, which reduces the importance of the state to the point of its non-existence,This is done through practices that contradict the provisions of the constitution and the law of the state, Holy jihad includes holy conquest and includes the establishment of punishments such as stoning or the killing of the polytheist, apostate or infidel, then spreading the message and so on, However, spreading the message, violating the rights of other peoples and establishing punishments are not among the tasks of the state stipulated in the constitution and in positive laws, which know only the obligation of non-aggression, The laws of any “state” do not know the features of jihad such as conquest and spreading religious messages, whether by the sword or without the sword, Therefore, the linguistic burden of jihad and its practical applications can be considered a war against the state, Whoever reduces the capabilities of the state is fighting it.
Among the burdens of the Arabic language are those pertaining to the concepts of justice and equality, For many reasons, Arabic prioritizes justice over equality, meaning that the language’s approach in this regard is flawed, This language doesn’t distinguish between justice, which is a legal concept, and equity, which is a human concept, Prioritizing justice over equality is inherently contradictory, There is no justice without equality, and the absence of equality is equivalent to the absence of justice, but it is not as contradictory to justice,A mother who steals to feed her children is condemned by the law because she stole, but she is not condemned by the concept of justice, which understands stealing to feed children, Generally, Arabic carries many rejected and reprehensible concepts, such as the concept of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a nose for a nose, and a head for a head, These are not the only reprehensible concepts; other reprehensible concepts are added, such as the prohibition against killing a believer for killing an unbeliever, and the differentiation between believers and unbelievers regarding the punishment for murder, A believer who kills is not the same as an unbeliever who kills, and the blood money for killing a believer is very different from the blood money for killing an unbeliever , Therefore, it can be considered The moral implications of this language and what it expresses regarding justice, fairness, and equality are harmful, degrading, and then conflicting with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in addition to that.
Before his death, veteran journalist Hassanein Heikal told a story about Kemal Ataturk on the program “Egypt, Where To?” with Lamis El-Hadidi,Mustafa Kemal was asked about the reasons that prompted him to abolish the use of Arabic letters in the Turkish language, that is, to practically abolish the Arabic language, He answered, in essence, that the Arab region is plagued with destructive ideas and perceptions, and all of that is documented and preserved in the Arabic language, and that severing ties with this language is one of the means of distancing oneself from that sick heritage, Indeed, Turkey’s launch into modernity was greater than expected after its defeat in the First World War, There is certainly a causal relationship between the secular Turkish renaissance and Ataturk’s measures regarding letters, language, the call to prayer, the role of religious figures, and the possibility of learning from the late Bedouin Arab heritage, etc.
If we take the Algerian experience, which is the opposite of the Ataturk Turkish experience, in Algeria Arabization began in the seventies of the last century at the hands of Houari Boumediene, and thus the Arab heritage was transferred to education and administration, In addition, many Arab teachers were brought to Algeria, These teachers transferred the Bedouin Arab culture to the country, and education thus moved from studying Hegel, Descartes, Hume, Rousseau, Kant and others to studying Ibn Taymiyyah, Al-Ghazali, Muhammad Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, Al-Ash’ari, Al-Sha’rawi and the like, which led to the collapse of the level of culture and to the transfer of the culture of jihad and violence to the country, Even the enmity between the Ahl al-Bayt group and the Companions group was transferred to the country despite the absence of Shiites there, All of this ended with the outbreak of the flames of a civil war that lasted for about ten years and claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Algerians,This tragedy was repeated in several countries such as Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya and others.
Arabization was not limited to creating cultural isolation from the world and neglecting to benefit from global civilization and the science and knowledge created by other peoples, Arabization enabled the infiltration of the culture of violence, conflict, corruption, fundamentalism, Sayyid Qutb, Al-Banna, Ibn Taymiyyah, Wahhabism, tribalism, and clannishness into people’s minds, There is no need to mention what has been and is being spent in terms of money and media infusion of dark ideas, the culture of terrorism, eating hearts and livers, then the culture of fatalism, dependency, conspiracy, caliphate, leadership, individual heroism, and emulation of criminal symbols, and all that the peoples of the Arabic-speaking region suffer from , It is noteworthy that these problems do not exist in the societies of Southeast Asia, for example, Here, it is worth asking about the factors that led to this disparity, and to the rise of some peoples and the decline of the conditions of others, The Southeast Asian countries that do not speak Arabic, such as Malaysia, did not suffer from what the Arabized Arab countries suffer from.
Post Views: 48