M. Bitar, Ruba Mansour:
We know of no peoples who venerate their language except for some so-called Arab peoples, This veneration hinders development and adaptation to new circumstances for Arab peoples, or rather, Arabized peoples, who justify stagnation with assumptions whose validity has not been proven since their inception, Some still justify the necessity of stagnation by saying that Arabic is the language spoken by angels, How do those addicted to stagnation know that angels use the Arabic language, and what is the proof of that? Have any of them spoken with angels? Is the existence of angels limited to the region extending from the ocean to the Gulf? Do the Chinese, Americans, or others live without angels? Did angels advise the Bedouins to engage in wars and raids, practice polygamy, kill apostates, cut off the hand of a thief, and so on? And did those pieces of advice lead the Arabs to a better life? And how can it be said that the life of the Arabs with the angels is better than the life of the Germans and the Japanese without angels? For without angels, the Japanese did not go hungry, nor did they become corrupt, lie, and flatter like the Arab, And why do the Arabs insist on hypotheses of this kind when those who do not speak with angels and do not fear the accursed Satan are ahead of them in all areas of life? And why has the Almighty not yet eliminated that accursed Satan?
The state of the language is no different from the state of the rest of the backward aspects of social life compared to the aspects of life of non-Arabs, This Arab peculiarity has reasons, including their lack of awareness of the concept of development and the dynamism of life through development, and the belief that stagnation and remaining imprisoned in the past is good for the present and the future,This is in contrast to all other peoples of the world, who have committed to development and practiced it and removed the stagnation imposed on more than half of society, that is, on women, who have to remain prisoners of the home and live ostracized with one wife and another, so that the rate of polygamy reaches 30% of all marriages, for example, in the Damascus countryside, and the percentage will certainly be higher in many other Arab regions!
The Arabs reject progress because it disrupts their reverence for the past, and the result is that they live in stagnation, since stagnation aligns with reverence, And what is the result of all this? The results are hunger, poverty, crime, corruption, and illiteracy among half the region’s population, in addition to many other negative consequences, How can they progress when backwardness and regression are their true goals in life? Every people on earth has religions and beliefs that do not oppose development and social progress, nor do they look backward as the Arabs and Muslims do, On the contrary, all peoples of the world have religious, political, and social freedoms, and they do not oppress others in their countries, nor do they oppose women’s liberation, Religion opposes the liberation of women, the liberation of language, and the liberation of humanity from superstition. When women are enslaved in religious communities, the reason must be sought in religion and religiosity!
Language becomes a tool for idle chatter and triviality when it regresses to a Salafist language that takes people back to the past and to Abu Zayd al-Hilali and Antarah, unlike the English language, which is characterized by being futuristic in terms of the inventions, discoveries, and developments it conveys, which are contrary to the state of modern Arab cultural stagnation, which does not convey the new because there is no new, and does not accept the new even in the methods of governance, where sterility prevails, which delusion has contributed to reproducing, with the deluded thinking that they were advanced, And how were they advanced when they lived by the sword and “my sustenance was in the shadow of my spear!!!” And is the enslavement of the daughters of Spain progress? Is Egypt considered a milking cow whose milk must be sucked to the last drop? Is the Bab Sharqi massacre in Damascus, and then coloring the river waters with the blood of Ibn al-Walid’s massacres (the Red River), an act to be emulated? Is it ethical to consider Ibn al-Walid one of the ten promised Paradise? Resorting to the old represents a forced escape from the new, which the Arabs were unable to formulate, create, and follow.
Language was not merely a hindrance, nor was its deficiency simply a failure to convey the new. In truth, there was nothing new for it to convey. Minds imprisoned by dogma and delusion were incapable of producing the new, deemed heresy, that language was supposed to transmit. The language itself was afflicted with a kind of traditionalism. It is proudly proclaimed that this language has preserved its rules since 1440, without any shame or embarrassment in admitting it, A language that has maintained its form and style for fourteen centuries acknowledges its rigidity and takes pride in its stagnation and in outdated linguistic structures, such as modes of expression, value systems, and methods of communication, In short, ossification became a source of pride. Other areas, like the culture of communication and dialogue, were frozen. Look at social media platforms and the sterile dialogues that, in most cases, consist of insults, mockery, digressions, and an addiction to dictation and imposition, Even the claim of preserving rules was a lie. What percentage of people can write a sentence of seven words? Without seven linguistic errors? Al-Mutanabbi’s language did not preserve its rules, but rather turned into wreckage with regard to those rules, and into a corpse with regard to understanding, And how will this understanding be achieved in a language that those who want to understand others do not master? The replacement of the official language with local dialects is proof that this language has given you its life, especially when 50% of Arabs remain illiterate, unable to read or write!