Arab - Speak Arabic

Arab - Speak Arabic

By Emmanuel Sivan

Good news for devotees of the Arabic language: Don't be discouraged, you are not alone. An ally has arisen in the north: the president of Syria. In his recent inauguration speech for a second term, he portrayed the spread of foreign words as a national enemy. He outlined "instructions" designed to prevent the deterioration of the Arabic language's status in advertisements, the media and education. He also demanded assistance for Arabic, to allow it to become more advanced "so that it can be integrated with scientific and cognitive development." Syria is an orderly country. The president speaks and the prime minister acts on it. The latter ordered regional governors to conduct a system of "Arabization," which mainly consists of removing signs from businesses that bear non-Arabic names - concepts and brand names that became so popular in the 1990s as globalization penetrated Syria. The governors received orders to replace these with Arabic writing, with the non-Arabic names appearing below in tiny letters. In advertisements, pure literary Arabic must be used, without using expressions from the colloquial language, which is a "murky and inferior version." Whenever any doubt arises about a translation from a foreign language, the Academy for Arabic's directives should be followed. The Academy, of course, is in Damascus, "the beating heart of Arabism."

The regime has adopted a similar policy against high schools and private colleges that specialize in foreign languages: They have received a directive to focus on the core subjects, which are studied in Arabic. Much has changed since the 1980s, when Damascus comedians used to tell about a dialogue between two Alawi officers.

Officer A: "We won't be able to integrate into the global economy until we learn foreign languages."

Officer B: "I don't agree. Just yesterday I saw a foreign tourist ask passersby in Damascus, in five languages, how to get to the Kassioun market. No one understood him. So what good did all his knowledge of languages do him?

Today young and old flock to learn foreign languages at embassies and private institutes. Some are Alawis who work in government institutions and the army.

This affair illustrates the sense of siege the Syrian regime is experiencing. It is pitted against a Western cultural invasion. Al-ghazw al-fikri is an instructive Arab expression. It comes from the Muslim Brotherhood's vocabulary and is designed to take the wind out of the sails of this large opposition movement, which does not enjoy legal status but is being aided by the wave of religiosity sweeping the urban community. The Baath slogan "Syria as the focus of Arabism" has been painted by Assad with Muslim colors. Will this bolster his weakened legitimacy? Time will tell. Perhaps it will help to affirm a shared external enemy, in the spirit of the times and the "clash of civilizations."

But there is no guarantee, mainly because a second enemy of the regime is at the gate. As noted, the regime is based on a combination of Syrianism and Arabism. But the emphasis on the Syrian element, at a time when Syria appears isolated in the Arab arena, comes up against an alternative vision. Al-Qaida is now posing a challenge to the nation state - whether Syrian, Algerian or similar. Its slogan is wataniya = wathniya (nation state = paganism), and it expresses a vision in which the Islamic world returns to the way it was divided before the 20th century. Al-Qaida makes a point to refer to the area of Greater Syria (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine) as "al-Sham."

Some of Al-Qaida's prominent ideologues are Syrian, and they disseminate these ideas on the Internet. A possible interpretation: dismantling Syria and integrating it into "liberated enclaves" in al-Sham. Soon the Syrian volunteers will return from the jihad in Iraq, bringing ideas of this sort. In short, the isolated Assad regime, whose base of legitimacy is weakening, has reasons to be fearful. Also from within.

from
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/909635.html