The Impact of Globalization on the Arabic Language1

Globalization, modernization, and secularization bring considerable benefits, technologically, politically, and economically. Their encroachment, however, by means of mass media and popular culture, may also undermine existing socio-linguistic structures. In the case of Arabic, this means, diminishing the depth and breadth of the Allah Lexicon. This lexicon is the rich and varied body of hundreds, perhaps thousands of religious expressions which form a unique feature of the Arabic language, including insha’ Allah [God willing], alhamdulillah [Praise be to God], subhana Allah [Glory be to God], masha Allah [It is the will of God], baraka Allahu fik [May God bless you], jazaka Allah khayr [May God reward you], fi amanillah [Go with God], inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un [From God we come and to Him is our return] and a multitude of others. Considering the importance of the Allah Lexicon in terms of linguistic, cultural, and religious identity, we have examined the effects of globalization on the Lexicon, issues of cross-cultural transferability, as well as the consequences of alienating language policies, all of which compromise cultural and linguistic diversity. Based on a review of the literature, as well as fieldwork conducted among Arabic-speakers at home and abroad it becomes evident that secularization is placing the stability of this core linguistic system in peril.

In the Arabic-Islamic world, both the Arabic language and the Muslim faith are often viewed as inseparable parts of the same Arab Muslim identity. In the words of ‘Abdo A. Elkholy, “The Arabic language is an inseparable part of Islam” (Turner Medhi, 1978, 109). As Desmond Stewart (1968) explains, “[t]he Arabic language is more than the unifying bond of the Arab world; it also shapes and molds that world” (14). Since Arabic is the language of the Qur’an and Muhammad, the Messenger of God, “it has an even greater effect on its speakers than other languages have on their speakers” (14).

Speakers of Arabic and those who read it via their devotion to the Qur’an recognize the language as directly dispensing Allah’s word and law, as well as the words of the earliest disciples of those pronouncements. Through the Allah Lexicon, those who are directly connected to Arabic have absorbed a repertoire of divine sentiment into their daily speech, assigning Allah’s influence over every area of their lives. The array of items within the Allah Lexicon demonstrates this component of identity as it is exhibited both by elective and affective elements of lifestyle. As Hetherington (1998) explains, “The terms ‘elective’ and ‘affective’ can be directly connected to religious identification, given that a religion is both a chosen feature of a lifestyle and one intended to give voice to emotion and mirror a response to it” (49). This tie, between Arabic and Islam, has not gone unnoticed. In fact, it has been readily understood by those who seek to undermine it.

With the fall of Granada in 1492, the “Muslim Question,” needed to be addressed. What was to be done with the millions of Muslims in Spain? The answer came quickly: forced conversion to Catholicism through the destruction of everything related to the Islamic identity. This left Muslims with two choices: leave Spain or practice pious dissimulation or taqiyyah (Watt, 1965, 182). Among the prohibitions enacted were bans on Islamic dress, ritual baths, prayers and fasting, the pilgrimage to Mecca, and paying zakah. At the fore, however, was the prohibition to either speak or write Arabic, for which the penalties were severe: “thirty days in prison in chains for the first offense, double the sentence for the second offense, and for the third offense men were given a hundred lashes and four years in the galleys while women and youths under seventeen were given four years in prison” (Thomson, 1989, 295).

The persecution of secret Muslims was so severe that “[t]he parents could not even afford to say Allah in the presence of young children,” who were kept ignorant of Islam at least until the age of reason, for fear that a childish indiscretion might betray the whole family (284). Severed from Arabic, the secret Muslims were cut off from the Qur’an. While they lost their language, the Moriscos retained the Arabic script for writing in Spanish, a mark of the religious significance of the script and their determination to affirm their cultural identity as Muslims (López-Morillas, 1994, 17). With time, however, the knowledge of the Arabic script was also lost. The only thing that remained in their hearts was a silent affirmation of La ilaha illa Allah, Muhammadun Rasulu Allah, without knowing experientially the meaning of what they secretly believed (Thomson, 1989, 285). Due to this loss of personal religious experience over the generations, the knowledge of Islam among these secret Muslims became severely limited, facilitating their gradual assimilation into Catholicism and the eventual elimination of Islam in Spain.

This same desire to eliminate Islam through the elimination of Arabic was demonstrated by Western powers when they colonized the Arabic-Islamic world. According to Darwish al-Jundi, “The imperialists…were aware of the influence of the Arabic language…They fought it and tried to replace it with their own languages. They also attempted to develop colloquial and regional dialects, hoping thereby to stamp out classical Arabic” (Laffin, 1975, 67-68). In most Arabic-speaking countries, some secularized politicians or writers have advocated converting the regional dialect into the official language and relegating classical Arabic to ruin. In every case, this has failed, due in large part to a profound Arabic-Islamic identity.

In non-Arab countries, where the bond to the Qur’an was limited to similarities in script and language differences made access to its significance more difficult, efforts to further distance Muslims from their scripture have been more successful. In Turkey, for example, Kemal Ataturk eliminated the Arabic alphabet and replaced it with a Latin-based one, effectively ensuring that future generations of Turks would not be able to read the Qur’an in its original Arabic without the substantial effort required to learn the script. In Iran, the Shah commenced a campaign to “purge” the Persian language from Arabic loan-words and planned to replace the Persian alphabet, of Arabic origin, with the Latin one. His design to subordinate the Arabic script was viewed as an attempt to alienate the Iranians from the Qur’an and ultimately played a role in his overthrow during the Islamic Revolution of Iran.

The importance of the Arabic script extends far beyond the graphic representation of a given set of sounds by a particular set of letters (López-Morillas, 1994, 18). Whether it’s Morisco Spanish, Persian, Ottoman Turkish or Urdu, the “use of the Arabic alphabet brings with it a considerable degree of Arabization and Islamicization of the original languages” (18). Muslims in the Indian subcontinent have been very conscious of this fact. Since Urdu, in its written form, used the Arabic-Persian alphabet, it is perceived as having great symbolic importance. As a result, the educated Muslim elite have viewed any opposition to the use of the Urdu script as a threat, not only to their professional positions, but also to Islamic culture in general (Minault, 1978, 456). If attempts have been made to undermine Islam by eliminating the Arabic alphabet, attempts are now being made to undermine Islam by depriving it of its essential religious expressions.

In the Western world, the Allah Lexicon appears to be under attack by both malevolent and benign forces. In the case of France, a deliberate campaign of cultural imperialism is being waged against the Allah Lexicon with scholars like Paul Balta and Linda Hamoud advocating the creation of a “secular Arabic,” an Arabic language detached from Islam. According to Paul Balta (1991), the famous French Orientalist of Egyptian origin, “teaching Arabic does not go against secularism” (123). While he admits that “Islam is an unavoidable element in learning this language” he insists that “it is possible to deal with it in secular manner” (123). According to Linda Hamoud (2004), speaking about religion in an Arabic language class poses a serious problem (67). The problem with teaching Arabic, she notes, is that it arouses interest in Islam. As she explains,

The problem revolves around the fact that from sixth grade and up the questions of students concerning the Muslim religion made to the Arabic teacher are frequent and persistent. In the context of a republican secular school system, which finds itself in direct competition with the Arabic language instruction provided by mosques, the opinions of the teacher regarding religious subjects comes into direct conflict with the teachings of the Imam. In fact, he has a natural authority on these types of subjects and, as a result, Arabic instructors find themselves unprepared to respond to students’ questions.

The solution to this problem, according to Hamoud (2004), is to use and diffuse: to deal with a religious sequence from Arabic television, addressing and analyzing images and elements so that students “avoid getting hit in the face with the religious message” (68). The goal, she explains, is “to show students that intertextuality goes beyond the words pronounced by the Shaykh” (69). Hamoud (2004) explains that religious discourse is based on “emotions and rarely on human reason” (69) which is why it should be avoided. Balta (1991) warns that “If public schools do not offer the possibility of learning Arabic, parents turn to associations, often of religious inspiration, which are even more difficult to control” (123).

As a result, he greatly encourages the French government to provide Arabic language instruction at all levels, from elementary school to university. In doing so, of course, “Arabic must not be considered as a religious language” (123). He feels that if the teaching of Arabic was valued as part of the national educational system, “it could be a powerful instrument encouraging secularism and integration” (123). In fact, he feels that if the state feigns support for the Islamic culture of the students, they would not feel the need to use religious symbols like the hijab to express their differences. Balta does not hide “the French Solution” to “the Muslim Problem.” When asked whether a secular Islam will be born in Western Europe, he explains that a new generation of secular Muslim intellectuals can serve as an example and “prepare the post-Islamist era” (330).

This would permit Muslims to continue, if they wish, to practice their religion within the confines of secular republicanism while ensuring that nothing stops them from ceasing to believe or to change their beliefs (330). The French policy with regard to the Islamic presence in the Arabic language and culture is to deflect it. Considering the fact that language cannot be meaningfully studied outside of the context of culture, the desire to create a “secular Arabic” poses serious pedagogical problems. It is politically-motivated pedagogy aimed more at attempting to secularize French Arabs than to teach the Arabic language.

In the rest of the Western world, the attack against the Allah Lexicon is more subtle, the influence of popular culture, secularization, globalization, and modernization, rather than overtly aggressive governmental policy. Due to discrimination, fear of persecution, stereotyping, the inability to find work, Arab and Muslim immigrants to the Western world have a long history of assimilation. Along with a consistent pattern of derision of Islam, there exists the currently promoted belief that there is something inherently violent buried within the history and essence of the religion, a violence totally distinct from Christianity’s own history of Crusades, slaughters, Inquisitions, and forced conversions (Hassan, 1995, 1-7).

Riding in tandem is a corresponding suspicion of the language itself which, paired with ethnic discrimination, leads young Arabic-speaking boys and girls to hide their heritage, refuse to speak the language of their parents and grandparents and take on names like Sam instead of Sulayman, or Abe instead of Ibrahim. As a result of all of these factors, Ronald Taft (1989), Desmond Cahill (1989), Saed Bader Dweik (1980), Ghazi Shorrab (1986) and ‘Abdel Fattah Bani Hani (2001) have all shown that Arab children have a high rate of language erosion and attrition. As Beverlee Turner Mehdi (1978) has observed, Arabs are characterized by the fact that they are so easily assimilated into American and Western culture (VIII).

As we have established in our book Arabic, Islam, and the Allah Lexicon, religious expressions form a vital and required feature of the Arabic language. They have been dictated by Allah in the Qur’an and the Prophet in the Sunnah. In response, tradition has found countless circumstances and formations for its delivery. Some of these phrases, reminders of Allah’s power, characteristics, capacity and identity have been seen to appear in conversation multiple times each day in venues from the marketplace to the television news. In fact, Arabic religious expressions are so common that the language counts Allah as its most common content word. You simply cannot effectively and legitimately teach Arabic without including Islamic expressions. As Harrell, Abu-Talib, and Carroll (2003) explain,

It is an important cultural pattern that compliments or words of praise should be accompanied by a deferential reference to God. Without the reference to God, such statements appear crude, and in older, more traditional social circles, they are taken as bad omens which bring misfortune. References to God of this sort are usually not directly translatable into English. (352)

One of the fundamental differences between both languages is that in English the word “God” is usually restricted to either oaths, both profane and serious, or to formally serious situations (331). Arabic, on the other hand, “employs references to God and to religion in general, in a wide variety of everyday situations” (331). El-Sayed (1991) notes that “[a] failure to grasp the often subtle differences between first language and target language formulas can lead to serious misunderstandings and misjudgments” (1). As Eirlys Davies (2000) explains,

Learners with a good mastery of the pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary of a language may nevertheless be extremely unsuccessful in their interactions with native speakers of that language if they do not have some understanding of their norms of politeness; indeed, as would be the case with stylistic errors in general…it is likely that the more proficient learners are in other aspects, the greater will be the danger that their failure to use the appropriate strategies may be perceived, not as evidence of lack of proficiency, but rather as a sign of disrespect, hostility, or other negative attitudes. (76)

She further warns that the inappropriate use of religiously-based Arabic politeness expression may be perceived as abrupt of impolite (80). Arabic-speakers rarely say shukran or thank you, typically opting for the religious barakallahufik “May God bless you” or jazaka Allahu khayran “May God reward you.” A mere la or “no” can be terribly rude in Arabic culture where the polite response to a request one cannot or will not grant is Allah yu‘tik or “May God give you” based on the Qur’anic verse

“And even if thou hast to turn away from them…speak to them a word of kindness” (17:28).

You may not have given them what they want, but at least you gave them a blessing. Even basic greetings and salutations are religiously-based. As Khalid S.A. Hassanain (1994) warns in his article “Saudi Mode of Greeting Rituals,” “[v]iolations of…social greeting rituals lead to undesired consequences or to a provocation of violence resulting in misunderstanding or misinterpreting of the verbal and non-verbal behavior in the Saudi setting” (68). Clearly, you cannot communicate proficiently in Arabic without a mastery of religiously-prescribed expressions. Consequently, you cannot teach Arabic without considering Islamic culture. As Joshua Fishman (1996) has said, Arabic is a “holy language:” it cannot be separated from the religion that arose within its use (11).

While Arabic religious expressions continue to be widely used in daily discourse in the Arab world, the local variations of the Allah Lexicon are being reduced due to the influence of the Arabic mass media, particularly on women. In Oman, for example, while older people, especially women, often use ta’aqqabna ‘alaykum al-‘afiyyah [May good health follow you], darbak khadra [may your path be green] and qiddaish al-Rahman [God, the Compassionate, is before you], men appear to favor hayyak Allah [May God give you life] and young women tend to employ the pan-Arabic ma‘a al-salamah as a closing exchange more than men (Emery, 2000, 208). While satellite television and the internet help spread Modern Standard Arabic, strengthening and uniting the Arabic world, they also contribute to a standardization of Arabic dialects, reducing the regional range of Allah expressions.

The major challenge to the depth and diversity of the Allah Lexicon comes from Western popular culture by means of television, movies, and music. As Ferguson has pointed out with regards to Syria, the younger generation’s reduced use of Arabic politeness formulas, both in terms of formulas and complexity of patterns, may be attributed to urbanization and secularization, as well as European and American influence (68). How, then, will the Allah Lexicon, as a system of devotion and cultural consciousness, be regarded and utilized by the younger generations? In the modern world, when youth-oriented cultures are sweeping the globe, will these aspects of tradition and reverence go the way of opening doors for ladies?

While the future is uncertain, the present reality is clear: the Arabic language is undergoing a reduction in the use of Islamic, Allah-centric, expressions, which are being supplanted by simplified forms based on English and French norms. As Charles Ferguson (1983) has observed, “the profusion of thank yous, good wishes, and the like of Arabic society is being reduced to the models of French and English usage” (68). In many large Arabic cities, the greeting al-salamu ‘alaykum, the very symbol of Islam, is sometimes viewed with contempt and its speaker dismissed as an arubi, a backwards peasant, by “sophisticated” Westernized Arabs who employ “Allo,” “Bonjour,” “Hi,” and “Hello.” The situation is accentuated in the Western world where a decline in the use of Allah expressions is observed among Arabic-speaking Muslims.

When faced with the loss of the Allah Lexicon, some scholars may respond with a simple “so what?” So what if the Arabic language is becoming less religious and so what if Arabs are becoming increasingly secularized. For some scholars, the loss of Islamic influence in language and culture is viewed as positive developments, the inevitable result of linguistic and socio-cultural evolution. With the Arabic language, however, the loss of the Allah Lexicon is not part of a natural phenomenon; it is the direct result of cultural, linguistic, and political imperialism. The assault against the religious nature of the Arabic language does not come from within, it comes from abroad. Take the case of France, for example, which is promoting a politically motivated pedagogy which seeks to create a “secular Arabic.” The question begs to be asked: What rights do the French have to dictate the nature of the Arabic language? Westerners who support the suppression of Islamic expressions in Arabic should first start by suppressing the Christian expressions in their own languages. Attempting to eliminate the religious dimensions of the Arabic language is akin to suppressing the sports-related vocabulary found in American English. Teaching Arabic to prepare the “post-Islamist” era, as Balta wishes, is as unethical and subversive as teaching Spanish to prepare the “post-Catholic” and “post-Hispanic” era. Attempting to remove religious references in a language is an act of censorship, a violation of human rights, an affront against freedoms of religion and expression.

There are those that will argue that the French are doing the “right thing.” If anything, they are doing the “extreme right-wing thing.” The more the French repress the religion, culture, and language of French Arabs, the more they will become resentful and radicalized. Imagine, for instance, the case of black riots in the United States. Would starting a campaign to ban “black English” be a sensible solution? The proponents of this approach might argue that black English has got too much “soul,” that it places black children at a disadvantage at school, that it helps reinforce communalism, that it promotes gang culture, and that it entrenches racial divisions in American society.

The problem with French Arabs was created by the French. It is not the result of Islam or the Arabic language. The French Arabs have lived in France for three generations. They are French by birth, by citizenship, by language, and culture. Most of them are secular, non-observant Muslims, and many of them have even lost the Arabic language. Despite adopting Western culture, they face marginalization and discrimination to the extent that 40% of young French Arabs are unemployed. Their predicament is similar to that of blacks in the United States. In the New York City, to cite a single example, black men between the ages of 16 to 64 face a 49.2% unemployment rate (Levitan, 2004).

Unlike white Americans, who have ties to their ancestral homelands in Europe, black Americans were completely cut off from Africa. They lost their religion, their culture, and their language. As such, they are entirely American. Yet despite the fact that they are the most American of the Americans, they have faced prejudice and persecution for one single reason: the color of their skin. The problem in France is not that French Arabs refuse to integrate and assimilate. The problem is that they are prevented from fully participating in society. Considering the fact that most French Arabs are irreligious - even Balta (1991) has shown this in his book - Islam, and Arabic culture cannot be blamed for the riots in France. The answer needs to be found elsewhere. The March 15th, 2000, report from the Advisory Committee on Human Rights seems like a good start. It indicates that 70% of French people admit to having racist sentiments (Savyon, 2005).

These arguments, of course, are unlikely to convince those who are stubbornly set in their ways. For many people in the Western world, Islam is not the solution, it is the problem. This is despite the fact that vast majority of Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding people, and those who are not, are typically responding to Western foreign policy. As people who appreciate cultural and linguistic diversity, we cannot help but lament the loss of such a central component of the Arabic language such as the Allah Lexicon. Saying that the Allah Lexicon, the Arabic language, or Islam, should go, is the same as advocating the elimination of English, Hebrew, and Chinese, and that we would be better off without Judaism, Christianity, and Buddhism. Erasing Islam from the Arabic language is much like the efforts of totalitarian regimes to re-write history. For us, the loss of any language, core linguistic feature, religious tradition or culture, is something which impoverishes us forever. It is more than losing a subspecies, a species, or an entire genus. It is more than losing an entire ecosystem. With every language we lose, we lose an entire world. It is something which, when it is gone, is irretrievable, rupturing a universal equilibrium.

While natural issues of language evolution may play a role in the omission of Allah phrases, the major impulse seems to be the result of globalization. The cause for the reduction in Arabic religious expressions being established, it is essential to consider its consequences in terms of religious bonds. In point of fact, the missing phrases and expletives from the Allah Lexicon mean that speakers are in limited contact with the Divine, a serious blow when one considers that Allah and Islam are the basis of Arabic-Islamic identity. The loss of Arabic in any Muslim venue, and the Allah Lexicon as an umbilical-like connection between the religion and the language, would be a loss that would indelibly alter the nature of the religion itself. The loss of the Allah Lexicon is a loss of culture, identity, sense of self, individuality and community. It is the demise of cultural diversity and the harbinger of linguistic homogeneity.

This study relates to the issues of translatability and culture-loss addressed in the Intercultural Communication Studies XIV, 4 (2005) on Translation, Representation, and Identity in Intercultural Communication. In her article on “Transparency in Translating from Arabic,” Myriam Salama-Carr demonstrates how some French translations of Arabic literature distort the sense of the originals in order to render them more exotic (112). Jolanda Guardi’s article on “The Status of Algerian Literature in Italy: Between Random Approaches and the Perpetuation of Stereotypes” addresses the ethnocentric violence of translation (93). The author exposes the role of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the publication of Algerian literature as an act of cultural colonialism which seeks to assert that French is the natural language of culture and that Arabic was imposed by force (98). In his article, “Cultural Dislocation through Translation,” Said Faiq shows how many translations of Arabic literature merely serve to subvert Arab realities and Islam in order to reinforce Western culture (73).

While the subversion often comes from foreign-sponsored translators, it is also the result of Arab authors who write in Arabic for the sole purpose of translation and whose intended audience is not Arab at all (67). Their works are translated into European languages, particularly English and French, reaffirming two dominant concepts: the oppression of Arab women and the myth of Islamic fundamentalism (67). In short, Said Faiq demonstrates that much modern Arabic literature, particularly in translation, seeks to support Western stereotypes and prejudices about the Arab-Islamic world. It comes as no surprise, then, that Robert de Beaugrande’s article on “Geopolitics, Geolinguistics, and Translatability,” concludes that “The Arabic language may be threatened by a translation-based trend toward an enforced modernity that could eventually compromise its identity” (13). If Salama-Carr, Faiq, Guardi, and Beaugrande have pointed out the perils posed by manipulative translations, our study has examined the wider impact of globalization, with a particular focus on politically-motivated pedagogy, namely, the French attempt to create a “secular” Arabic. Clearly, the Arabic language is undergoing a loss of important religious and cultural components. According to Tim Walters’ article, “Determinants of Cross-Cultural Media Usage Patterns in the United Arab Emirates,” and which is published in this present volume, the very survival of the Arabic language is at stake in certain parts of the Arab world.

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• 1. This article, which was co-authored by my colleague Barbara Castleton, was previously published in Intercultural Communication Studies XVI 2 (2007) 202-212. It is available online at: www.uri.edu/.../16% 20 John %20A.%20Morrow%20&%20Barbara%20Castleton.pdf .