Hi Maha,

Most people are blissfully unaware of language – and, by the way, consider themselves experts simply because they speak one. Language expresses power both overtly and covertly – in ways we are aware of and in ways we ignore.

I did not forget to talk about the political dimension but just thought I’d written enough and so stopped. English speakers are often aware of the political force of their language and you even see this discussed in near-mainstream groups under the rubric of “language imperialism.” There is an inverse phenomenon of native speakers becoming outnumbered by second language learners and then overwhelmed and losing control of English. I think it will become more and more clear that this is indeed the case over the next 50 years. Already, most academic writing in English is by non-native speakers. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Native speakers are often the most obtuse and incomprehensible of writers.

I agree with your point about Arabic having become a language of consumers rather than producers of knowledge. This has the affect of arresting its development and further fragmenting it into a plethora of local and regional dialects, creoles, and pidgin forms.

This is a direct result of the political and economic containment of the Arab world. Even in areas of theology and law, where Arabic was historically productive, there has been a stasis since sometime in the 18th century with the adoption of strongly positivist views toward these subjects expressed in such ways as “the doors of ijtihad are closed.” This notion may have come from Western “science” of at era, or it may have been in response to political monopolization of authority on a local level. Whatever the reason, memory and application became more valued than inquiry and innovation.

Today, the Arabs are more completely subjugated than they were under the French and British Empires. In those days, there was still some independent trade, science, law, and culture. It is difficult to see these things today. In the Arab world, elites are speaking English and elite universities are, by definition, English only institutions. Both you and I work in such institutions. Muslim societies have been polarized by a Western philosophical dichotomy of secular and religious, which is irrelevant to Muslim and Islamic civilization but which, nevertheless, paralyzes the Arabs and makes any kind of progress extremely difficult – you see this in Egypt very clearly today.

We know that for every malady there is a remedy – li kulli daa` dawaa` – so the solution is self-evident, self-evident and unknown at least until someone recognizes it.

In the mean time, work needs to be done to rehabilitate Arabic as a language of knowledge producers. The place for that is in primary and middle school public education in the Arabic world that focuses less on 19th century values of social control, obedience and more on knowledge production, innovation, problem solving, and the development of coherent social and political values.