The story is not religion! – Saudi Arabia News

Colleague Sawsan Al-Abtah wrote an article on October 17th entitled “The Killer Language”, against the backdrop of the controversy in France after President Emmanuel Macron announced his desire to promote the teaching of Arabic in schools.Al-Abtah, a professor in the Department of Arabic Language and Literature at the Lebanese University, and a journalist and writer for the Middle East newspaper, defended the idea of ​​teaching Arabic in French schools, like other languages. However, she says: “Macron made a mistake when he proposed in one project the subject of the Arabic language and the development of high-quality Islamic studies in universities, coupled with the fight against extremism. It opened a door for Arab fanatics on the one hand, and for French fanatics on the other hand, and everyone entered Hell.

Following Al-Abtah’s article, Dr. Hamza Al-Muzaini commented on Twitter, saying: “Dr. Sawsan Al-Abtah is important to a case that I noticed years ago, which is that one of the most important reasons for the weak teaching of the Arabic language to its children and non-children is that it carried an exaggerated religious burden and concealed that it is a living language that expresses life, art and beauty. Most of her texts presented to students are dark! ”

Dr. Turki Al-Hamad said: “I agreed with this proposition. The jurists and grammarians linked the logic of jurisprudence with the logic of grammar. He consecrated Arabic as a language that is exaggerated in its reverence and religious burden. His life, without taking into account the growth of this person ».

Dr. Tawfiq Al-Saif commented on Dr. Al-Muzaini: “Our professor agreed with you and Dr. Sawsan, the religious burden of the Arabic language made it narrow-minded and “forbidden” to conjugate. I previously noticed that most of those writing in English belong to other cultures, while writing Arabic is restricted to Arabs or those who belong to the Arab culture. The world’s contribution to Arab culture is almost zero ».

The truth is, I did not see in the colleague’s article Al-Abtah any connection with that. I asked Dr. Al-Abtah and she told me: “The story is more about identity,” as she criticizes the linking of teaching Arabic to religious reform, and says what is required is to teach Arabic like other languages ​​in French schools. She added: “Language is not a political or religious issue.”

Well, why do I care? The reason is simple because I spent more than two decades abroad between Washington and London, and I had children abroad who lived and learned, and I faced the problem of learning the Arabic language, and I was fully aware that the problem is not the religious bearing in the language, but the absence of teaching it in Western schools, and its abduction by extremists. Language is the vessel and the selection of texts is problematic to choose.

I admitted one of my sons to an Arab school in London every Saturday, after which I noticed that he was looking at matters from “permissible” and “forbidden” perspectives in a Western society! I asked him: Where did you learn this? He said: “From my teacher on Saturday!” As a result, I took him out of that school and agreed with another teacher to teach my children Arabic at home, on condition that she does not engage in “permissible” and “forbidden”.

The problem of the expatriate Arabs in learning their language is the loss of an identity and the difficulty of life in the motherland, due to an extremist teacher, and a strict approach, meaning selection, not religious conception, and therefore it is better for language to be taught in schools, like other languages, and not to be left to extremists.

This story, not the story of religion, that is another place, and another discussion.

Saudi writer

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