The role of language in Arab reforms

[Warrior of Light]

The role of language in Arab reforms

By Shaheen Chughtai

 

Sunday 20 June 2004, 18:04 Makka Time, 15:04 GMT

 

Arab governments are under pressure to change curricula

 

 

Related:

Scepticism over curricula review

Arab schoolbooks reform face opposition

Palestine textbooks under fire

 

 

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"The war is language," wrote American beat generation poet Allen Ginsberg,

in his Wichita Vortex Sutra. "Language used like magic for power on the

planet."

Ginsberg's Vietnam-war-era concerns about the manipulation of language

during times of conflict finds an echo in today's Middle East, where Arab

governments have come under increasing pressure from Western centres of

power to reform not only their political systems but their educational

curricula.

This pressure springs partly from a belief that the Middle East's schools

and universities have nurtured a world view that helped motivate those

responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks on the US.

Following those plane attacks, Saudi Arabia - home to 15 of the alleged

hijackers - began a review of schoolbooks for evidence of extremism. About

five per cent of the material has been deemed objectionable and purged.

Some Arabs have welcomed such changes. The editor-in-chief of Saudi

newspaper al-Riyadh, Turki al-Sudairi, recently blamed "our education system

which does not stress tolerance of other faiths" for encouraging terrorism.

During a recent Aljazeera interview US Secretary of State Colin Powell said

he sensed that "the people of the Middle East are asking for reform. It's

not just a question the United States wants it [sic]." But the notion of

ideologically-driven reform of curricula has also stirred controversy and

criticism.

"Do you have a new religion you want to teach students? Is it the Western

religion? Is it the new American religion?" demanded Islamist MP Abd Allah

Okash during a Kuwaiti parliamentary debate last December after the

government said it wanted to alter textbooks to promote tolerance.

War of words

For those who believe traditional curricula help to breed extremists, Arabic

is a key culprit. In the battle for tongues and minds, English has been

deployed as a weapon to counter the militancy allegedly fostered by

Arabic-medium education.

Saudi authorities announced last month that English will be taught as a core

subject alongside Arabic and maths beginning this coming school year.

 

English has become a core school

subject in Saudi Arabia

"After 9/11, there emerged a troubling view that teaching Arabic and Islam

encouraged militant tendencies," says Sohail Karmani, an English language

teaching (ELT) professional based in the UAE, "whereas English was seen as

promoting the values of freedom, tolerance and democracy."

Karmani is the founder of TESOL Islamia, an organisation based in Abu Dhabi

that aims to raise ideological awareness of issues in English language

education in Arab and Muslim countries and to promote ELT in ways that best

serve the socio-political and socio-cultural interests of Arabs and Muslims.

"Some Muslims will naturally feel that there is a conspiracy to destroy

Arabic because of its obvious proximity to Islam," says Karmani. "But I

think this is far too sophisticated for the Bush administration, although it

probably does have this crude vision of Arabic as being somehow specially

endowed in nurturing a militant mindset."

Mujahidin training

The Afghan experience may have helped shape these associations between

education and behaviour. Islamist-oriented madrassas were encouraged to

produce combat-minded mujahidin to fight the atheistic Soviet occupiers in

the 1980s.

"Afghanistan is a good example," says Karmani. "During the Soviet years, the

US actively promoted a jihadist worldview through Dari and Pashto [the two

main Afghan languages] along with US-produced school textbooks which

contained explicit references to war and hatred. After 9/11, it seems to

have reversed the paradigm, using English now to promote tolerance and

democracy."

 

Language was used to help create

a generation of Afghan warrior

But critics such as Karmani ridicule the premise that Arabic-medium and

Islamic-oriented education act as some kind of cultural poison to

susceptible students, for which English is the antidote.

"It's an absurd idea," says Karmani, who has more than 15 years ELT

experience in his native Britain, Italy and, for the last eight years, in

the Gulf.

"Usama bin Ladin, like most of the 19 hijackers [blamed for the 9/11

attacks], is probably well versed in English. In fact, the attacks would

have been virtually impossible if the hijackers hadn't known English. In a

sense, it was a crucial part of their cover."

Nevertheless, the concept of English as a modern Trojan horse carrying a

different set of beliefs and views into hostile territory has reared its

head in Iraq, where ELT intertwined with missionary work has enjoyed a

post-war surge.

Mission Iraq

American evangelical Christian organisations, including Voice of the Martyrs

the Southern Baptist Convention and the Association of Baptists for World

Evangelism, have declared Muslims in Iraq as priority targets for

proselytising.

"Right now there are scores of rightwing Christian missionaries flooding

into Iraq," says Karmani. "Many have no moral qualms about using English as

a tool to reach Muslims often under the false pretence of offering free

English lessons and thereby establishing intimate contact with local

communities, particularly Muslim women."

 

Iraqi pupils may find that some

teachers have a hidden agenda

 

Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham - both senior American Christian

leaders who are close to the Bush administration - has planned a major

proselytising operation in Iraq through his organisation Samaritan's Purse.

Such US evangelicals see their mission in Iraq in the context of a clash

between superior and inferior belief systems. The younger Graham has a

history of anti-Islam comments, including his description of it as "a very

evil and wicked religion" that encourages terrorism.

Organisations such as the Billy Graham Center and Christian Educators in

TESOL offer advice to Christians wishing to teach English to foreign

unbelievers. And websites such as Missionfinder.org carry adverts for

English-teaching missionaries in Iraq.

Promoting English

The US State Department promotes the spread of English overseas through the

Office of English Language Programmes (OELP), which has 16 regional English

language officers (RELOs) - four of them in the Middle East - as well

project specialists and support staff.

The OELP aims to create and support targeted English language projects "to

promote mutual understanding between the United States and other countries"

- drawing a clear link between English language and diplomacy.

 

Secretary of State Colin Powell

(L) has called for Arab reforms

The OELP's work is administered through embassies and consulates and

includes the development of English teaching curricula, textbooks, and

teacher-training workshops. US embassies in Jordan, Syria and Yemen conduct

their own English training programmes while those in Egypt, Morocco and

Tunisia give support to affiliated projects.

The US aid agency USAID is also involved in English teacher training

programmes, most notably in Egypt.

In addition, Powell launched the Middle East Partnership Initiative at the

end of 2002 to promote political, economic and educational reforms in the

region.

"The drive for reform is being increasingly stepped up by Washington," says

Karmani. "And what's worrying is that there seems to be no moral debate

about introducing secular reforms into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world."

Regional reforms

With or without that impetus, curricular reforms and the spread of English

have continued apace in the Middle East, especially in the Gulf. Saudi

Arabia has implemented well publicised changes but the regional pace-setter

is Qatar, where a major revamp of school curricula, educational facilities

and teaching methods is under way.

This autumn, Carnegie Mellon University joins fellow American institutions

Weill Cornell Medical College, Texas A&M University and Virginia

Commonwealth University who have already set up English-medium branches in

Qatar.

"Students are learning more English and less

Islam"

Washington Post on US colleges setting up in Qatar

But according to Cairo-based RELO Robert Lindsey, the US promotion of

English has always been "extremely modest and peripheral to our mainstream

public diplomacy and economic development policies".

"If there is in fact a correlation between the spread and use of English and

the spread of democratic values, then our public diplomacy has missed - and

continues to miss - a big opportunity," Lindsey told Aljazeera.net.

And Darwish al-Emadi, director of the Educational Institute at the Supreme

Educational Council that oversees the reforms, dismisses suggestions that

Qatar has succumbed to external pressure. The current reform campaign began

three months before the 9/11 attacks took place, he says, and only serves

educational purposes.

Nevertheless, many Western observers view the relationship between imported

subjects and native ones as essentially competitive. Writing in the

Washington Post last year, journalist Susan Glasser said Qatar's educational

reforms meant "students are learning more English and less Islam".

Coexistence

But are English and Arabic necessarily locked into a zero-sum contest? And

does an English education not empower students in a world where that

language dominates global commerce, travel, diplomacy and the internet?

Karmani argues that the two can coexist but to meet students' needs, English

might be taught as a foreign, not second, language. Countries such as France

Japan and Iceland cope well without having to resort to English-medium

education, he notes.

 

Experts agree that students

learn best in their native tongue

"It is an indisputable fact that people learn better in their mother tongue,

says Karmani. "But instead of being taught together, with English, Arabic

has been grotesquely marginalised.

"The result is that students leave universities with very poor levels of

English. The Arab Human Development Report for 2003 has found that ... young

people are leaving university with very poor language skills in both English

and Arabic. So, in a sense, these people are being disempowered by an

English-only approach to education."

Lindsey says that the US has no official position "other than a general

position in favour of freedom of choice: We would not like to see English as

a foreign language banned or severely hampered, or English-medium schools

closed." But he agrees that students normally learn better in their native

tongues.

The solution says Karmani, is "to promote more Arabic in ways that empower

young people and to explore ways of adding English as a means of building on

literacy in Arabic.

"There is a desperate need for a debate on language policy issues in the

Arab world, to determine just how much English we really need and why we

need it along with a parallel debate on the role of classical, modern and

demotic varieties of Arabic."

Aljazeera

 

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