Learning Arabic Can Make Citizens of Pakistan A Better Person or Create Unity Is A Bizarre Thought
By
Pervez Hoodbhoy
February
13, 2021
IN every
school of Islamabad every child shall henceforth be compelled to study the
Arabic language from Grade 1 to Grade 5. Thereafter he or she shall learn
Arabic grammar from Grade 6 to Grade 12. By unanimous vote, that’s what the
Senate of Pakistan has decided. Introduced on Feb 1, 2021 as a private member’s
bill by Senator Javed Abbasi of the PML-N, the Compulsory Teaching of Arabic
Language Bill, 2020, will become an act of parliament once approved by the
National Assembly. Thereafter it is likely to be applied across the country.
Should we
citizens celebrate or be worried? That depends upon whether desired outcomes
can be attained. Let’s therefore see what reasons were given by our lawmakers
for the bill, one that will deeply impact many generations to come.
First, the
bill states that proficiency in Arabic will “broaden the employment and
business opportunities for the citizens of Pakistan” in rich Arab countries.
While attraction to Arab oil wealth is understandable and has long been
pursued, this reason is weak. Jobs and businesses go to persons with specific
skills or those who have deliverables to offer.
Just look
at who gets invited to GCC countries. Westerners having zero familiarity with
Arabic but high expertise are most sought after. Indians are a distant second,
getting only about 10 per cent of high-level jobs with the rest performing
menial and unskilled construction tasks. Pakistanis stand still further below
with only 3pc at higher levels. This is because of low professional and life
skills. With the Pakistani schoolchild now to be burdened with learning yet
another language, achievement levels will further deteriorate.
If the
Pakistani job seeker could use his school-learned Arabic to communicate with
Arabs, would it improve matters? This is unlikely. Graduates from Pakistani madrasas
seeking to understand the Holy Quran spend their lives trying to master
classical Arabic. And yet they have zero job prospects in the Middle East.
Present enrolment in Arabic language courses and university degree programmes
is therefore very low. In fact, after starting such programmes over 20 to 30
years ago, some universities later closed them down.
For the boy
now in an Islamabad school compelled to learn classical Arabic, communication
with Arabs in their Arabic will not be easy. In fact, the poor fellow will be
quite at sea. Only modern versions of Arabic are spoken in various Arab
countries, not classical Arabic. Imagine that a Pakistani lad trained in ye
olde Englisch — the “proper English” of Shakespeare or the Canterbury Tales —
was to land up in today’s England. He might be a source of merriment but
getting a job would be tough.
Second, the
bill claims that school-taught Arabic will enable students to understand the
Holy Quran better and so become better Muslims. Are the bill’s sponsors not
aware that, beginning with Persian in the 10th century, the Quran has undergone
translation into all major languages? This was necessary because it is
extremely difficult for non-Arabs to understand the Quran’s wonderfully rich
and nuanced classical Arabic.
Many scholars
have spent entire lives performing such monumental translations, knowing that
words have meanings that subtly change with time. But even so, no two
translations completely agree and sometimes different interpretations emerge.
Given these difficulties, absorbing the contents of the Quran through an Urdu
translation is surely much easier for a Pakistani school student.
Deeply
puzzling, therefore, is the statement from the minister of state for
parliamentary affairs: “You cannot understand the message of Allah, if you do
not know Arabic.” If true, that massively downgrades most Muslims living on
this planet. The entire Muslim population of Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh,
Iran, or Turkey cannot be made to understand or speak Arabic. And what of those
long dead Muslims who tried hard to follow the teachings of Islam but never
learned — nor tried to learn — the Arabic language?
That
knowing Arabic — any version — can make one a better person or create unity is
a bizarre thought. If true, the Arab states would be standing together instead
of several rushing to recognise Israel even as it gobbles up the last bits of
Palestine. Has the Arabic language made Arab states beacons of moral integrity,
parsimony, and high thinking? Are our senators claiming that today’s Arabs are
paragons of virtue?
But truly,
it would be wonderful if teaching Arabic to kids, and further jacking up the
religious content of education, could change students for the better. Just
imagine! Future Pakistani lawyers would not be rampaging goons who destroy
court property and randomly attack patients in hospital emergency wards; our
students would be reading books rather than noisily demonstrating for their
“right to cheat”; our political leaders would not be looters and our generals
would no longer have secret overseas business franchises.
While some
chase such delusions, others nervously search for their civilisational roots in
some faraway land — Saudi Arabia earlier and now Turkey. Thus quite a few are
drawn to Arabic. But curiously, Arabs show no interest in reviving Arabic.
Their new generations are hell-bent upon modernising and moving towards
English. Now for several decades, an energised Arab world has been luring
American universities with large sums of money to open local campuses in GCC
states.
Part of
that investment is paying off. The success of Al-Amal, the UAE spacecraft that
entered orbit around Mars some days ago, was officially celebrated as an Arab
Muslim success. While one feels happy at this, it is really the triumph of
Western technology harnessed by a few forward-looking Arabs who have learnt to
speak the language of modern science. A thousand years ago that language was
only Arabic. But in our epoch it is only English.
In forcing
kids to learn Arabic, all those sitting in Pakistan’s Senate — with just a
single exception — forgot that they are Pakistanis first and that Pakistan was
made for Pakistanis. Rather than behave as snivelling cultural orphans seeking
shelter in a rich uncle’s house, they need to take pride in the diversity and
strength of the myriad local cultures and languages that make this land and its
people.
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Pervez
Hoodbhoy is an Islamabad-based physicist and writer.
Original
Headline: Making Arabic compulsory
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