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Sacred Language, Ordinary People
~
Dilemmas of Culture and Politics in Egypt
Niloofor Haeri
SACRED LANGUAGE, ORDINARY PEOPLE
Copyright © Niloofar Haeri, 2003.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2003 978-0-312-23898-8
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First published in 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLANTM
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ISBN 978-0-312-23897-1 ISBN 978-0-230-10737-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230107373
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Haeri, Niloofar, 1958-
Sacred language, ordinary people: state, religion and modernity in Egypt
1 by Niloofar Haeri.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-312-23897-1
I. Arabic language-Dialects-Egypt. 2. Arabic language
Variation-Egypt. 3. Arabic Language-Social aspects-Egypt.
4. Diglossia (Linguistics)-Egypt. 5. Language and culture-Egypt.
6. Arabic language-Religious aspects-Islam. l. Title.
PJ6773. H34 2002
492.7'70962-dc21
2002074880
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Letra Libre, Inc.
First edition: January 2003
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
For Abdullah & the blue flame
Contents
Prefoce IX
Acknowledgments X111
Notes on Transliteration xv
Chapter One Introduction
Chapter Two Humble Custodians of the Divine Word:
Classical Arabic in Daily Life 25
Chapter Three Text Regulation and Sites of Ideology 53
Chapter Four Creating Contemporaneity: Struggles with Form 73
Chapter Five Persistent Dilemmas: Pleasure, Power and
Ambiguity 113
Chapter Six Conclusion 143
Notes 159
Bibliography 171
Index 181
Preface
When I was a child, my mother used to gather us around regularly and ask
us to read parts of the Qur'an out loud. She did not demand any recitation
talents but simply correct pronunciation and fluency. I remember that the
Qur'an we read had line by line translations in Persian. The Arabic was set
off by a beautiful and thick calligraphy with little circles, dashes and curly
lines above and below the letters. The Persian in contrast was in a plain or
dinary type-face. While reading, my brother and I would glance quickly at
the Persian to try to get some idea of the meaning of the verses. My mother
would gently correct us, pause once in a while to explain the significance of
what we had just read, and scold us when we giggled because some of the
Arabic words sounded like Persian ones for extremely mundane objects. Her
emphasis was on our recognition of the diacritic marks and the necessary li
aisons between the ends of some words and the beginning of others. Even
tually, she and my father taught us the five obligatory daily prayers (namaaz
in Persian, il-?alaa in Arabic). In time, we memorized all of them, and
learned the correct body movements that serve to mark different parts of the
prayers. My parents also tried to teach us special prayers for particular occa
sions-those for important Islamic dates or for times of personal crises. My
interest began to fade as I entered adolescence and left Tehran for Boston.
But these experiences, along with my parents' love for the language of the
holy book, stayed with me. As did countless childhood memories that are
forever laced with the sounds of the Qur' an.
Many years later in graduate school in Philadelphia, I began to learn Ara
bic in order to do field research in Egypt. I studied the grammar of a lan
guage that I had first encountered in childhood as mere sounds and
melodies. I found the chance to learn that language finally and become pro
ficient in it exhilarating. Eventually, I went to Egypt to begin my first period
of research in 1987-88, and was stunned to discover, like many researchers
before me, that I was unequipped to have even a rudimentary conversation
in the language. Of course I had been briefly told that the language I was
taught was the language of writing and that it was different from the spoken
x Sacred Language, Ordinary People
language. But what I had not quite grasped was just how great the differ
ences are. It was clear that in order for me to be able to do my research and
have conversations with Egyptians, I had to devote time to the study of
Egyptian Arabic as well.
Soon I realized that Egyptian schoolchildren and I have a somewhat com
parable experience but in reverse: they start out knowing Egyptian Arabic
because it is their mother tongue, and begin to learn Classical Arabic at
school, since this is the official language and the medium of education. Why
isn't Egyptian Arabic the medium of education? Most primary and sec
ondary school teachers give their lessons in Egyptian Arabic-classroom in
teractions in general are in that language. So, unofficially, Egyptian Arabic is
also a medium of education. But why not officially as well? The constitution
of 1980, like those before it, declares Classical Arabic as the official language
of Egypt. No mention is made of Egyptian Arabic. Why is citizenship in part
defined in relation to a language that is no one's mother tongue? What does
it mean to have a divine language as the official language of a state? These
and similar questions motivated me to go back to Egypt for more field re
search in 1995-96.
Classical Arabic is the language of the Qur' an and of Islamic rituals such
as the five daily prayers. It has been and continues to be the language of
writing-used in textbooks, newspapers, magazines, fiction and nonfiction,
and in bureaucracy. The language of daily exchanges and that of nonprint
media is Egyptian Arabic, used in television, radio, theatre and film, but on
the whole prevented from becoming a language of writing.
Many Egyptians told me that in order to learn Classical Arabic well, one
had to study the Qur' an, whose language is the Word of God and the high
est exemplar of Classical Arabic. If Classical Arabic is both the language of
Islam and of the state, do Egyptians identifY the two as the same? Or, as sec
ular intellectuals believe, there has emerged a new form of Classical Arabic
a "third language"-over the past century and a half that is "modern"-a
language that is independent of religion and in which "anything can be
said"? If so, why do most other Egyptians find these claims so controversial,
asserting, on the contrary, that there is only "one" Classical Arabic that is the
language of the Qur' an and of Islam?
This book is an attempt at understanding the cultural and political im
plications of the divide between Classical and Egyptian Arabic. Since the
nineteenth century, Egyptians set out to modernize and simplifY (ta&dith
and tabsiit, respectively) Classical Arabic in order to make it more re
sponsive to their needs and to the exigencies of contemporary life more
generally. The central question that I pursue in the following chapters is:
What does it mean to modernize a sacred language? I explore whether
such an endeavor is possible, what kinds oflimits it has and how it affects
Preface =~ Xl
personal self-expression, cultural production and social and political rela
tions in Egypt today.
So far, I have used the term "Classical Arabic" to refer both to the lan
guage of the Qur' an and to the contemporary written language. Some
scholars may take issue with this choice, preferring instead to refer to the
contemporary language of writing as "Modern Standard Arabic" or MSA
for short. I resist this term for a number of reasons. First, there is no equiv
alent to this term in common usage in Arabic. The term MSA was coined
by a number of linguists at Harvard University in the 1960s, according to
the renowned linguist Charles Ferguson. In addition, its use implies that we
understand the "modernity" of contemporary Classical Arabic and that the
modernization of this language is now an accomplished fact. The term has
allowed us to take the entire question of modernization for granted and
hence has prevented inquires into the many complex issues surrounding it.
The closest translation of the name of the language in Arabic-al-Iugha al
'arabiyya al-fu.s~a-is "the Eloquent Arabic Language." Egyptians often
shorten this term to either al-Iugha al-'arabiyya or to fu!~a. I could have fol
lowed this usage throughout and used the term the "Arabic Language." But
as non-Arab readers already need to be reminded that there is not just one
"Arabic" language, and as many scholars writing in English use the term
Classical Arabic, I have chosen not to do that. Finally, for those who write
in English, it is common to refer to the non-Classical varieties of Arabic as
"colloquial Arabic." I do not use this term because the modifier "colloquial"
refers to a style of speaking or writing, and cannot characterize an entire lan
guage in which there are many styles of self-expression. I return to the issue
of terms a number of times in the following chapters.
The entanglement of language and politics is not unique to Egypt or to
the Arab world. In the United States, the English-only movement advocates
a constitutional amendment to make English the official language, or more
accurately, to make it officially the official language. There are many promi
nent politicians and celebrities who support this movement, including the
Austrian-born actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Senator Hayakawa of Califor
nia and Newt Gingrich. Although love of the language could be part of the
motivation for this movement, all of the reasons the movement offers are
clearly political. Similarly, the heated debate about the use of African Amer
ican English in the classroom (what came to be known as the "Ebonies" de
bate) and the many disadvantages that children speaking nonstandard
varieties of English face, clearly illustrates just how political language issues
can become. In Egypt and the Arab world, the language question has roots
in religion, nationalism, colonial rule, secularism and interpretations over
the heritage of Islam. Hence, it is also a highly sensitive topic. So much so
that it is not only Arabs who often show this sensitivity but also non-Arab
Xli Sacred Language, Ordinary People
scholars who work on the region. I have had discussions with Iranian, Eu
ropean and American scholars who seem just as sensitive and defensive
about the subject, and who have very strong opinions about what they think
has been or is going on. I understand this sensitivity because there is a great
deal at stake.
Writing this book has not only been a great challenge for me because of
the complexity of the issues involved, but also because the very posing of the
questions pursued seems to imply criticism. My hope is to contribute to an
open dialogue that addresses some longstanding dilemmas in the Arab world
and the region as a whole. I have tried to undertake as careful an analysis as
I can without shrinking from following up some of its implications. In this
task, I am in the company of a number of Egyptian and other Arab writers,
past and present, who have been trying to call attention to the profound
problems that the language situation exemplifies and creates. Generally, such
writers are marginalized inside Egypt and are not read outside it. In the
Middle East, external forces continue to bear responsibility for a variety of
problems including disregard for national sovereignties and support for
regimes that put their peoples' interests at the bottom of their priorities. But
just as we need analyses of what is done to us, so we need to examine what
we do to ourselves, in spite of the fact that the two may not always be easily
separable. As hostility toward Muslims and even toward those who "look
Muslim" grows in the West in the present political climate, the need for self
examination and critical thinking becomes even more pressing.
