Arabic and anti-Semitism

Submitted by R K Iyer (United States), Apr 25, 2007 at 02:22

The news that a school for teaching Arabic is going to open in New York is saddening. I have lived among Arabs and I have encountered very high levels of anti-Semitism among educated Arabs because their language has Jew-hatred integrated into it. It is impossible to speak Arabic without imbibing hatred for Jews and, by extension, for the West.

The less said about idol worshipping Hindus and Buddhists the better. In the eyes of Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, do not even count as human beings.The language of Muslims in the Arab speaking countries is not fit for non-Moslems to learn. Having said that, perhaps the need for Arabic translation could justify teaching that language to Americans. Teaching Arabic to young muslims in America will pave the way for accepting suicide bombing and anti-Semitism as both normal and even desirable. Arabic as a language is anti-West, anti-foreigners, anti-modern. Ideas and attitudes, lifestyle options and perceptions of man-god relationships that are incorporated within Arabic are uncompromisingly Islamic.

Centuries of conscious and violent exclusion of non-Islamic thought has gone into the lexical and semantic fibre of Arabic. Its popularity in countries such as India and Indonesia which ha ve been historically outside the linguistic influence of Arabic, bodes ill for the growth of modern thinking in these countries.

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