Taming the fear of Arabic language

Abimbola Adelakun

When the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board stridently defended itself against the allegations that it had included the Arabic language on the test for recruitment into the Nigeria Police recently, I thought that incident was one too many. There should be a more practical solution to dealing with the abiding fear of Islamisation of Nigeria beyond usual hysteria. If Muslims truly want to use the Arabic language to Islamise Nigeria, there is not much the overreaction and panic can do to stop them. Instead of the various protests over the Arabic language, why not just encourage them to learn the language too and if necessary, weaponise the knowledge? It is easy to think that asking those worried about Islamisation to learn Arabic is to, in fact, hasten the Islamisation project. However, the panic about the looming prospect of an Islam-governed Nigerian dystopia is not advancing the polity either.

This issue of how much Arabic can be safely permitted without losing the country to Islamisers is a recurrent one. There are some people in Nigeria for whom Arabic is as good as their mother tongue, and they too will not stop making demands on Nigeria because their faith threatens other religious groups. The practical thing is for those who are Islamophobic to tame their fear by learning the language. It is not an ultimate solution, but it is a compromise that will go a long way to alleviate the threat of a society where the knowledge of Arabic is used to exclude some groups from the national patrimony. There are other benefits to learning Arabic too. There is a wealth of cultural resources, philosophy, scientific innovations in Arabic traditions that will expand people’s cultural repertoire if they learn it. The fear of Arabic, by the way, is relatively nascent. Already, many words in the Yoruba Bible are an appropriation from the Arabic language; a consequence of centuries of trade, religion, and intercultural exchange between people that have shared Arabic heritage.

The battle over whether the naira notes should contain Arabic inscriptions has raged for decades, passed through the nation’s courts, and is still nowhere settled to mutual satisfaction. Since Muhammadu Buhari became President, the fear of “Islamisation” has been re-awakened. There have been battles over the imposition of Arabic language/studies in the education curriculum. Last year, the tussle over the Arabic language, Islamic studies, and Christian Religious Studies reached a head when the high-ranking pastors in Nigeria instructed Christian students to boycott Arabic studies wherever they thought it was being imposed. I felt that fatwa by those Christian leaders was somewhat hasty and could have done with more prudence. Asking people to boycott knowledge because it is attached to religion is counterproductive. I have consistently advocated a religious studies education that is approached from a universal and comparative point of view, rather than one that encourages students to see the world through the narrowed lens of their religion. It is far more empowering to help people to learn about the faith of others than forcefully bracket them to studies on their faith. To appreciate one’s faith better, one needs to learn about others’ to gain essential perspectives.

The real contest, however, is not so much about knowledge but the fear of dominance. Muslims are eager to assert their cultural presence on the Nigerian landscape that is pervasively Christian in outlook. That is why they are all over the place either supporting the use of hijab or insisting that the naira be marked with Arabic inscriptions (and to an extent too, supporting Buhari, a man who is thought to personify religious and ethnic irredentism). Christians are equally worried about Islamisation. They are wary of the domination of the upper echelons of power by Muslims (mainly from the northern part of Nigeria) who will use such political capital to spin a web of nepotistic power that will exclude Christians from the political gains due to them as citizens. For instance, if there had been Arabic language test in  the police recruitment test, it means either only Muslims who understand Arabic or people from the part of Nigeria where it is spoken would have passed the exams. In time, those are the people who will dominate the police organisation and enforce rules that are meant to subjugate the rest of us under a religious ideology.

 Language has always been the strategy of the coloniser and Africans know this almost instinctively. Discerning folks are justifiably suspicious of any conditions in which people are asked to learn a language not entirely out of their own choice. The fear of Arabic language is thus understandable, but the frequency of the mania is unproductive. When Lagos State proposed to include the Chinese language in its curriculum, it did not engender the same phobia that attends a proposed study of Arabic language even though the Chinese are as much threat to Africa’s future.

 The fear of Arabic language and the Islamisation that it portends transcends Nigerian borders. In some western countries, Arabic/Islamophobia is so grave that those who speak or write in the language, whether Muslims or not, have to self-police in public so they do not induce xenophobes. In the US, a geography teacher’s attempt to teach students Arabic calligraphy as part of lessons in world religion resulted in a backlash. Parents accused the school of trying to convert their children to Muslims. Some parents sent threats; some sent hate messages. In 2016, an Italian professor in an Ivy League university was pulled off a plane. His seatmate on the flight saw him working on some advanced math equations and assumed it was Arabic. Also, because of his exotic looks, she thought he was Middle Eastern too, and so she alerted the authorities that he might be a security threat. Despite those fears, Arabic is still one of the most studied languages in the US universities. As analysts note, those that are studying it are not necessarily Muslims or even Middle Easterners. Many of them are Caucasians who want to connect with the world outside of theirs. In the times past, the medieval man destroyed things he did not understand because he considered them a threat. While we like to think that civilisation has taught us to use knowledge to domesticate threats, we still live in times when the Arabic language still makes some people behave like they never left the dark ages.

Some activists in the US have tried to turn Islamophobia and the fear of Arabic writing around by putting up tongue-in-cheek messages in the Arabic language on billboards in public places. The goal is to invite people who are frightened enough by the threat of terror to seek the meaning of the inscription. Two Palestinians did a similar thing; they write messages in Arabic on tote bags and have people carry it around in some European countries. Their goal too is to terrify those who have developed a fear of Arabic language, make them want to know the meaning, and when they do realise the joke is on them.

 At some point, non-Muslims in Nigeria will need to do more than jump every time their phobic noses pick the scent of Arabic. I do not intend to discount the fear of those who see mischief by Muslims to Islamise Nigeria. I understand because I also fear a political space dominated by any ideology that evokes primal fears in people. Fear is not a strategy, knowledge is. They should look beyond the spectre of Islamisation and embrace the prospect of learning the language. It is part of our heritage as a nation, and it is too ingrained in our culture to be wiped out. By the way, the Arabic language is not entirely coterminous with Islam. It is even one of the official languages of Israel.

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