Arabization

Saudi Arabia has not been colonized or dominated by a super power in its history. But English has assumed a special status in the whole region since the beginning of the twentieth century. This paper explores the place of English in academic settings in Saudi Arabia, and the bearings this role has assumed on translation from English as a language of a super power into Arabic. One important aspect of this case of language in contact is seen in the role ascribed to English in the process of the "Arabization" of higher education in the country. The paper explores the prevailing culture and practices that have maintained English as a language of academic teaching, research and publication. It concludes that Arabic needs to extend its social, epidemiological and cultural domains to launch a substantiated translation program, in which English maintains its central position as an international language.

The present paper addresses the issue of language policy and language planning in Morocco. In particular, it argues that there is a lack of a clear language planning strategy that is based on a sound political, socioeconomic , ideological and academic justification. This problem has resulted in an inconsistent education approach, creating an incompatibility between different levels of education (e.g. high schools vs. universities), social classes (e.g. low class vs. middle/high class) and professional environments (e.g. academia vs. job market). For this reason, we suggest that three elements need to be integrated into any language planning effort. These are Literacy Prestige, Economic Prestige and Academic/Scientific Prestige.

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to demystify the issue of Arabization as a language planning policy in the Moroccan educational system. The focus is on the transmission and propagation of Arabic via printed documents, such as textbooks and methods of teaching. The adoption of Arabic-French bilingualism in education did not entirely solve the problem as there are different obstacles that still confront students in studying both Arabic and French. From socio-and-applied linguistic perspectives, I have tried to enumerate and examine the difficulties facing Moroccan students in studying both Arabic and French. Those difficulties are mainly concomitant to the complex linguistic map of Morocco, the inefficient and ineffective methods of teaching, the context of teaching as well as the interlingual and intralingual problems.  Consequently, Arabic-French bilingualism has been faced with contradictory reactions. It is concluded that both Arabic and French, to different degrees, are relatively lagging behind with respect to the access to scientific and technological information. Besides, paper questions the true intentions of the Francophonie.
Keywords: Language planning, Arabic-French bilingualism, Arabization, Francophonie

The Cordubensian Mozarabs of the 9th century were under the protection of the dhimma and had their own organization into the Andalusian society. But, because of their internal dynamics and Muslim pressure, they were reduced by Islamic conversions and divided into collaborationists and reluctants. Meanwhile, the cultural arabization and the decline of the Latin culture were developing, de-spite the revival of Córdoba as a cultural focus for the Mozarabs of all al-Andalus. Due to the education and the intellectual legacy of the Latin culture, there was an intellectual resistance against the arabization and the islamization that culmi-nated in the voluntary martyrdom, supported ideologically on the early-Christian martyrial culture and the anti-Islamic literature. After the fall of these movements, the Christian-Latin culture and the Mozarabic identity were defended by Hafs b. Albar in Arabic.

The linguistic market in Morocco has been characterized by its richness and complexity in that a number of local as well as foreign languages co-exist. Given this multiplicity and diversity in its linguistic landscape, Morocco has opted for Arabization as a language policy in education, its ultimate goal being, as it were, to safeguard and maintain its national identity (Ennaji, 2003). Achieving this goal, however, is far from being without glaring shortcomings. Arabization has, inter alia, marginalized mother tongues, the latter being relegated to daily communication only with a devalued and denigrated status. On this view, the present paper brings to the fore the status of languages in use in Morocco and, more precisely, will bring into focus the impact of Arabization on the status of mother tongues. What is more, the study attempts to shed light on the Moroccans’ attitudes towards their mother tongues. In pursuance of this aim, the study will address the following research questions, principally (i) What is the status of Arabic in Morocco? (ii) What is the nature of Moroccans’ attitudes towards their mother tongues, namely Moroccan Arabic and Moroccan Amazigh? (iii) What is the impact of Arabization on the status of mother tongues in Morocco?

Scholars have depicted the Arabization and Islamization of Sudan either as two parallel, centuries-long processes or as a set of interrelated state policies in the postcolonial era. This article contributes new chronological and empirical insights into the growing conflation of Arabic, Arabness and Islam in twentieth-century Sudan. First, it locates state efforts at Arabizing and Islamizing the South one decade before independence (1956) within the context of British imperial retreat and Northern Sudanese empowerment. Second, it examines how language and religion were increasingly enmeshed in cultural representations and school practices, even if the two were strategically distinguished in political discourses. The article assesses Southern Sudanese experience of forceful Arabization and Islamization, suggesting that cultural definitions of the nation and the access to educational, political and economic resources remain at the heart of the current citizenship crisis in Sudan and South Sudan.

In the first half of the 20th century, Sudan, which included the territories of present-day Sudan and South Sudan, was ruled by a dual colonial government known as the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium (1899–1956). Britain was the senior partner in this administration, Egypt being itself politically and militarily subordinated to Britain between 1882 and 1956. During most of the colonial period, Sudan was ruled as two Sudans, as the British sought to separate the predominantly Islamic and Arabic-speaking North from the multireligious and multilingual South. Educational policy was no exception to this: until 1947, the British developed a government school system in the North while leaving educational matters in the hands of Christian missionaries in the South. In the North, the numerically dominant government school network coexisted with Egyptian schools, missionary schools, community schools, and Sudanese private schools. In the South, schools were established by the Anglican Church Missionary Society, the Roman Catholic Verona Fathers, and the American Presbyterian Mission. Whereas Arabic and English were the mediums of instruction in Northern schools, the linguistic situation was more complicated in the South, where local vernaculars, English and Romanized Arabic were used in missionary schools.
The last colonial decade (1947–1957) witnessed a triple process of educational expansion, unification, and nationalization. Mounting Anglo-Egyptian rivalries over the control of Sudan and the polarization of Sudanese nationalists into “pro-British” independentists and “pro-Egyptian” unionists led the British authorities in Khartoum to boost government education while giving up the policy of separate rule between North and South. In practice, educational unification of the two Sudanese regions meant the alignment of Southern curricula on Northern programs and the introduction of Arabic into Southern schools, first as a subject matter, then as a medium of instruction. Missionary and other private schools were nationalized one year after Sudan gained independence from Britain and Egypt (1956).

Representatives of one of the world’s largest Muslim organizations, the Indonesian Nahdlatul ‘Ulama (NU), propagate an “Islam of the archipelago” (Islam Nusantara) that harmonizes Islamic practices and local culture. They paint a picture of a pluralist and inclusive Indonesian Islam that accommodates diverse local cultures, contrasting it with a potentially homogenizing “Arabization” — a term used in reference to the perceived ideological radicalization of Islamic lifestyle. Strikingly, in Madura, a region that is considered a stronghold of the NU, there is an affinity to “Arabness” that is not primarily dedicated to questions of the right interpretation of Islam but rather to local hierarchies, social life, political influence, and economic activities. Madurese engagement with cultural markers that are labelled as “Arab” is relatively ambivalent in nature. On the one hand, the Madurese treat “Arabness” as a symbol of Islamic piety that illustrates a special connection to the Holy Land, access to religious learnedness, and the power of blessings. On the other hand, the Madurese can be critical of Arabic culture and customs, especially Wahabist ideology. In the context of pilgrimage to the holy Muslim sites of Mecca and Medina, Madurese Muslims newly imagine and localize “Arabness”. By transferring Arabic cultural markers into economic, cultural, social, and symbolic capital, Madurese Muslims make “Arabness” meaningful beyond debates about Islam Nusantara and Arabization.

This article discusses beliefs about personal names and naming practices in Pakistan. it also touches very briefly upon nicknames and how they are used in the society. The focus of the article is how names are connected with several societal variables such as identity, power and belief-system. They are related to rural and urban perceptions of identity, ethnic identities, level of religiosity and its type and social class. Names may be changed with a view to concealing a problematic identity or to integrate with a desiderated group identity. Moreover, changing trends in naming may indicate changes in belief-systems such as increasing Islamization, Arabization or Westernization. In short, names are important indicators of identity and changes in identity construction.

Kirkuk, with its large oil reserves, has constituted one of the most significant points of controversy politically , ethnically, and economically in modern Iraq. Historically a Turkmen city, Kirkuk underwent a massive Arabization policy during the Baathist regime in order to modify the city's demographics. This formed the major means by which the Baathist regime sought to control this multiethnic and multi-religious city. After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Kurds launched a massive Kurdification program whereby Turkmen and Arabs have been encouraged to leave the city. The demography of the city has been changing in favor of the Kurds, who have resorted to all means, not excluding crimes against humanity, to form the majority of the city's population before the referendum that will decide not only the status of the city but also the future of Iraq and the Middle East. In supporting the Kurds, Western countries have ignored the suffering of the Turkmen, the primary victims of Arabization in the past and nowadays of Kurdification.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Büyük petrol rezervlerine sahip olan Kerkük modern Irak'ta siyasi, etnik ve ekonomik olarak en tartış-malı konulardan birisidir. Tarihi olarak bir Türkmen şehri olan Kerkük Baas rejimi döneminde şehrin demografik yapısını değiştirme amaçlı olarak yoğun bir Araplaştırma politikasına maruz kalmıştır. Bu Baas rejiminin etnik ve dini açıdan karma bir yapıya sahip bu şehri kontrol etmek için kullandığı yöntemlerden birisi olmuştur. ABD'nin 2003 yılında Irak'ı işgalinden sonra Kürtler Türkmen ve Araplara şehri terk etme-leri konusunda baskı yaparak yoğun bir Kürtleştirme politikası uygulamaya başlamışlardır. Şehrin demografik yapısı, sadece şehrin statüsünü değil Irak ve Orta Doğu'nun geleceğini de belirleyecek olan referandum öncesinde şehrin nüfusunun çoğunluğunu oluşturmayı hedefleyen Kürtler lehine insanlığa karşı işlenen suçlar dahil her türlü yöntemle değiştirilmektedir. Kürtleri destekleyen Batılı devletler önce Araplaştırma, şimdi de Kürtleştirme politikasının esas kurbanı olan Türkmenlerin acılarını görmezden gelmektedir.

Throughout literature, Arabization had different definitions and interpretation. For example, According to Meriam Webster it means “to cause to acquire Arabic customs, manners, speech, or outlook” or “to modify (a population) by intermarriage with Arabs” and that the first known use of Arabization in English dictionaries was in 1883 and that’s according to Oxford dictionary. Jack Halpern state that Arabization” is the reverse of romanization; that is, the representation of a non-Arabic script, such as the Roman script, using the Arabic alphabet, e.g., Muhammad → محمد, Clinton →كلينتون “(2). Mostly, Arabization deals with translation. As it intends to translate scientific, political, medical and other terminologies into Arabic. Accordingly, it was important to decide which methods to follow in order to make it as flow as possible for the Arabic speakers and readers. Arabization faced many obstacles. For once, Arabic dictionaries wasn’t contemporary, so the modern sciences , political , medical , social and other terms weren’t included for and they had to find a way in order to find the right equivalent for these concepts and terminology in Arabic  .Because of that the Arabization procedures evolved and the need for it become greater  .

The Arab conquest of Hispania meant the entry into the Iberian Peninsula of two different ethnic and linguistic communities: the Arabs and the Berbers. These communities came into contact with the indigenous Hispanic population, who in their vast majority spoke some of the more or less defined forms of peninsular Romance. The consequences of this human and linguistic encounter are not well understood. Traditional historiography attempted to construct a frozen and static image of reality, according to which each of the three linguistic communities - Arabic-speaking, Berber-speaking and Romance-speaking - kept their vernacular language intact, avoiding contact with other groups and perpetuating in time the initial linguistic differences. But is that what really happened? This article tries to reconstruct the human and linguistic map of a frontier space: the land of Ávila during the Islamic period.

El  topónimo  Valladolid  ha  sido  objeto  de  cierto  debate  y  controversia  desde  el  siglo  XIX  hasta  la  actualidad debido a la dificultad de desentrañar su origen y significado. Se exponen los motivos para rechazar la viabilidad de las dos hipótesis más consolidadas, una de fundamentación árabe, Balad Walīd, y otra con elementos latinos y célticos, Vallis Tolitum, y se presenta Baldat Ulit como la alternativa basándose  en  la  documentación  más  antigua  conservada,  en  las  normas  de  la  evolución  fonética  en las lenguas iberorromances y en el contexto histórico, material y cultural de Valladolid, tanto su zona como el núcleo de población, durante los siglos VIII, IX, X y XI.

« On devient enseignant universitaire comme on
devient père ou mère, sur le tas en intériorisant
les bonnes et les mauvaises dispositions. »
Nous, enseignants universitaires, parlons peu de nos expériences pédagogiques. Nous sommes isolés avec nos étudiants dans des salles ou des amphis. Personne de l’extérieur n’est au courant de la manière dont se déroule nos cours ou nos séminaires… J’aimerai partager avec vous une réflexion sur ma pratique d’enseignant, comment je me suis débrouillé pour dépasser une pédagogie qui domine encore dans nos universités. C’est dans l’échange, et non dans les recettes pédagogiques autoritaires, que chacun de nous peut se frayer son propre chemin.

This article argues that anti-Shi'ism is simply one component in a strategy to justify and enforce Egypt's security policies and regional leadership goals. An examination of Egyptian press coverage of the 2009 discovery of a Hizbullah cell in Egypt illustrates a process through which Shi'ism is initially identified as a sectarian threat, but then “de-Arabized” through linkage with Iran. Despite being an Arab organization, Egyptian media portray Hizbullah as a non-Arab challenge to the Arab world's stability, more than a Shi'i challenge to Sunnism or a security threat. This indicates that Egypt's traditional foreign policy of defending Arab interests is more important than sectarianism in conceptualizing threats to its security.

Moroccan language-in-education policies have been conducted in a confused way since the country achieved independence in 1956. While their stated aim was Arabisation, i.e. giving back to the official language – namely, Standard Arabic – the dominant social and institutional roles that it had lost under the French colonisation, their actual outcome was not only the maintenance of a situation of bilingualism (where French is still nowadays the dominant language in a range of key domains, such as business and private sector, and strongly influences media), but also the perpetuation of social inequality. The latter in Morocco consists of a deep social divide between Westernised, French-speaking Moroccans, whose families could afford providing them a better – and often private – education, and “Arabised” Moroccans, i.e. still culturally attached to the traditional Arabic-Islamic heritage, who either went through the low-quality formation of the public school system, or could not even afford attending school, or completing their studies, and thus ended up illiterate. Most usually, the former group forms the national elite, while the latter swells the lines of unemployed graduates or illiterate people, both suffering a high degree of exclusion from social privileges.

In this paper, the issue of adding diacritics Tashkeel to undiacritized Arabic text using statistical methods for language modeling is addressed. The approach requires a large corpus of fully diacritized text for extracting the language monograms, bigrams, and trigrams for words and letters. Search algorithms are then used o find the best probable sequence of diacritized words of a given undiacritized word sequence. The word sequence of undiacritized Arabic text is considered an observation sequence from a hidden Markov Model, where the hidden states are the possible diacritized expressions of the words. The optimal sequence of diacritized words (or states) is then efficiently obtained using Viterbi Algorithm. We present an evaluation of the basic algorithm using the Qur’an’s text, and discuss various ramifications for improving the performance of this approach.

In this chapter, the ethno-cultural components of Nasrid society are analysed from a diachronic point of view. It raises questions about the survival of Mozarabs, the presence of the Jewish community and, in short, the completion of the processes of Arabisation and Islamisation in the remaining territories of al-Andalus.

This article analyzes the career of Christian institutions in al-Andalus during the Umayyad period. To that end, I will focus on the evolution of the Episcopal network, as bishops cooperated closely with the Umayyads by playing different roles, such as tax or diplomatic roles. Therefore, special attention will be paid to changes in the dioceses in relation to the successive strategies that Umayyad power adopted in respect of them.

Cyberspace is the most significant technological development of the late twentieth century. Yet it is inseparable from its cultural context. Hence the creation and continued evolution of cyberculture, developed through social interaction in the electronic environment of cyberspace. This chapter describes Cyber-Arab-Culture as one example of a newly emerging
cyberculture, produced through the interactive processes of globalization, democratization, privatization, digitization, and Arabization. Globalization of media markets, digitization, and new media have led to an unprecedented democratization of international communication. Democratization is a gradual, ongoing process in Arab countries, with various requirements still to be achieved. Telecommunications policies have accomplished significant economic development in the region, most notably the privatization of administration, manufacturing, and service delivery. New media have
influenced the region, and particularly its culture, through increasing access by the Arab public to international media content. Arabization of new media content has been a major goal in the region. Cyber-Arab-Culture is expected to facilitate the spread of Arab cultural values on the Internet; however, there have been anti-Cyber-Arab-Culture practices that impede the evolution of this new cyberculture. Arabs are encouraged to continue to develop and enhance Cyber-Arab-Culture, relying on their own widespread cultural patterns: primarily their basic cultural values, language, and verbal communication patterns.

The ethnic and territorial dispute in Iraq’s divided city of Kirkuk has not been resolved as was required by Iraq’s 2005 constitution. A main historical origin of the dispute is the Arabization policy of Saddam Hussein which institutionalized persecution of non-Arabs in Iraq. Today, the dispute has become a constitutional battle over the identity of the Iraqi state itself which is complicated by the return migration of Kurds into Kirkuk. As one of Iraq’s disputed territories, Kirkuk is literally in the center of this crisis and is often viewed as a microcosm of Iraq’s ethnic diversity. The aim of this paper is to analyze the theory of transitional justice and truth commissions to determine whether or not such a mechanism may reduce the ethnic tension in Kirkuk so that the constitutionally mandated census and referendum can occur peacefully. It is concluded that although reconciliation projects in Iraq have consistently failed, and Kirkuk’s security remains in question, there exists a precedent for an investigatory, or ‘truth,’ commission to succeed in a city within a divided state. However, such a commission will not emerge without public consultation and wide recognition of the lessons from other case studies.

Abstract:
In the dynamics of environmental context, the referent of a linguistic sign changes, but the sign persists as a verbal symbol. Since a technical term strictly evokes one referent, it may lack in specificity due to the ever-changing reality, resulting in homonymy, overlap, and a semantic continuum based on designating by necessity. In addition to the elements of reference theory, the criteria for technical terms postulate the user, whose authority and responsibility are necessary for the term to function as a specific designator. The centrality of the user, translator or otherwise, has hermeneutic and linguistic implications for the evolution of terminology, because it stipulates that terminological meaning and usage are dependent on the user’s conscious knowledge, a condition that leads to the recognition of a user epistemic continuum parallel to the semantic necessity continuum. Ideally, a term should be universally specific in reference, and its user should be epistemologically empowered and ethically responsible. 

Keyword: Terminology, technical terms, Translation, Islamic terminology, semantic continuum

In light of primary sources and related literature, this article analyzes the settlement of the Bayat Tribe in Iraq, its loss of national identity and assimilation, and contributions to the Turkish culture. The Bayats, one of the Oghuz/Turkmen tribes, settled in countries such as Anatolia, Iran, Syria, Azerbaijan, and Iraq before the Ottomans, and they played an important role in the formation of the Turkish states and civilizations in history. In Iraq, they mostly lived in and around Kirkuk and Tuzkhurmatu, Daquq, and Kifri located on the south. They laid the basis for Iraqi Turkism in many aspects like population and cultural influence. Some of the Iraqi Bayats lived in dispersed settlements remote from each other, together with the Arabs and Kurds who were the majority. In this way, over centuries, they forgot their languages and cultures, the main elements of their national identities, which resulted in Arabization or Kurdization of considerable numbers of them. As a result of this social transitivity, the phenomenon of miscegenation is observed in the case of Iraqi Bayats. Before and during the Ottoman period, this group made their presence strongly felt in fields such as administration, military service, music, literature, and culture: Iraqi Bayats, who raised blood horses, gained reputation for their militancy. Many places and a division were named (Bayat Sanjak) after them. Many renowned poets and scientists like Fuzuli, Nasimi, and Mustafa Cevad as well as others were raised among them. As a remarkable contribution, they brought “bayati maqam” in the Turkish music. By these features, they made highly lasting and rich contributions to the Turkish history, culture and civilization.

Ways of dressing play an important role in bodily self-representations and in communicating one’s self-image to the outside world. In Malaysia, a country with a predominantly Muslim population, a trend has emerged of Muslim Malay women increasingly wearing the abaya, the long black cloak which is usually worn by Arab women. Some female Arab tourists, however, take off the abaya when on holiday in Malaysia, thus evading bodily restrictions in their home countries. In this article I argue that, through the use of the abaya, Muslim women are negotiating not just their respective interpretations and concepts of Islam, but modernity as well.