THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XIII, Issue # 276, November 22, 2011
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
ARABIST SNOBS
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
FLUENCY IN ARABIC, AQUISITION & DISSEMINATION OF RELIABLE INFORMATION REGARDING ARABS, & THE EFFECTIVENESS U.S. FOREIGN POLICY INTENDED
TO IMPACT ON THE BEHAVIOR OF ARAB SOCIETIES: IS A COMMAND OF THE ARABIC LANGUAGE ESSENTIAL TO RESEARCH & WRITING ABOUT ARABS
& MAKING FOREIGN POLICY TOWARD THEM? NO! WHILE IT HELPS TO KNOW THE LANGUAGE, IT DOES NOT PROTECT AGAINST POLITICAL IDEOLOGY, RELIGIOUS
DOGMATISM, FADDISM, PEDANTRY, OR MISINFORMATION. FLUENCY IN ARABIC GUARANTEES NEITHER QUALITY SCHOLARSHIP NOR POLICY INSIGHTS.
KNOWLEDGE OF THE LANGUAGE DOES NOT TRUMP OTHER QUALIFICATIONS.
FULL STORY:
Is knowledge of Arabic necessary to write about Arabs or make policy toward them? Yes, sniff some of those who have learned the language, known as Arabists.
THE ARABIC LANGUAGE WENT TO ANTONY SULLIVAN'S HEAD.
Antony T. Sullivan, for example, pulls rank in the journal, Historically Speaking. Critiquing an article, "The Military Roots of Islam," by two non-Arabists,
George Nafziger and Mark Walton, he writes: "As one who believes that foreign language competence and accurate rendition of foreign words and concepts into
English are important," – note Sullivan's puffed-up sense of self – "I must confess to considerable disappointment in the article." And what devastating mistake
did those authors make to undermine their thesis? Did they misunderstand jihad (Islamic holy war)? No, something much worse:
Most egregiously, the authors refer more than once to the Muslim direction of prayer as the qilbah. This is incorrect: Nafziger and Walton have reversed the
second and third consonants of the Arabic word (root: qaaf-baa-laam). The correct word is qibla (accent on the first syllable), and in English that word is most
commonly written with the spelling indicated. The system of transliteration recommended by the International Journal of Middle East Studies, the leading
American scholarly journal in the field, holds that there is no reason to add an 'h' to the final letter (taa marbuuta) of such words as qibla.
Sullivan concludes on an even more pompous note: "It is unfortunate that those who do not have a firm command of Arabic opt to write on topics that demand
linguistic competence. But this is unfortunately all too common in the times in which we live.
JUAN COLE "COMMANDS" LANGUAGES & BAD POLICY.
But Nafziger-Walton correctly understand that war is "the principal process by which Islam spread throughout the world," while Sullivan, despite his intimacy
with taa marbuutas, propagates Islamist misinformation ("terrorism and Jihad are not identical twins but historic enemies"). His error fits a larger Arabist deceit,
hiding the true meaning of jihad and pretending that it means self improvement rather than offensive warfare.
Juan Cole, a professor at the University of Michigan, offers another colorful instance of Arabist snobbism. His official biography proclaims he "commands
Arabic, Persian, and Urdu and reads some Turkish." Preposterously, he argues that U.S. problems in Iraq resulted from a lack of Arabic language ability: "we
saw all the instant Middle East experts who knew no Arabic and had never lived in the Arab world (or sometimes even been there) who were paraded as
knowledgeable sources."
But his vaunted knowledge of many languages did not prevent Cole from giving horrible advice, such as encouraging Washington to trust the Muslim
Brotherhood and negotiate with Hamas.
Amusingly, Cole specifically lambasts the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, asking "Does anyone … over there even speak a word of
Arabic?" and derides one specific AEI scholar, Michael Rubin. "I've never seen Rubin quote an Arabic source, and wonder if he even knows the language; he
is a Persianist by training." Rubin (whose biography says nothing about the languages he "commands") informs me that he has "a working knowledge of
Arabic" adequate to quote Arabic newspapers for policy analysis. Unlike Cole, Rubin does not flaunt having learnt difficult languages; also unlike Cole, Rubin
offers sensible policy advice on an impressive range of issues.
DAVID PRYCE-JONES'S CLOSED CIRCLE IS "A LANDMARK."
Moreover, note the inconsistency of Cole and other Arabists; "they themselves freely write about Israel, although they have no Hebrew," Lee Smith of The
Weekly Standard points out. Perhaps too many foreigners know Hebrew to make it quite so prestigious?
While one can scarcely imagine serious research on, say, the United States of America without knowing English, non-Arabists do write useful and important
studies about Arabs, due to the vast amount of information in Western languages, especially English. For example, I have praised David Pryce-Jones's The
Closed Circle: An Interpretation of the Arabs as "a landmark for understanding the politics of the Middle East." If one hardly needs Arabic to write about
the U.S.A., native Arabic speakers typically do need information available in Western languages to excel.
Of course, it helps to know languages. But, as these examples suggest, languages do not protect against ideology, faddism, pedantry, or misinformation. They
guarantee neither quality scholarship nor policy insights. Whoever has learned Arabic can take pride in this achievement without boasting that it trumps other
qualifications. It is one tool among many, not a status.
© 2011 by Daniel Pipes. All Rights Reserved.
Originally Published in National Review Online.
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes.
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, November 22, 2011
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/10342/arabist-snobs
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and President of the Middle East Forum,
Publisher of Middle East Quarterly,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, including a grammar of the Egyptian dialect, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for
National Review Online, Front Page Magazine, the New York Sun, and the Jerusalem Post.
His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East have appeared in numerous North
American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Wall Street
Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and think tanks, to discuss
the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on BBC and
Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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