Islam and Arabic

[Alexandre Enkerli]

Isn't there an issue of diglossia, here? Is Pipes talking about Classical
Arabic?
It still sounds like an awkward perspective but there's something to be said
about people's expectations in terms of links between sacred language and
religion. Comparisons with Sanskrit, Hebrew, and Latin would be quite
interesting.

I have no idea about the actual situation but I seem to remember an article
describing a situation in which the way some people (IIRC, native speakers
of Tamashek) speak Arabic was connoted in terms of their religious practise.
Something about devout Muslims and the pronunciation of "kh" in "aleikhum"
(as a fricative instead of a plosive). Seems to me quite reasonable to
expect that some forms of Arabic would be associated with Islam.

On 8/30/07, Ronald Kephart <rkephart at unf.edu> wrote:
>
>  On 8/30/07 2:05 PM, "Robert Lawless" <robert.lawless at wichita.edu> wrote:
>
> The conflating of Islam with Arabic should be on interest to linguists.
> According to an article today in *Counterpunch* by Anthony DiMaggio:
>
> Daniel Pipes [...] argues that "learning Arabic in-and-of-itself promotes
> an
> Islamic outlook," as "Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with
>
> pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage."
>
> Hmmm. I wonder what the Palestinian (and Arabic-speaking) Christians,
> among
> others, might have to say about this. And then, we have all those
> Malay-Indonesian speaking Muslims.
>
> Ron
>
>


-- 
Alexandre
http://enkerli.wordpress.com/
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