Arabic Language’s Taboo Status in France Explored in New Book

Nabil Wakim, a journalist at Le Monde, of Lebanese origin, speaking only a few words of "the language of the Quran", evokes the relationship that France maintains with Arabic, in parallel with his own, he who has been immersed in this language that has cradled his first four years in Lebanon, but which has become foreign to him in France.

The author says he sees announcements in English, Spanish, even Chinese every day in the Parisian metro, where he does not note the slightest trace of Arabic inscriptions. Except, until recently, the situation was the same in French airports, with the exception of Nice, where rich Gulf Arabs come to bask on the coast.

And yet, we know that several million people (the majority of whom are French nationals) are "Arabs", perceived as such.

He has gone over the issue with big names in French culture, citing the case of the Minister of National Education, Jean-Michel Blanquer, (who is known to be on the right of the majority) who has been the target of so many arrows, for having committed the sin of considering the teaching of Arabic in kindergarten. Fourteen thousand students study Arabic, twice less than thirty years ago, and 178 teachers teach it, 20% less than ten years ago.

Undoubtedly, the Arabic language is frightening, worries the author, and the good Arab is the one who integrates at the price of erasure.
Restoring the dignity of the Arabic language in France would surely be one of the means of combating what our authorities denounce as "separatism" and which is nothing other than the rejection, by the Republic, of a part of its children, of their history, of their culture, concludes the author.

Nabil Wakim, L’Arabe pour tous. Pourquoi ma langue est taboue en France, Seuil, Paris, 2020. — 199 pages; 17 euros