The writer reflects on the role of language, foreign and Arabic, colloquial and classical, in Morocco; and on the appropriation, polarisation, and xenophobia of the Egyptian counter-revolution.
Daesh's depravity may be as much imitative as original; and the writer considers how the battle over freedom of speech is part of a bigger game, driving a wedge between France and its Muslims.
The motives of many young would-be jihadists are childlike—the appeal of becoming ‘super-heroes’ to fill an existential void. The author meets a comic book writer aiming to lead them in a different direction.
The author considers the wave of gory Isis propaganda and the violent wielding of an old tool with new vectors, a social media Tamburlaine; and remembers the Moroccans who served in the World Wars.
The author asks how small children will survive sukuns - Morocco's spoken tongue; ponders the word "museum"; and closes with a favourite Moroccan parable.
The author ponders literacy, the literate 'red blood corpuscles of society', and the way Arabic is taught in the Middle East and North Africa. He explores the shaky relationship between language and expression and closes with a story of an American seduced into 'deprovincialisation' by Arabic.
The author considers how education may impact on a society's growing propensity to resort to violence. This column responds to criticism of the school system in Morocco with some thoughts of its own about the role of English, the lingua franca of international communication.
February 17 is the anniversary of the Day of Rage in Benghazi which kicked off the Libyan Revolution in 2011. But behind the rage, our author finds the politics, the hopes, the justified impatience, and his Libyan friend, Salah. Meanwhile, libraries are burning in Timbuktu.
Bookshops are places where the rhizome of culture breaks ground, connected beneath the earth but apparently separate on the surface. But in Morocco at least, something dreadful is happening to girls between the age of ten and 20, and leaching away their early literacy.
Dispassionate analysis of social and political problems is what is needed to build a better society. Thirty Moroccan youth activists seize the chance, in the process moving the author, who meanwhile finds himself drawn into the country’s language wars.
The effects of learning Arabic from two different angles – as a cause of illiteracy in Morocco, and a spurned langue d’immigration in France – prompting reflections on what constitutes a ‘modern foreign language’ in the European mind.
