Language and identity between Oudghiri and Kateb Yassin
Dr. Abdelali El Oudghiri is a Moroccan writer, researcher and academic known for his fierce defense of the Arabic language, and his strong opposition to French domination in Morocco. He is the author of many books related to the subject of the Arabic language and its defense. In the context of this defense of Arabic and anti-Francophonie, Dr. Oudghiri strongly criticizes the famous saying of the Francophone Algerian writer Kateb Yassine, in which he says that the French in which he writes is "a booty of war". This response to Yassin was published in July 2022, on the website of the Ibn Ghazi Center for Research and Strategic Studies, in a two-part article (1, 2) under the title: "Who was the spoil really, Kateb Yassin?"
What is true in French may be true in Arabic:
Professor Oudghiri tries to convince us, in his criticism of Kateb Yacine’s position on the French language, that the latter, as indicated by the title of the article, is not one of the spoils of the French language, as he expressed it when he said that it is “a spoil of war”, but rather it is the one that spoiled him. When he became its writer and servant, he recruited her to fight against Arabism and Islam, as the colonial France itself wanted and did in Algeria.
For this reason, Kateb Yassin and his ilk are, as Mr. Oudgiri says, “the guardians of the Francophone Orthodox temple and its deacons, whose interests were intertwined with his interests, and their existence and destiny were linked to his existence”, living “their whole lives enlisted in his service and offering sacrifices to his doorstep.” . Because of the French language, Yassine remained, as Professor Oudgiri explains, bearing the “culture of wielding the sword against the common standard Arabic that France fought with with all it had, […] especially after discovering the soft destructive machine known as 'Francophone', which is the name of the nickname that language and educational policy gained French later"; "So he spent the last third of his life stationed on the front of the war against Arabism and the Arab-Islamic existence, reviving the spirit of racism and tearing the bond that Islamic values have always worked to strengthen among the Arabs and amazighs in the Maghreb." Which is what Professor Oudgiri concludes with this disapproving question, which he addresses to Yassin: “Who was, then, right to be considered a spoil of war, Kateb Yassin, you or the foreign language in which you said you were exiled? Were you able to liberate your consciousness, mind, thought, and culture from This abyssal exile?"
If it is true - and it is not - that the French language, as Professor Al-Wadgiri wrote, made Yassin a servant of this language, loyal to it and defending it, then his behavior would be no different from what Mr. Al-Wadghiri himself does when you made the Arabic language its servant and a fierce defender of it, We are happy with her and in love with her... If it is true that Kateb Yassin and his ilk are "the guardians and deacons of the Francophone Orthodox temple", they live "their whole lives conscripted to serve him and make offerings to his reproach", then it will be true, and with the same logic and the same practice, that Mr. Al-Woghairi "the worshiper and his ilk The Orthodox and his deacons" live "their whole lives enlisted in his service and offering sacrifices to his doorstep." . The evidence for this is that he wrote several defensive books in which he presents this service, loyalty, adoration, and offering..., while what Yassin provided for the French - always according to the logic of Dr. Wadghiri - did not exceed creative writings of poetry, novel and theater. Why does Mr. Oudghiri allow himself what he forbids others, and permit Arabic what he is forbidden from French? Does this contradiction not express an inflated pan-Arab narcissism, whose exaggeration makes it transcend logic and reality, seeing only itself as the center of the world?..
But the French did not make Yassin pretend to be French:
And if it is also true - and it is not - that Kateb Yassin was antagonizing Arabic for his service to French, then his behavior would be no different from what Mr. Wadghiri himself does when he antagonizes Amazigh and Darija in the service of Arabic so that it does not have a competitor within the national languages. But Yassin was rejecting Arabic as an Algerian defending the language of the Algerian people, which is Tamazight and Darija, and not because he is “French” defending the French language for the French-Algerian people. As for Mr. Oudghiri, and other Arabists, they defend Arabic as the language of the Arab people, Moroccan and Algerian, using the Arabic language as a tool for national Arabization and identities, and the sexual transformation of Moroccans and Algerians from their Amazigh African race to an Arab Asian race. Therefore, in their defense of Arabic for the sake of this national Arabization and sexual transformation, they are not only practicing the Arabization of the tongue, but the Arabization of the human being by sexually transforming him into a person of the Arab race.
This is a crime condemned by laws, morals, and Islam, which was repeated eleven times in the subject of Professor Oudghiri, but in order to ultimately violate his principles of respecting and preserving the languages and identities of non-Arab peoples.
Yacine’s writer did not use French to turn the Algerian people into a French people, but rather used it to explain it accurately and clearly when he said while acknowledging that it is a colonial language: “Francophone is a political machine of neo-colonialism, which perpetuates our dispossession. But using the French language does not mean that we are agents of a foreign power. I am I write in French to tell the French that I am not French." As for you, the Arabists, you use Arabic to tell the real Arabs that you are Arabs like them, expecting a reward from them for getting rid of your “barbarism” and your true and original identity. But these real Arabs reply to you that you are just fake and forged Arabs, impersonating and practicing falsehood.
And this is the difference between you and Kateb Yacine: he employs French to prove his Amazigh African identity and defend it against France, which was seeking to swallow it and dissolve it in its French affiliation. As for you, Arabists, headed by Professor Oudgiri, you employ Arabic to eliminate the Amazigh African identity of Moroccans and Algerians, and to attach them to a forged and plagiarized Arab identity. Therefore, when Kateb Yassin says that French is a war booty, he means that thanks to this language, he has an identity awareness of his original Amazigh affiliation, and he realizes that he is neither French nor Arab. Were it not for the French language, he would have continued to consider himself “Arab,” as he thought, because he belonged to an Arabophone family, where the criterion for distinguishing between “Arab” and Amazigh was the language standard, as is the case with us in Morocco. As for the Arabic language, regarding the relationship to identity awareness, and unlike French, it falsifies this awareness by making its owner believe that he is “Arab,” and that it is his duty to fight Amazigh so as not to disturb his false Arab identity awareness.
Professor Oudghiri says that Kateb Yacine died “on a testimony: “I am neither an Arab nor a Muslim, I am an Algerian.” Which he sees as a result of "Yassin's involvement in a fierce war against Classical Arabic, its culture, its people, and the religious, civilizational and historical values associated with it." Even if this is true, the reason for this “war” will be that the Arabic language and its culture are used in North Africa to eliminate Amazigh as a collective identity for the peoples of this region. He was not fighting them as a language and as a culture, but rather he was fighting their uses to fight the original collective identity of the North African countries. His death on the testimony of: “I am neither an Arab nor a Muslim, I am an Algerian” is an expression of sound identity awareness, realizing that his identity is not determined by religion or Arabness, but by belonging to the Algerian land, which is an African Amazigh land. This is what he reached thanks to the French language in which he became aware of his true identity and history. And not the two ideologues that Arabization and its tool, which is the Arabic language, spread, without this meaning that he was defending the French of Algeria, as do Mr. El-Wogiri and the rest of the Arabists who use Arabic to Arabize the countries of North Africa.
What is the language that made the Maghreb cut off the tongue,
? Arabic or French
Mr. Oudgiri asks Kateb Yassin denouncing: “What language was it worth considering as a booty and an asset in your life? Is it the language of your nation and your Islamic civilization in which your roots grew and your veins nourished […],The mother of the language that turned you into an eternal captive, cut off the tongue.” Once again, because of Arab dispossession, ideological blindness, and the tyranny of Amazigh-phobe passion, Professor Oudghiri reverses the results of the relationship between Arabic and French with the reality of their use and communication in life. In his opinion, since Kateb Yacine is not good at Except for French and he is ignorant of classical Arabic, so it is the “tongue cut off”, which it represents, as it is understood from the question of Professor Wadghiri, the classical Arabic language, that is, that Arabic that is only learned in school or something that takes its place.
If Mr. Oudghiri means that someone who is fluent in French and is ignorant of classical Arabic, such as Kateb Yacine, He remains “tongue cut off” because the French he is fluent in cannot communicate in his Maghreb country, in the street, in the restaurant, at the train station, in the café, and in the market... This is absolutely out of the question and will never happen. Why? Because he does not need to use French in these Maghreb spaces, as long as he uses the language spoken in his Maghreb country, which is Darija - or Tamazight - which Kateb Yacine used to speak as an innate mother tongue. The French that he teaches thus constitutes a second tongue that is added to his common, innate and original tongue, without the consequence that she “cuts” his common tongue. That is why he considered it a "booty", that is, an additional profit and gain.
But a person who is only fluent in the classical Arabic that he learned in school and is ignorant of any other language, such as Tamazight and Darija, cannot communicate with it in the street, restaurant, train station, café, and market... So he actually becomes “tongue cut off”, because the language he knows and masters, It is standard Arabic, and it does not exist in daily communication in life, after it lost, centuries ago, the function of oral communication to become a language used in writing only. It is thus a half-dead or half-living language, given that the language lives first and foremost by oral circulation and then secondly by writing and school. The case is that Arabic does not live only by this last means.
The result is that someone who knows only classical Arabic will be like a “tongue cut off” because he is unable to use it in oral communication because no one uses Arabic to communicate in life. This is what Professor Oudgiri calls us to be "tongue-cutters".
In addition to this result that classical Arabic leads to, when it makes its owner “cut off the tongue”, as I explained, it also cuts off, as in North African countries, the original Amazigh tongue of these populations, by adopting it to spread criminal Arabization with the aim of annihilating the Amazigh language and identity and transforming Amazighs into Arabs. Forgeries.
Monotheism and Arabization between Islam and Colonialism:
Professor Oudgiri invokes a set of colloquial opinions as a reference and a “scientific” guide to explain his ready-made, and colloquial rulings as well, about Arabic, identity, colonialism and his French language… Among these colloquial opinions, on which he relies in his response to Kateb Yassin, is his certain judgment that Islam has “gave to Algeria and others.” Among the countries and peoples that had the honor of embracing him, and he did not take from her. He gave her everything and did not take anything from her. He united her and united her internal and external scattering with her Muslim sisters.
This monotheistic role of Islam is not a historical fact, fixed and certain, but rather a common public opinion among the Muslims of the Middle East and North Africa. It is a general opinion because it is based on the confusion between the doctrinal monotheism of Islam as a monotheistic religion that is opposed to and contradicting polytheistic beliefs, and the political monotheism that these Muslims, including Mr. Wadghiri, attribute to Islam. Although the difference between doctrinal monotheism and political monotheism is great, and the first does not lead to the second and does not include it, as we may find non-Muslim peoples, but they are politically united, and Muslim peoples, but they are divided and politically contested. This is proven by the history of Muslims, as evidenced by the existence of dozens of Islamic countries separated from each other, as well as wars and conflicts between groups of Muslims, which have characterized their history since the death of the Prophet (peace be upon him) until today, even though the same religion unites them and unites them ideologically.
If we take Morocco as an example, we note that the Moroccans were Muslims thirteen centuries ago. However, this did not prevent the political divisions between them, countries and tribes, and Islam was not able to unite them and unite them internally, as Professor Oudgiri claims. But the bitter truth that may shock him is that the first to unite the Moroccan state and the Moroccan tribes, reunite them and merge them under one authority, is French colonialism, not the Islamic religion. This does not mean that Islam is a religion of political division and division. Rather, it means that Islam is politically neutral, does not divide or blame. Rather, it is its political use that may make it a religion that unites or divides politically. The source of division and disagreement, for example, between Shiites and Sunnis is the political use of Islam by each of them to serve its own conflicting political goals and interests from the goals and interests of the other party.
Arabists invoke the warning against discrimination and the call for unity in an obsessive manner whenever it comes to the right of the Amazigh to qualify it to be the language of education, administration and judiciary... It is as if the source of all the fragmentation, division and conflicts experienced by the so-called Arab world is the Amazigh. Kateb Yassin, in his introduction to Tasa’adt Yassin’s book “Ait Mencalt Sings,” described these Arabists, who reject Amazigh language under the pretext of threatening national unity, as destroyers of unity. About them, he says: “Les fossoyeurs de l unité destroyers of unity warn us of the dangers of threatening national unity. It is the trick of the thief who claims to have stolen to cover up his crime. And he says in one of his recent conversations with the same writer, Tsa'dat Yassin: "On what basis do they want us to unite
?" and build this unity, on the basis of lies and falsification of history
As for Islam giving everything to Algeria and not taking anything from it, this is also from the common vernacular opinions, which do not prove before research and analysis. Even if we assume that Islam, in terms of its teachings and principles, does not call for the plundering of the wealth of the countries in which it spreads, but that in its name, that is, through its political use, a great effort will be made to plunder the most precious wealth of North African countries. It is her Amazigh identity. Islam has been used to eliminate the collective identity of the peoples of North Africa and replace it with an Arab identity, with many Islamic political justifications according to the political periods and contexts: once under the pretext of eliminating paganism and ignorance, and once on the claim that the Prophet is an Arab, and once on the claim that Arabic is the language of heaven, and once under the pretext of fighting discrimination and racism, and once On the pretext of thwarting the colonial division scheme… Saying that Islam gave it everything and did not take anything from it, may be true for countries such as Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Indonesia…, which preserved their original collective identities and national languages after the spread of Islam in them and were not used to convert them to “Arab” peoples, just as North African regimes tried to It does so by employing it for Islam and using it for this purpose.
Recognizing the absence of any Arab affiliation before the French occupation:
The truest thing in Professor Oudghiri’s article is his saying, regarding Algeria, which is of course also true of Morocco: “No one, before the era of the French occupation, attributed anything of it to the Arabs alone or to the amazighs alone, but to the countries that unite them.” This is a very beautiful thing. It is no longer Islam that unites the peoples, but the land to which these peoples belong. But most importantly, this land is the source of the collective identity of those peoples, regardless of their ethnic origins, amazigh, Arab oramazigh. And if we know that this land is a Amazigh land, that is, “the land of the amazighs,” as the Arab history books say, then this collective identity of the peoples of these countries is amazigh.
As for the strongest and most significant aspect of Professor Oudgiri's words, it is his assertion that no one before the French occupation attributed himself to the Arabs or the amazighs, but only to the land. So, if there was no purely Arab affiliation or purely Berber affiliation to Morocco and Algeria before the French occupation, how did these two countries, after this occupation, turn into an “Arab Maghreb”, and not an Amazigh Morocco or an Arab Amazigh if we assume the existence of these two elements? I do not think that Professor Oudghiri, no matter how he tries to evade by twisting and interpreting, can deny that the term “Arab Maghreb”, which explicitly ascribes the countries of North Africa to the Arabs, did not appear until after the French occupation of Morocco. This confirms that it was France that carried out the largest and most dangerous Arabization process for Morocco and Algeria. Why is it bigger and more dangerous? Because Arabization, in which Islam was used to spread it, as we have already explained, remained limited and confined to what is ethnic, pertaining to a group of individuals who claimed to be of Arab descent or of “honorable descent.” As for France, it was not satisfied with the ethnic Arabization of individuals by spreading the myth of “honorable lineage”, but rather it carried out a political Arabization according to which the Moroccan state became Arab, with the resultant that this Arabization withdrew from all of Morocco as an Arab country, which is expressed by the term “Arab Maghreb” that began Its use in the forties of the last century, which was invented by the Maghreb after the political Arabization carried out by France had given its fruit.
Even the Arabic language was not fought by France, as Mr. Oudghiri claims, but rather preserved it and made it a language in which laws, citations and decrees are published in the Official Gazette alongside French, which gave it, for the first time in history, the status of an official language in the legal sense. Why did France preserve Arabic and made it an official language alongside French? Because Arabic is the only language that allows French to dominate and dominate because it is (Arabic) a half-dead or half-living language that is used only in writing and not in daily circulation, as previously mentioned, which makes it unable to compete with French, unlike Berber and Darija, which can in a short period of time A quarter of a century, the French were removed from their throne in Morocco If there is the political will to advance them, by rehabilitating them at school and upgrading them to the level of two languages for writing and teaching. We have already explained, in previous articles (see the topic: “French as a publisher of Arabism and anti-Amazigh” by clicking here), that the dominance of French in Morocco is part of the policy of Arabization, because the dominance of French depends on the survival of Arabic as a semi-living language that cannot threaten nor compete French as a living language.
These are facts that Mr. Wadghiri does not believe and will not understand, because in dealing with the issue of language and identity, he proceeds from what is ideological, colloquial, common, and an apparent and external given. While the scientific facts are often hidden behind the apparent and sensory given.
? Why does the writer Yassine bother the Maghreb intellectuals
Kateb Yacine died a third of a century ago (in 1989), a period during which nationalist and pan-Arabist ideology declined significantly, and Tamazight made remarkable progress if the Amazigh language became constitutional and official in both Morocco and Algeria, which accompanied and resulted in a decline in the Amazigh-phobic tendency against Amazigh , whether with the authorities or Arab intellectuals. But despite all these political and ideological transformations, Kateb Yassin continues to intimidate and intimidate the Berbers, and they are still fighting him, as Professor Oudghiri does, with the same old, rusty weapons (tearing the nation apart, serving the colonial scheme, reviving tribal strife and ethnic tendencies…) that were used, Between the seventies and nineties of the last century, in the face of the emerging Amazigh movement.
? Why does Yassin's writer alone "receive" such exceptional attention
Because Kateb Yacine did not come to Tamazight from Tamazight like Mouloud Maamari, or Ali Sedky Azaiko, or Ahmed Assid, Mohammed al-Shami, or Hassan Benakia... If they are fighters for the sake of Tamazight, this may seem a natural thing because they are originally Amazigh and speak Amazigh. Kateb Yassin came to Tamazight from Arabism, to which he believed he belonged as an “Arab” who spoke Arabic (Darija) for his “Arabic” family. This “Arab” environment in which he lived his childhood instilled in him early on, his hatred and contempt for everything that is Amazigh. About this stage of his life, he says: “What I knew about the Kabyles when I was young was all insults. The Kabyle is like the Jew, a strange human being who does not resemble us. There were common expressions identifying his character: Leqbayel, leqbayel/Tous, tous/Lgemla ged Ifellus!” (The Kabyles all have lice the size of chicks.) It was therefore expected, given the Amazigh-phobic “Arab” environment in which Kateb Yassin lived, that he would be an “Arab” person who viewed Amazigh with Arab racial superiority and despised it as a backward dialect specific to the “backward” Berbers, to whom he does not belong because he is of “Arab” origin. “. But on the contrary, he will become one of the staunch defenders of Amazighness, and the fiercest opponent of Arabism, which he has always considered, in all his writings, speeches and stances, as an invasion, colonialism and usurpation of the worst and worst kind (see the topic: “When will Moroccan intellectuals do like the Algerian intellectual Kateb Yacine? ”, within the book: “On the Amazigh Identity of Morocco”, by clicking here or here). And this is what embarrasses Professor Oudgiri: How can an “Arab” desperately defend the Amazigh when those who still bear the Amazigh name - “The Oudgiri”, in reference to the famous Amazigh tribe “Lodaghir” known as the Moroccan Amazigh “Fikek” - are not friendly to his Berbers ? This is what makes Yacine's writer annoy the Arab intellectuals more than all the activists of the Berber movement. He awakened awareness of the Amazigh identity at a stage when there was no Amazigh movement or Amazigh demands, and at the height of the dominance of Arab nationalism. This early and advanced Amazigh identity awareness is what explains why he named his son “Amazigh” in 1972, “that is, at a time when Amazigh names were not in circulation, not used, or even prohibited by the authorities. Because no one was using it. Kateb Yacine was therefore ahead of his time and ahead of his time in terms of awareness of the Amazigh identity” as a collective identity for North African countries. This position does not only annoy Arabist intellectuals, but may embarrass them when they notice that an “Arab” intellectual was able to get rid of the false identity awareness and embrace the correct identity awareness in the seventies of the last century, while they are still, and in the twenty-first century, living in the cave of false identity awareness that Formed at the beginning of the twentieth century.
For there to be Amazigh-speaking Amazigh activists, for these intellectuals who reject Amazighness, it is an acceptable and normal thing that does not bother them or worry them, because these activists are at least Amazigh in the first place, even if it is “deceived” by them. As for the presence of an Amazigh activist of “Arab” origin, this is what they cannot and cannot tolerate, because it proves to them that they are also amazighs, but they are victims of false awareness. This embarrasses them, as I said, to the point where they feel ashamed of themselves. That is why they do not get tired, as Professor Oudgiri does, of trying to ridicule the positions of Kateb Yacine so that they feel that they were not mistaken when they reject the Amazigh language and defend the Arabism of North African countries. .
Written by Professor Muhammad Bodhan
Source: websites