In response to Mr. Yassin Al-Omari
Al-Tayeb Amgroud - a professor specializing in the Amazigh language
“Let no people mock another people”…the verse
Greetings and peace,
I saw on your official YouTube channel a recording of your lecture “Our Youth and Contemporary Challenges,” which you delivered to the students of the Higher School of Textile and Clothing Industry in Casablanca, ESITH CASABLANCA, on January 3, 2024.
Since you mentioned among the challenges of the era for the youth of Morocco the problem of identity, and you mentioned the language as its container, you tried to convince the audience that the lifeline is the return to the mother tongue of Moroccans, which you claimed, i.e. the Arabic language. You devoted seven minutes of your speech to attacking the Amazigh language, the central tributary of Moroccan identity, ignoring everything that has been achieved in its favor, belittling all the efforts that have been made and are being made by state institutions and those who are jealous of it in all its manifestations for twenty-two years, despite your absence of any knowledge or interest in the Amazigh language and culture. And your complete ignorance of the details of its file, characteristics, and scientific details.
I respond to part of what was stated in your speech, a large part of which is directed against the Amazigh language (from minutes 32.39 to 39.24), providing the following points:
1. You talk about the West using a speech of absolute, comprehensive rejection. The West, in what your speech suggests, is a source of evil and nothing but evil, and that all goodness lies in us. Among the examples you cited was the inability of a young man who called you to perform prayer due to restrictions imposed on him, which made him... He is forced to do it in the bathroom. All the problems of Moroccan immigrants, including workers and students whose excellence qualifies them to enroll in Western schools and universities, boil down to restrictions on them and their inability to perform prayers on time due to work or fear of being reported, knowing that these countries, as you know, are not concerned with a person’s prayer or fasting unless It restricts others, or when a follower of a religion seeks to impose his point of view or religion. The West is a refuge for all sects and religions, and no one has ever complained about it except those who secretly left their countries and moved to the West, which they describe as infidel. As soon as their situation stabilizes, they begin to demand the conversion of countries. Receiving copies from their countries, and an example of this is when some of them intentionally obstruct the normal functioning of public facilities by initiating performance prayers in the roads, streets, and at workplaces.
2. It seems that you do not know anything about the constitutions and laws of the countries that were mentioned in your speech, so you exerted yourself to charge the young men and women present and convince them of the futility of dreaming of integrating there, thinking that the matter is related to one of the states that still does not recognize the most basic rights of citizenship for a number of its citizens. Reducing everything that a person can do to seek integration into the West by changing the details of his external appearance to resemble the appearance of Westerners and mastering their languages, to conclude that this integration will not be achieved, and that the person seeking it will be rejected and expelled, and he will inevitably return to his country and find himself also unacceptable as a Moroccan, because In your opinion, he is a mongrel and has lost his mother tongue, which is nothing but Arabic.
3. Science defines the mother tongue as being the first language that a child learns from his parents. However, you claim that a person’s first mother language is the language of the faith in which he believes, and you mean classical Arabic, the Arabic of the Qur’an in the Moroccan context. If we apply your logic to all non-Arab Islamic peoples, then more than ninety percent of Muslims, including Moroccan Amazighs, have an incorrect faith because they do not speak classical Arabic, and the number of Muslims exceeds a billion and a half, even if we remove from them the speakers of the various languages of the Islamic peoples, such as Amazigh and Nubian. , Kurdish, Persian, and Urdu... We will remain with a small number of those who consider themselves impudent Arabs, and who also do not speak classical Arabic as a mother tongue, but rather their local dialects, meaning that their faith is also incorrect, knowing that there are some Arabs who profess religions other than Islam, such as Christianity, so do Is Arabic also a language of faith among Arab Christians?
?If the answer is no, what is their language of faith
4. You ignore that millions of Moroccans only speak the Amazigh language, and if they are forced to be diglossic, they speak dialect, so where will we find a Moroccan who speaks classical Arabic as a mother tongue?
5. The real situation of the classical Arabic language in Morocco, which neither the nationalists nor the Islamists will accept, is that it is not the mother tongue of any Moroccan, but rather the language of religion and administration.
6. What was mentioned in your speech is that knowledge of God can only be achieved through and in the Arabic language, which means, given that Moroccans do not speak classical Arabic, that none of them truly know God. Therefore, this is an insult to the Moroccans and an attack on their religiosity, which will not be complete unless By speaking classical Arabic and abandoning their languages, and millions of Moroccan citizens are only fluent in Amazigh, while the rest speak dialect and Hassaniya, in fact it diminishes the religiosity of all non-Arabic speakers in the world, and is challenged by those who consider Arabic to be one of the pillars of Islam.
7. You said that God chose Arabic from among all the languages of the peoples He created as a vessel for His revelation, because, according to your opinion, it is the only one that understands it. He also jumped on what was stated in the Qur’anic text itself, since the messengers who carried messages to their people carried them to them in their own languages. The Jews were addressed in Hebrew. The Christians were addressed in Aramaic and the Arabs were addressed in Arabic.
8. Do not declare to your followers that the Qur’anic text does not include only Arabic, but rather a huge lexical reserve from all the languages of the surrounding region of the region that witnessed the appearance of the Qur’an.
9. You conclude, apart from science, that the first mother tongue of Moroccans is Classical Arabic, and here I ask you: Where are there Moroccans for whom Classical Arabic is a mother language? Will we apply the same logic to non-Arabic speakers from peoples who profess Islam, whose number doubles the number of dialect speakers? Much Arabic, and what is the position of non-Muslim Arabic speakers in your logic and equation? Like Arab Christians, for example?
10. Why do you insist on belittling the Amazigh and their Amazigh language and mocking them, and avoid calling them by the names they accept for themselves, so you call them Shalouh and call their language Shalah, even though Islam does not permit mocking people and calling people names, and despite the fact that the Moroccan Constitution and all its laws and legislation use the term Amazigh?
11. You acknowledge that all the countries that broke with backwardness started from their mother tongues, and that our gateway to development and catching up is to use the mother tongue of Moroccans, yet you are shooting the plane in the park, and you are wrong, and you are claiming that the mother language of Moroccans is classical Arabic, simply because our languages The mother tongue is Amazigh with its variations, and the Moroccan colloquial dialect is a field of correspondence between Amazigh and Arabic, and the Hassaniyya south of Guelmim is also a field of correspondence between Amazigh Sanhaja/Agnaga speech and Arabic. Let us start from ourselves, then, Si Al-Omari, if your goal is truly good and your heart is on this land, and let us employ the mother tongues of the Moroccans. We acknowledge scientifically that the status of classical Arabic in Morocco is the same as that of French, and that considering it a teaching language has delayed the development process in Morocco for six decades, simply because it is not the mother tongue of any Moroccan, and it cannot scientifically be adopted as a teaching language. Rather, it must be taught for its own sake, and not as a language. As for the language of instruction for other sciences and specializations.
12. So, Si Al-Omari, let us launch teaching in our mother tongues, which will only be Berber, dialect, or Hassani. When a child joins school at the age of six years, he masters these languages and has absorbed their rules from his surroundings and family, and communicates in them fluently, only to find before him a strange and complex linguistic system that makes For the sake of effort, money and time only because a group of us seeks to forcefully Arabize us, and another group seeks to convince us that Arabic is one of the pillars of Islam and a sacred language and that God only speaks it, and it is the one with which we will be held accountable and enter Paradise.
13. You say in another place that we study in all languages except our own. You are right, Si Yassin. When a Moroccan student joins school, he does not find in front of him his mother’s language, but rather classical Arabic, which does not exist in his reality and surroundings. Imagine with us, Si Yassin, what would the situation of Moroccan children be like if we adopted their mother tongues in education since independence?
14. You move on to talk about your horse stud, “Al-Shalha,” about teaching the Amazigh language to Moroccan children, betraying all those who fought for it, employing the conspiracy theory, despite the fact that those you are betraying are the ones who achieved all the gains in favor of the Amazigh language.
15. Despite your complete distance from the Amazigh language in all its minute details, including sounds, the alphabet, the lexicon, morphology, structure, and semantics, and the lack of the simplest conditions in you, meaning that you should at least be a speaker of it, you find in yourself the complete audacity to discuss a topic that you know nothing about, which is teaching the Amazigh language. With its original letter, Tifinagh. Unfortunately, your discussion is very late and came two decades after it was decided by the palace and specialists during February 2003, and the beginning of its integration into education by teaching it in the primary school and universities, and after the number of its specialized professors exceeded a thousand male and female professors, and after it became an official language of Morocco, which is An understatement of everything that the Moroccan state has done and is doing since 2001.
To respond to you, Si Yassin, we will suffice by saying that Tifinagh is an integrated and accurate writing system, and one of the most ancient human writing systems for natural languages. The Tuareg have not stopped writing their Amazigh language in it to this day, and it is preserved by rocks, inscriptions, jewelry, clothing, and furniture. And the chests and bodies of people in North Africa and the Sahel, and Tifinagh accommodates all the sounds of the Amazigh language. Morocco chose it, borrowed it, and wrote it as a letter of writing for the Amazigh language. The neighboring Amazighs in Tunisia, Libya, and the Diaspora adopted it, and it made great strides in integrating into the international information system and means of modern technology, and thousands of books have been written with it to this day. And documents, and no one will wait to get your opinion and those with you to continue teaching the Amazigh language with a letter that is considered the easiest in Moroccan schools, and the quickest to learn by Moroccan children, and even by adult Moroccans, and this is what I express to you about my desire to volunteer to teach it to you, that is, the Tifinagh alphabet. In a record time of no more than an hour, in any place and time you choose, until the blur is removed from your eyes.
16. Despite the fact that you do not speak any of the branches of the Amazigh language, and your complete ignorance of it, which is proven by the example you cited, thinking that you will confuse your opponents with it, “It’s okay Darwin/It’s okay Darwin,” you stuck your nose into a debate for which you do not have the scientific equipment. The Amazigh language, according to scholars The language exists on its own, independent of its sounds, lexicon, morphology, structure, and semantics from any other language. It includes dozens of regional and local dialects and branches throughout North Africa and the Sahel, from Canary in the west to Siwa in the east, and from the Mediterranean Sea in the north to the Sahara in the south. And what you think is a push for exclusion. The Amazigh language education is a weak argument, and what you are talking about, i.e. dialect diversity, does not concern it alone, but rather is a phenomenon that includes all natural languages, including Arabic. If you wish, I will volunteer to inform you of the verses of the Amazigh language, and the nature of the differences between its dialects, which do not affect the essence, i.e. morphology and structure, but rather the sounds and the lexicon to a lesser extent.
17. I ask you, Mr. Al-Omari, about the feasibility of teaching the Amazigh language, and we extract the answer from your own words, which is that we want to become one of the developed countries, as Amazigh is the mother tongue of more than seventy percent of Moroccans, and we will save a lot of effort, time and money in changing a linguistic system that follows the same rule. Al-Tongues is a system that will be built from the beginning. Therefore, Moroccan children have the right to learn their Amazigh language in school, and receive lessons in various disciplines and sciences, and millions of Moroccans have the right to use their mother tongue in all aspects of life and administration. Will Si Al-Omari accept to stand before the judge, or your mother to stand before the doctor, or your son to sit? In front of the professor, you will all find it difficult to communicate with someone who should communicate with you in your mother tongue, and not forcing you to speak in a language you have never heard of, or the official asking you to bring an interpreter from the audience to convey your words, on which your fate before the judiciary, or one of you’s treatment papers, or His future as a human being.
18. Greetings for your data, Mr. Al-Omari, let me tell you some data. The specialists in the Amazigh language and culture in the seven research centers that constitute the research structures of the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture, have worked since 2001 on their various fields, including the standardization of the Amazigh language, and standardization is not a language industry, otherwise Sibawayh and Hebron. Ben Ahmed...they created classical Arabic, rather a scientific process that all languages undergo when they move from the function of oral communication to new functions imposed by their new status as an official language, that is, qualifying that language that was oral to carry out its new functions imposed by its constitutional status as an official language of administration, education, media, and all... aspects of public life, and standardization is a process that goes through several stages in which dictionaries are collected, and the phonetic, morphological, and syntactic characteristics of the various branches, until we arrive at the characteristics that unite the various branches as regional or local variations of a stand-alone mother language and adopt them. You, Si Al-Omari, can move to the institute’s headquarters in the Riyadh district. To see for yourself what researchers are doing in the official institution that has been dedicated to the Amazigh language and culture since 2001, and about which you seem to know nothing and its efforts.
19. According to your logic, it would be nice if you narrated to the recipient the stages of borrowing Arabic, even if we looked at the linguistic reality of the many and complex Arabic dialects, or went back centuries, for the same reality that you think is a deficiency and calls for a diminution of the Amazigh language, that is, the dialect, was lived by Arabic and all natural languages, And that Classical Arabic went through the same stages of pluralization and pluralization by names you know well, and that if we looked at the simplest thing carefully, which is the letter, we would discover that its current form did not reach it except after centuries of modification, and among them is the letter of writing the Qur’an, the details of which I do not think you are unaware of.
20. Therefore, Mr. Yassine Al-Omari, the language that has been taught to Moroccan children since 2003 in schools, and whose division has been adopted in Moroccan universities and in training institutions, is the Amazigh language, which is an intermediate language between all of Morocco’s varieties. It has excluded all regional and local phonetic phenomena that do not affect the meaning. You can ask her teachers about the extent of the students’ response to her lessons, despite all the obstacles, difficulties, and intrigues.
21. Si Al-Omari, following in the footsteps of Arab leaders who banned speaking the Amazigh language on the street and confined it to homes, and contradicting your call to teach in the mother tongue as a lifeline, concludes that the natural position of the Shalah is to speak it at home only, while completely abandoning its right to life and scientific and legislative protection. And constitutionality, and benefiting from the state’s budget and capabilities, and being present in all aspects of public life, and the rights of its children to education and the media, and the use of their language in all aspects of public life, describing it by force and indeed as a mother language and an official language for Moroccans, thus leaving its place to the language of God, Paradise, and revelation, that is, the Arabic language, according to your logic.
22. It will become possible for you, Mr. Al-Omari, to compare school languages to which billions of public funds are allocated, a large portion of a student’s school time, thousands of frameworks and material and logistical capabilities, and a language that was deprived of all its rights until 2001. You will have the right to do so after we generalize the teaching of the Amazigh language. Horizontally and vertically, it enjoys the financial, material, human and legislative potential that Arab countries have been blessed with.
Waiting for your response, please accept my appreciation and respect, Mr. Yassin Al-Omari,
and peace
Source: websites