On the claim that Tamazight is useless

In a previous article (titled “The Allegation of a Lack of Scientific Rigor and the Dominance of Ideology in Amazigh Discourse”), we highlighted that those among identity defectors—in the original sense of the Arabic term jins (nationality or belonging)—who oppose their own Amazigh identity no longer justify their rejection by brandishing the scarecrow of the “Berber Dahir.” This is especially true given that the decree has been proven to be nothing more than a myth with no real historical foundation. Yet they have not surrendered, as one might have expected given the advancements of the Amazigh cause and the gains achieved. Instead, they have simply changed tactics, shifting away from directly using the myth of the “Berber Dahir” to exploiting its derivatives. These take the form of pretexts that appear completely detached from the founding mythology behind some Moroccans’ hostility toward their Amazigh identity, even though they aim for the exact same objective: to “convince” people of the legitimacy of rejecting, excluding, and marginalizing the Amazigh language.

Chief among these pretexts is the frequently repeated cliché that Moroccans’ true priorities are employment, education, healthcare, dignity, social justice, democracy, and the fight against corruption and despotism—not the Amazigh language, which is deemed useless and therefore absent from their concerns. Although this notion is widely held among the public, it did not originate within uneducated working-class circles. On the contrary, intellectuals forged and disseminated it until it became commonplace in public opinion. For example, despite his recognized intellectual stature, the late Mohammed Abed Al-Jabri stated in an interview with 2M in the late 1990s—when asked about his stance on Amazigh demands—that Amazighs in villages, mountains, and the countryside were asking for water, electricity, hospitals, and schools, rather than the identity, linguistic, and cultural demands advocated by Amazigh associations. If such a prominent intellectual, who was an Amazigh speaker himself, reduced Amazigh demands to access to water, electricity, clinics, and schools, one can hardly blame the general public, especially non-Amazigh speakers, for arguing that Moroccans’ priorities are employment, education, health, dignity, social justice, democracy, and the struggle against corruption and authoritarianism—not the Amazigh language, a tongue that will not secure them jobs, assist them in education, train doctors, grant them dignity, guarantee social justice, establish democracy, or put an end to corruption and despotism…

If the Amazigh language is judged useless, it is because it is prevented from being useful:

This is the very foundation of the alleged “lack of utility” used to justify and legitimate the exclusion of the Amazigh language. According to this pretext, the language is supposedly of no use or value to Moroccan citizens—whether in terms of employment, education, healthcare, dignity, social justice, or democratic governance. Yet, by invoking the urgent daily needs of Moroccans, this argument clearly rests on a bad-faith deception. If the Amazigh language is absent from schools, public administration, courts, mosques, and all state institutions, it is only natural that citizens, upon entering these institutions, find that it offers them no help. Thus, the exclusion of the Amazigh language becomes both the end and the means: it is excluded to rob it of all utility, and this deprivation is then used to reinforce and legitimize its exclusion. Yet, if the Amazigh language appears useless, as proponents of this thesis claim, it is precisely because it has been prevented from becoming so. How could it be useful in administrative offices and courts when it is banned from schools, where civil servants and magistrates should have learned it in written form to use it effectively? It is absurd and misleading to exclude the Amazigh language in order to render it useless, only to argue afterward that it serves no purpose and conclude that Moroccans have no need for it. This is the exact same approach adopted by Mr. Bensalem Himmich in his Amazighophobic writings when he challenges Amazigh activists, with a simplistic logic bordering on illiteracy, to write their articles in the Amazigh language and in Tifinagh script. Yet he knows full well—unless he is illiterate himself—that written language is learned in school or in similar educational settings. It is neither logical, nor fair, nor sound to banish the Amazigh language from the education system—the premier site for learning to write—only to decree afterward that it is unfit for writing under the pretext that its speakers have not mastered it in written form.

Therefore, for the argument regarding the “uselessness of the Amazigh language” to possess any credibility or logical validity, it would require:

– First, giving the Amazigh language the opportunity to be practiced—which entails prior educational integration, just like all languages considered useful—in order to verify whether or not it is capable of being useful.

Second, it requires demonstrating that languages deemed useful, such as Arabic, are indeed effective in the areas where the Amazigh language has supposedly failed, and doing so only after granting the Amazigh language the same opportunities to thrive as those other languages.

Having benefited neither from the attention given to Arabic and French, nor from that devoted to any other language considered useful under this logic of utility, and having lacked equal opportunities for standardized, compulsory instruction, claiming that the Amazigh language is useless is completely unfounded. Indeed, its alleged uselessness has never been demonstrated under fair evaluation conditions comparable to those granted to Arabic, French, or any other language deemed useful. Consequently, arguing that the Amazigh language is incapable of fulfilling Moroccans’ expectations regarding employment, education, healthcare, dignity, social justice, democracy, or the fight against corruption and authoritarianism is pure speculation without the slightest empirical basis. It is simply Amazighophobic discourse rooted in a preconceived hostility toward the Amazigh language, disguised under the pretext of utility, when the true failure lies in refusing to give it the opportunity to prove its worth.

Has Arabic actually guaranteed Moroccans employment, healthcare, and democracy?

Although this pretext is groundless—unless it can be proven that other languages considered “useful,” such as Arabic, actually deliver where the Amazigh language has supposedly failed, after receiving the same opportunities—we will nonetheless compare the “utility” of these languages with the alleged uselessness of the Amazigh language, which has enjoyed none of the development and promotion efforts granted to others. Let us start with Arabic, on which the state has poured billions in public funds since independence. If this language were truly useful and, unlike the Amazigh language, guaranteed Moroccans employment, education, healthcare access, dignity, social justice, democracy, and a fight against corruption and despotism, that would merely be the natural and expected outcome of the immense state support it receives. Yet the reality is that Arabic has proven incapable—perhaps even more so than the Amazigh language, which has not received even a fraction of a billionth of that public funding—of providing Moroccans with employment, education, doctors, dignity, social justice, or democracy, or of curbing corruption and authoritarianism. Except for certain liberal professions such as lawyers or adouls, alongside a few administrative and judicial posts, high-level jobs in Morocco are available only to those fluent in foreign languages other than Arabic. Meanwhile, traditional manual trades—such as construction, transport, metalworking, mechanics, butchery, or grocery retailing—rely on Darija or the Amazigh language. It is therefore no surprise that Morocco’s unemployment rate increases alongside the growing number of graduates educated exclusively in Arabic.

If one argues, according to utilitarian logic, that the Amazigh language does not serve the quality education that Moroccans need, it is on the contrary well established that Arabic has degraded Morocco’s educational system. This is explained by its use not as a mere language, but as an instrument of Arabization aimed at transforming the identity of Moroccans—shifting it from their Amazigh and African roots to a borrowed Arab-Asian identity. It is precisely this process that caused the decline in educational standards in Morocco, foreshadowing the “heart attack” against which the late King Hassan II warned in October 1995. This deterioration prompted officials to abandon Arabization and return to foreign languages for teaching science subjects in primary and secondary education, following Parliament’s adoption in late July 2019 of Framework Law No. 51.17 on the education, training, and scientific research system. Articles 2 and 31 of this legislation established “linguistic alternation” to justify and validate the decision to teach science subjects in French rather than Arabic, despite Arabic having been imposed for these disciplines for forty years. In reality, the catastrophic results of the Arabization policy—which have nothing to do with the Arabic language itself, the primary victim of this policy—speak for themselves. By asserting that Moroccans’ true priorities are employment, education, healthcare, dignity, social justice, democracy, and combating corruption, rather than the Amazigh language, the blame for these vital shortcomings is placed directly on Arabic—or at least on its ideological and distorted use which, as I have written, seeks to divert Moroccans from their Amazigh and African roots toward an Arab-Asian identity. Meanwhile, the Amazigh language is completely absolved of these failures, having been excluded and absent from the public sphere since independence. It has therefore played no role in the disastrous outcomes of the linguistic and educational policies adopted and imposed by the state.

The value of languages is not limited to their practical utility alone:

Furthermore, if utility were the sole criterion for measuring the value and importance of languages, most nations would have abandoned their own in favor of the most “useful” ones, such as English or Chinese. Indeed, Arabs would have been the first to abandon Arabic, which offers no practical utility in economics, science, or technology. Taking this utilitarian logic to its ultimate conclusion, Moroccans should even renounce what they hold most dear—Islam—since it guarantees them neither employment (except for practitioners of illegal roqya), nor quality education, nor medical care for the sick, nor social justice, nor democratic governance. I realize this may sound absurd or unacceptable. Yet it is the logical outcome of the utilitarian reasoning used by those who justify excluding the Amazigh language on those very grounds. Why do they invoke this pragmatism to dismiss the Amazigh language, while refusing to accept its logical consequences when it comes to Arabic or Islam? Especially considering that if the Amazigh language appears to lack utility, it is precisely because—as we have explained—it has been prevented from developing it. Through these questions and examples, we aim to demonstrate that the value of languages, even when they do not seem “useful,” cannot be measured solely by their communicative, cognitive, scientific, or economic contribution. It also lies in their connection to a people’s collective identity, of which language is the mirror image. This is why most nations bear the name of their language, which simultaneously defines their collective identity. This is true of the Arab people, whose identity language is Arabic and whose collective identity is Arabness; of the Japanese people, whose language is Japanese and whose identity is Japanese; of the Amazigh people of North Africa, whose identity language is the Amazigh language and whose identity is Amazigh; and of the Persian people in Iran, whose language is Persian and whose identity is Persian.

In light of this organic link between language and identity, claiming that the Amazigh language “serves no purpose” reflects extreme self-hatred and self-deprecation. For any Moroccan making such a claim, it amounts to admitting their own uselessness. Such rhetoric comes only from individuals caught in a crisis of national identity, who despise their own Amazigh essence and devalue their heritage. Yet, even assuming the Amazigh language were useless, true patriotism as well as the values of justice and equity would demand not the constant reiteration of this uselessness, but rather active efforts to remove the obstacles hindering it and to work toward making it useful and beneficial.

That is why this utilitarian logic applied to languages, even assuming it were well-founded, rests on a purely mechanical view of the human being. It denies the human dimension as a cultural being carrying values that transcend simple pragmatism, such as language, identity, or religion—values for which people are willing to fight, or even die, despite having no immediate or direct utility. This is precisely what all peoples proud of their language do: they protect and defend it even when it does not reach the utility level of English, Chinese, or German. This pride constitutes the source of dignity for these peoples who value their national languages and take pride in them.

The Amazigh language as a source of dignity and a lever for democracy:

Speaking of dignity—which proponents of the pretext of the “uselessness” of Amazigh identity present as one of the priorities for Moroccans, while claiming that this language cannot guarantee it—it must be stressed that the abandonment by many of their Amazigh identity is one of the major reasons dignity has become an urgent concern. By substituting an artificial and usurped Arab identity for their natural and authentic identity, they surrendered their dignity, which is nonetheless symbolized by their collective belonging to Amazigh identity. They are reduced to begging others for recognition of belonging and putting themselves at the service of a foreign identity, even as those “others” disown them and refuse to adopt them, for fear of being betrayed in turn just as they betrayed their original identity. Anyone who disowns their roots to beg for an adopted identity loses all pride and dignity. First, because they choose to be without origin or lineage; second, because they deserve no trust, having betrayed what is closest to them: their Amazigh “mother.” In this regard, Amazigh identity proves to be the most useful and relevant path, for it is the very source of dignity and the symbol of loyalty, balance, and fidelity.

The same observation applies to the democratic system that Moroccans continue to dream of. The lack of democracy does not stem from the absence of Amazigh identity as a political system, but rather from the Arab identity the state has adopted. This leads to the implementation of a mode of governance characteristic of Arab regimes, defined primarily by the absence of genuine democracy. If religion is weaponized to support despotism, it is due to the importation of political models from the Mashreq (the Arab Middle East) that have no connection to Moroccan Islam as it was practiced before the onslaught of Middle Eastern political Islam—whether in its Wahhabi, Muslim Brotherhood, Salafist, or Jihadist forms. Do these versions of Middle Eastern political Islam provide Moroccans with employment, quality education, healthcare, dignity, social justice, or democratic governance? Will solidarity marches for Palestine—where it is loudly proclaimed that the Palestinian cause takes precedence over national issues—or the naming of Moroccan streets after Wahhabi figures from the Gulf, such as “Khaled Al-Sultan,” “Bassam Faraj,” “Khaled Al-Hamoudi,” “Hamad Al-Dahlous,” or “Khaled Saoud Al-Hulaibi” (see: “Is there a difference between calling Morocco Arab and naming its streets ‘Dahlous’?” by clicking here), guarantee Moroccans jobs, education, access to doctors, dignity, social justice, and democratic governance? Does Morocco’s membership in the Arab League, a symbol of its dependence on Arabism, fulfill these fundamental needs for its citizens? Such actions reflect a blind allegiance to all things Arab-Middle Eastern rather than addressing domestic priorities.

These questions in no way imply that breaking with borrowed Arabism to return to Amazigh identity would allow Morocco to instantly bask in the benefits of progress, prosperity, and democracy. However, it is certain that the country would recover its lost dignity by reclaiming its independence of identity. This would be a sine qua non for achieving any future progress and building a truly democratic state.

Through this analysis, we aim to demonstrate that the pretexts used to justify the exclusion of Amazigh identity—such as the idea that it serves no purpose—are merely “Amazighophobic” impressions and convictions spread by intellectuals who are themselves alienated or who alienate others. These discourses, echoed by the general public and the less educated, are quickly swept away by rigorous analysis; their futility is revealed at the slightest critical examination.

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