French as a Spreader of Arabism and an Opponent of Amazigh

If all kinds of colonialism are of one kind, for they all occupy other people’s land, plunder its wealth, enslave its inhabitants and commit crimes and massacres against colonized peoples, the forms in which this colonialism is exercised and the ways it treats the colonized peoples, within these evils inherent in all colonialism, may differ according to the colonizing states, as British colonialism differs from French colonialism. This difference is the subject of this discussion.

If we survey the history of British colonialism, in its relation to the identities of the peoples it colonized, we will conclude that it respected these identities more than France did, recognized them as independent identities and took care to protect them from anything that could expose them to disappearance or dissolution into other foreign identities. Thus it worked to implant in the inhabitants of the Arab regions it occupied a sense of belonging to a distinct collective identity, the Arab identity summed up in the idea of “Arabism” (‘uruba). And even if this British interest in Arabism was not love of it, but was meant to dismember the Ottoman Empire and weaken it in application of the principle “divide and rule”, that does not alter the fact that it rested on historical, geographical, identity, cultural and linguistic data.

By way of comparison between French and British colonialism in dealing with the identities of colonized peoples, we note that France, when it occupied Algeria from 1830, found it subject, like the countries of the Arab East that Britain would occupy, to Ottoman Turkish rule. But instead of doing as Britain did and implanting in Algerians a sense of belonging to a distinct collective identity, the African Amazigh identity, confirmed by historical, geographical, identity, cultural and linguistic facts…, it carried out the legal, legislative, institutional, administrative and linguistic… preparation for the rise of an Arab state, extreme in its Arabism and hostile to Amazigh and the Imazighen. As for Morocco, which was independent of the Ottomans and of the Arab East, and where Amazigh was the language of daily conversation for more than 80% of the population, by the French themselves’ admission, France created an Arab state with all its pillars and components: a flag, a national anthem, a new capital, a king who rules it in place of the sultan, the title that had been used for the rulers of the Maghreb states since the Islamic period…, with the issuing of laws, the creation of institutions and the entrenchment of administrative practices to speed up the pace of political Arabization, which was the root of identity and then linguistic Arabization. Political Arabization means giving the state an Arab character so that it exercises its political power in the name of its alleged Arab belonging. Which results in the direct political exclusion of Amazigh. Yet had France declared, when occupying Morocco, that it was an Amazigh state and conducted its colonial policy in this Amazigh direction, nobody would have objected, because such a declaration would have seemed at the time ordinary and in line with the truth and reality of Morocco. That is what Britain would undoubtedly have done had it occupied Morocco. But, to its misfortune and Amazigh’s, it was occupied by France, hostile to Amazigh.

And if France took an interest in Amazigh, language, culture, history and society, in Morocco (as in Algeria), it was not out of recognition that these components are part of an Amazigh state, but in order to integrate the Imazighen into the Arab state it created from 1912. That is why, if it issued the dahir of May 30, 1930 on Amazigh customs, it was not because it recognized those customs as the legal system of an Amazigh state, but in order to integrate Amazigh customary justice into the judicial system of the new Arab state. What France did in Morocco, in excluding Amazigh and fighting it politically, goes far beyond the Arabization policy pursued by the independence state with the aim of the “sex change” of Moroccans from their Amazigh gender to a usurped Arab one, because the Arabization carried out by France is a political Arabization through which the state considers itself Arab and exercises its political power in the name of its supposed belonging to Arabism. That is why Arabism had never been a problem in Morocco before the French occupation, although it existed, for religious and political reasons, as an individual belonging that did not go beyond the limits of a supposed Arab ancestry of the person who claimed it, and not as the collective belonging of the state as representative of the Moroccan people’s collective identity, as it would be from 1912. It is therefore France that made Arabism a problem for Amazigh after creating an Arab state in Morocco, which was the beginning of Amazigh’s political exclusion.

Thus, since 1912, the spread of the French language in Morocco has supported, to a great and unprecedented degree, the spread of Arabism as an identity, and not only of Arabic as a language. Although it seems difficult today to separate Arabic’s linguistic function from its identity function, its presence in Morocco, since the entry of Islam into the region, had no notable effect on the identity Arabization of Moroccans: it performed its linguistic function as a scholarly language, within a limited scope, without resulting in the transformation of Moroccans into Arabs. But with the arrival of French in Morocco, the identity function of Arabic would overtake its linguistic function, so that teaching it became teaching and spreading Arabism more than teaching and spreading the Arabic language. And if French weakened Arabic as a language, after the former became the language of science, economics, business…, it compensated by giving it great strength as an identity.

A sort of correlation has therefore arisen between the standing of French in Morocco and that of Arabism as an identity, to the point that Arabic’s identity function overtook its linguistic function, which was no longer of use once French took the leading positions in the sharing of the linguistic market between it and Arabic. This is what makes French a supremely Arabizing language, which performs, despite what may seem a merely apparent paradox, the function of identity Arabization of Moroccans more than Arabic does. Indeed, the Arabizing function of the latter only became, as I noted, the most important, strongest and foremost one compared with its linguistic function since French entered Morocco. If Morocco behaves today as an Arab state because it uses the Arabic language as a language with an identity-Arabizing function, it is because it has behaved as an Arab state since 1912 because it uses French, which also has an identity-Arabizing function. This holds for all the Francophone countries of North Africa. They are “Arab” in French first, and became Arab through their use of the Arabic language only after the French occupation of these countries. Whereas had English spread in Morocco as a result of its occupation by Britain, there would have been no identity Arabization at all, and Morocco would have remained Amazigh in its collective identity. And even if Arabic had been imposed in education and school, as is the case at present, its function would have stayed linguistic, resulting in the spread of Arabic as a language and not the spread of Arabism as an identity, as happened with the French occupation.

So what have we gained with French? Nothing. And what have we lost by it? A great many things.

We lost, first, our identity independence when France made Morocco an Arab state, that is, dependent in its identity on the Arab East. Which would not have happened had Britain occupied Morocco, as I explained. And we lost, second, the language of science, innovation and progress, which is English. By a quick comparison among African countries that underwent foreign occupation like Morocco, we will observe that those Britain occupied, which still use their English as a language of instruction, advance at a faster pace than the countries France occupied, which still use French as a language of instruction, like Morocco. Although Moroccan officials are aware of this reality and know the difference, as a factor of development and progress, between English and French when used as languages of instruction, they refuse to move to English and use it as the main language of instruction to replace French. Why? Because what matters to them is not what contributes to the country’s progress and prosperity, but what contributes to the progress and prosperity of identity Arabization, that is, the “sex change” of Moroccans from their Amazigh gender to a false and usurped Arab one. And the only foreign language (foreign only by origin, for it is national in Morocco, and even official in practice) that performs this function is French, as I showed. English, for its part, performs no identity-Arabizing function; on the contrary, it may develop the identity awareness of its users, as noted. Thus Moroccans have become hostages of two backward languages, French and Arabic, so that the identity Arabization these two languages carry out can go on. It is an insistence on choosing backwardness in order to be Arabs, without it meaning in the least that real Arabs are backward. The real backward ones are the counterfeit Arabs who imitate real Arabs and change their original gender to usurp belonging to the Arab one. Indeed, real Arabs have begun using English as a first language of instruction in place of Arabic, which is their identity language. This is the case of most countries that adopted English as a first language of instruction while keeping their identity language as a second language of instruction. Even the French themselves have begun using English as a first language in the field of scientific research.

All this shows that the move from French to English in Morocco will pave the way for recovering Amazigh as the collective identity of Morocco, the Moroccan people and the Moroccan state, after the removal of one of the main causes that prevent this recovery, namely the French language because of its Arabizing function, as shown. It will also give Morocco the chance to move forward, faster than today, on the path of development, progress and growth thanks to adopting English as the first language of instruction in place of French, with gradual qualification of its identity language, Amazigh, and of Darija. And the call to adopt English should not be understood to mean that there is a mechanical causal link between a non-developed state’s using English and its moving directly, thanks to English, to the ranks of developed countries. The progress of states and societies depends first on the existence of political will to achieve it, then on choosing the appropriate means to accomplish it. At the head of these means is qualifying the citizen, through good education, with useful knowledge and scientific training. And the tool for acquiring knowledge and scientific training is language. English, for countries that do not yet use their national languages (Arabic is an official language but not a national one, given that the national language is the one in which citizens converse) and identity languages as first languages of instruction, like Morocco, is the foreign language best qualified for this today, more than other foreign languages. Yet all the reforms of the education system that Morocco has undertaken regarding the language of instruction, the latest being Framework Law No. 51.17 adopted in July 2019, have remained confined to moving from French to Arabic or vice versa. The result is known: moving from backwardness to backwardness so that Morocco stays “Arab”, as I explained. And this circle of backwardness cannot be left except by breaking its links, French and Arabic, and what they lead to in the way of a falsified and usurped Arab belonging, by introducing English as the first language of instruction, with the opportunities this will give the Moroccan state to recover its collective Amazigh identity.

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