Yasir Suleiman

CHARTING THE NATION: ARABIC AND THE POLITICS OF IDENTITY

This chapter surveys recent work on the linguistic construction of national identity in the Middle East, against the backdrop of political conflicts of different intensities. It does so by discussing the language situation in Lebanon, Israel/Palestine, and Jordan in so far as these situations involve conflict between Arabic and other languages (French and Hebrew), Arabic and one of its dialectal variants, or different Arabic dialects. The chapter shows the dynamic nature of linguistic identity construction and the variety of modes this construction takes. It highlights the significance of linguistic subtraction as a marker of identity, the relevance of power differentials to language maintenance, and language shift as tropes of identity construction and shows that linguistic boundary setting is as much related to structural forces in society as it is to specific political conflicts that speed up the progress of these forces and their inevitable outcomes.The author wishes to thank the Leverhulme Trust for their Major Research Fellowship which has enabled him to conduct this research.

Islam on Campus: teaching Islamic Studies at Higher Education Institutions in the UK. Report of a conference held at the University of Edinburgh, 4 December 2006

The purpose of the ‘Islam on Campus’ conference was to consider the state of Islamic Studies in the UK. Its immediate context was the awareness that issues relating to the teaching of Islamic Studies were assuming greater importance, both on university campuses and in the funding and political arenas. The general interest in, and concern about, these issues has led to a number of previous events, including the Islam and Higher Education conference held in Birmingham between 20–30 January 2005, and a conference on The State of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Western Universities held at the School of Oriental and African Studies on 26 November 2006. Direct impetus for the conference came from an article in the Times Higher Education Supplement entitled ‘Islamic Teaching to be Scrutinised’ (19 May 2006). It reported that the Higher Education Minister Bill Rammell was ‘alarmed by “wrongheaded influences” on students’, and had decided to launch a major review of the teaching of Islam on campus, in order to ‘stamp out extremism’. The Higher Education Minister had come to the conclusion that ‘the quality of teaching of Islam that takes place in our universities needs to be improved’. A copy of the article is shown in Appendix 4, reproduced with the kind permission of the Times Higher Education Supplement. The Islam on Campus conference brought together academics involved in teaching and research in Islamic Studies at higher education institutions across the UK. The resulting discussion was wide ranging, considering issues such as the definition of

Arabic on Campus and Beyond

The main aim of the conference was to enable students and teachers of Arabic at UK institutions to share perspectives and experiences of the way Arabic is taught. It brought together teachers of Arabic and other ‘hard’ languages from universities, schools, and other professional environments from across the country and beyond. The conference was the result of an ongoing collaboration between the Centre for Advanced Study of the Arab World (directed by Elisabeth Kendall) and the Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (directed by Yasir Suleiman). The Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World had been established in 2006 to train the next generation of UK students in the Arabic language, and to enable scholars and social scientists to work with original sources and establish new contacts in the Arabic speaking world. Unfortunately, language training had recently been ranked as the least important learning benchmark in UK area studies. The Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World and the Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies aimed to challenge this approach. The first session of the day considered students’ different reasons for studying Arabic. Participants considered whether it was helpful to distinguish between motivations that were ‘instrumental’ (i.e., related a specific purpose such as a job) and those that were ‘integrative’ (i.e., connected to a general interest in a subject, culture or people). Students’ motivations were in many cases linked to a personal, religious or political orientation towards the subject of study. For example, some students wanted to study Arabic because of an active engagement with political issues in the Arab world. In these cases, the experience of learning Arabic in the Arab world could serve to develop or strengthen such a motivation. The issue of student motivation led to the question of what type of Arabic educational institutions should be teaching. Should they focus on literature, culture and religious texts, or on teaching spoken dialects of Arabic? The gap between these two approaches was a particular issue because of the diglossic structure of Arabic: the distance between the spoken and written languages.

‘Conducting Fieldwork in the Middle East’: Report of a Workshop held at the University of Edinburgh on 12 February 2007

The workshop explored the practice of fieldwork in the Middle East. It considered the methods and techniques used by scholars, obstacles and opportunities encountered in the field, and the way that these influenced the research product. It also asked to what extent, if any, these features of conducting fieldwork were particular to the Middle East. The workshop examined these issues from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, including anthropology, political science, history and literature. It brought together selected scholars who had conducted fieldwork in a range of countries across the Middle East. The resulting discussion considered both practical issues such as negotiating access to sources, developing networks of contacts, and the effect of censorship; as well as theoretical questions such as the positionality of the researcher; the relationship between ‘the field’ and theory; and the ways in which the Middle East as a region challenged the assumptions of some academic disciplines.