Once again the editors of the Wall Street Journal wrote an
editorial that demonstrates why it is important for a writer who wishes to
write about another people, to know more of their culture and language than
these editors know of the Arabs about whom they write all the time. Their
latest attempt is a piece that came under the title: “The Caliphate Rises” and
the subtitle: “Osama Bin Laden's political project begins to form in Iraq .” It was
published on June 28, 2014 in the Journal.
They begin like this: “The jihadists of the Islamic State of
Iraq and al Sham (ISIS )”. What they should
have said was this: “The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).” And this
is because they cannot mix English and Arabic to make the English acronym that
suits them. If they wanted to use “al Sham” they should have written the whole
thing in Arabic which would have sounded like this: “al dawla al islamiyah fi'l
3iraq wa'l sham.”
Now let me explain some of the weird things you see in that
Arabic phrase. Those who know French will have no trouble understanding where
the two words “fi'l” and “wa'l” come from. Actually, they represent “fi al” and
“wa al” respectively. The thing, however, is that in Arabic as in French,
having one word end with a vowel and the next start with a vowel is frowned
upon. Thus, they drop the first vowel and replace it with the apostrophe. This
is how “le amour” becomes “l'amour.” You got to love this, my English speaking
friends.
Another thing worthy of note is that in the colloquial of
some Arab groups, they prefer to replace the “l” by the consonant that begins
the next word. For example, they would pronounce “al nahar” as “annahar”. Now,
the character 3 you see in the word “3iraq” is an Arabic sound that does not
exist in English. It is one that comes from the back of the throat, and it is
correctly used by English speakers who know how to pronounce “Qaeda,” that
should be written as “Qa3da”.
This lesson is important to know for the same reason that
Secretary of State John Kerry used ISIL instead of ISIS when he was in Egypt not long
ago. As it happens, Isis is a deity in the
mythology of Ancient Egypt, and the people of that country would be offended if
a made-up Anglo-Arab acronym was used to associate an ancient mythological
figure with a modern group that is not winning the affection of many people.
And given that the Greek and Roman mythologies were based on the Egyptian, it
will not be long before the Greeks and the Italians would be up in arms at this
transgression of the English.
Another lesson that must be learned has to do with the fact
that the editors of the Wall Street Journal make it sound as if a caliphate is
imminent if not already here. This is how they put it: “Welcome to the new Middle East caliphate.” If only these people knew where
the word Sham came from, they would not have said this. To explain that, I must
begin with another lesson regarding the Arab pronunciation of a word. Imagine
getting a hiccup while pronouncing a word. So you begin with “sho,” you get a
hiccup “^” and you finish with the sound of “mm”. The word would sound like:
“sho^mm”. In Arabic it means pessimism or bad omen.
The word Sham (Arabic nickname used to mean the Levant ) is derived from that word sho^mm. And this is because
unlike Egypt that has been
the land of optimism where people were so content they believed in life after
death and prepared for it with mummification, the people of the Levant were a pessimist lot because they always raided
each other, fought each other, and looted each other. Life was a happy one in Egypt ; it was miserable in the Levant .
And if pessimism is the order of the day, those who wish to
start their caliphate in that part of the world, better watch out because they
don't know what will come down the pike of our modern world.