Why, of all nations on earth, the Arabs alone have such an ambivalent attitude towards their folk culture, especially the oral literature in the various regional vernaculars? Why do the majority of Arab universities hesitate to admit folklore and dialect studies in their curricula? This is in spite of the fact that Middle Eastern folklore is the richest, most ancient and most complex and colorful in the world!

Once we pose such questions and try to look for answers, we will find that this phenomenon has ideological and historical roots, which are deeply and intricately interwoven into the unique development of the Arab civilization and implanted in the make-up of Arab societies. In other words, this seemingly minor problem is only the surface manifestation of an inherent and more serious malaise.

We normally converse with each other in the local dialects and use vernacular proverbs and recite vernacular poetry extensively. All our songs, films and other media entertainment are composed in the vernacular. Our annual festivals and national celebrations are based mostly on folkloristic material. This is a fact of life. We cannot go about our daily business without resorting to colloquial speech. Yet, we turn a blind eye to all this and engage in a sort of unconscious denial of it all and refuse to take our folklore and dialects seriously or give them academic legitimacy.

There is no objection to taking interest in, for example, traditional crafts, local architecture, or any other aspect of material culture. Only the study of verbal material in the local vernacular is viewed with suspicion in all Arab countries. While other nations do not find any thing objectionable in writing about such material, an Arab author has to justify taking interest in the subject and must approach it hesitantly and apologetically.

I will not dwell on the importance of the study of folklore and dialects, for this is not the issue at hand. I am only concerned with the historical and cultural roots of this self-denial, which is peculiar to the Arab World. The Middle East is one of the most ancient and most complex cultural areas in the world with the most turbulent history. Due to its strategic position it has been, throughout the ages, a pathway for conquerors and empire builders from diverse racial and national groups with different ideologies and religious persuasions. Thus, it has become a woven tapestry of sub-cultures and racial and linguistic minorities. Yet, it is not a melting pot, but rather a volatile cauldron boiling with simmering tensions. Whoever happens to be in power always tries to rule with an iron hand by oppressing other groups and imposing on them his own language and culture, in an attempt to obliterate their own cultural identity.

Since the coming of Islam and the creation of the Arab Empire over the then existing shreds and patches of Middle Eastern nation states, classical Arabic, the language spoken by the ancient Arabs during and before the time of the prophet, came to be viewed as a sacred symbol of religious and national unity. This conviction was sanctioned by the belief that the quran, literally believed to be the very word of God, was revealed in the classical tongue, not to mention the sayings of the prophet.

Ideally, every Muslim is supposed to be familiar with the quran and should memorize as much of it as possible, since it spells out the basic tenets of the faith. Furthermore, the mandatory five daily prayers and other religious rituals cannot be properly performed without reciting some quranic verses. This gave prominence to classical Arabic which became sacred visa vis the profane local dialects. All linguistic and rhetorical scholarship was directed towards the study of classical Arabic literature and language, and its sole aim was the exegetical interpretation and understanding of the holy scripture and the demonstration of its inimitable style. Any scholarly pursuit which did not serve this end was discouraged and deemed frivolous and worthless.

This dialectical tension between the folk culture and the official culture, especially in the linguistic and literary domain, has always been a dominant feature of Arab civilization. But the language issue took a more radical turn during the first half of the 20th century. This came as a result of the rise of Arab nationalism and radical Islam as resistance against colonialism intensified. In addition to its religious prominence, classical Arabic came to symbolize Arab national identity and cultural unity, as well as historical continuity, while regional dialects were seen as signs of political disintegration. Whoever expressed any interest in the local dialects was accused of being a lackey collaborating with the colonialists to serve their agenda of fragmenting the Arabs into diverse and weak nations, each with its own language, and distancing the Muslims away from the language of their holly book and their shared and revered cultural heritage which goes back to more than 1500 years. To justify their fear and concerns, proponents of this argument cited the fate of Latin, which was once the language of the Catholic church and the whole of Europe but was eventually broken down into the different Romance languages. This did not only split up the European nations, but it also isolated the Europeans from their medieval cultural heritage, which is written in Latin.

The situation was aggravated by the interest taken by orientalists in the study of Arab dialects. Arab nationalists considered those orientalists to be in league with the colonialists who conspired with them against the Arab aspiration for national unity and independence. Religious and racial minorities in the various Arab countries were also suspected of surreptitiously pursuing this end as part of their separatist ambitions. The reputations of many well-meaning academicians, Arabs and Westerners, were smeared and tarnished merely because they did research in this field or wrote on the subject. The issue was politicized to the extreme, especially by political and religious demagogues, who never entertained the idea that some one could be driven to study dialects, or any subject for that matter, by scholarly curiosity, pure and simple.

Further complications were later introduced into this situation when development and modernization became an overriding concern for the Arab countries. An elitist attitude crept in which considered all forms of folk culture as signs of backwardness, which must be wiped out and forgotten, or at least swept under the carpet. For those elitists, the priorities of a developing country is not how to preserve its folk culture but how to transcend it. Some planners look at folk culture with its traditional values as a hindrance to progress and modernization. This, in brief, is the general attitude towards the study of folk literature and local dialects in the Arab World. But, as I indicated above, this is only a surface symptom of an underlying epistemological disorder. It stems from an intellectual outlook dominated by a static view of history, which considers any change, such as linguistic change from classical Arabic to the various dialects, not as an inevitable natural process but as corruption and deterioration. This is organically linked to the religious view that denies any social and cultural progress. Adherents of this radical religious view wish to stop the process of history and hold time at standstill to go back to the time of the prophet and live exactly like he and his companions did.

This static and unitarian outlook, which predominates intellectual life in the Arab World, has lead to the fostering of intolerance for differences in the religious, political and cultural spheres, as well as to the retardation of true, objective, disinterested, academic research. Because it confuses religious indoctrination with academic education, it makes it difficult to separate object from subject in academic research. Accordingly, if you show an interest in any subject, that could only mean that you embrace it wholeheartedly and promote it like a religious creed. So, if you study dialects you must be championing the cause of the dialects at the expense of the classical language. Furthermore, it equates linguistic unitarianism, which denies linguistic diversity, with religious unitarianism, which condemns religious differences and denounces them as heresies. On the political plain, national unity is also equated with religious unity. Just as adherents to the same faith should hold the same beliefs, people of the same nation should hold exactly similar views on all issues and should adhere to the same cultural values and life style. Any deviation is condemned as subversive and dissentient. This unitarian outlook harks back to a pristine primitive stage of a small, isolated, homogeneous community with one uniform collective consciousness. It does not take into account the fact that socio-cultural progress and demographic growth inevitably lead to complexities and diversifications of all sorts in all aspects of social life. In a modern society, it is simply unreasonable to expect every citizen to be a carbon copy of every other citizen.