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Sources

French Language Revival In Morocco - Colonial Nostalgia Or Bridge To Modernity?

French classes are fully booked in Morocco
French classes are fully booked in Morocco
Hassan Alaoui

-Essay-

RABAT - Along with Arabic, French has long been one of Morocco's languages. It is the language of culture; it is the flipside of our identity -- of our double identity, if you will, which is the result of a long coexistence and exchanges between generations.

Even though Morocco has been independent from French colonialism since 1956, the French language has never left our history and even less our memory. And today, while some are trying to bury the French language into a deep grave, there seems to be a revival of interest for the language.

The demand for French lessons is growing, according to Mohamed Malki. A former teacher of French and French literature for many years, Malki was later named inspector general of French at the Moroccan education ministry. “We are in a context of globalization, internationalized economy, closer relations with the EU, the development of off-shoring... and for Morocco, French is the historic bridge to Europe.”

This argument makes sense. It follows King Hassan II’s creed to open Morocco to the world.

The French Institute of Morocco (IFM) has regional offices across the country. Their classes are fully booked, and they never lack students. “Young Moroccans are more and more eager to learn French and the demand outweighs the supply.” It’s a new reality that totally contradicts those who had prematurely announced the death of the French language.

Those who are considered responsible for the slow decline of French in Moroccan schools are the Istiqlal party, a pro-independence and pro-monarchist party with conservative and nationalist views. They were the first to lead a crusade against French, while advocating massive Arabization. The Istiqlal lead its vigorous and politicized – quasi-ideological – campaign for decades. The arabization process created a rift between two opposing worlds and a new generation that can’t speak either French or Arabic properly. This rift, born of an extreme ideology, bears the responsibility of the current cultural divide that the Arab world is experiencing.

Globalization, the digital revolution, Internet and smartphones are not Arabic appendages. As sad as it may sound, the Arabic language is not in phase with the transformation of the world. Culture today revolves around new technologies -- and the new universal languages inherent to it are English and French, and pretty soon, Chinese or Brazilian...

This brings us to King Hassan II’s other paradigm: “An illiterate today is someone who only speaks one language!” The close-minded pro-arabization advocates cannot comprehend that in this new era, we need foreign languages – English or other European languages – as a complement.

When we interviewed people for this article, we realized that contrary to what we believed, young Moroccans were very eager to learn English or French. And Spanish too. For them, foreign languages are bridges to other worlds, a necessary step for a country open toward others.

Asserting cultural identity

This is about openness but also cultural and linguistic diversity. In its fifth article, the new Moroccan Constitution stipulates such a demand:

“Article 5: Arabic remains the official language. Tamazight constitutes an official language as common heritage for all the Moroccans without exception The State also preserves the Hassani culture as an integral part of the united cultural identity of Morocco.”

Tamazight is an ethnic Berber language from central Morocco, while Hassani culture refers to the Bedouin nomadic tribes of the Sahara desert, in southern Morocco.

For the sake of a coherent and cohesive heritage, the old demon of linguistic ethnocentrism – in the form of Arabic – is trampled under the foot of the rising socio-cultural specificities and the assertion of ethnic and cultural identity.

Universalism and ethnocentrism aren’t opposite notions -- in fact, thanks to languages, they can be complementary. The revival of the French language in Morocco stems from an individual process. Officially though, there is a growing awareness of the divide between French and Arabic, even if we use both in the private and public sector.

According to Charles Fries, the French ambassador in Morocco, “the French school network in Morocco is the biggest one we have outside of France, with 32 schools and 26,000 students, of which 15,000 are Moroccan.” There was a 2.8% jump in registrations for the 2012-2013 school year, i.e. 700 new students. The French schools are jointly run by bodies affiliated to the French government (AEFE) and to the Moroccan government (OSUI). The partnership is a success.

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Society

Brazil's Evangelical Surge Threatens Survival Of Native Afro-Brazilian Faith

Followers of the Afro-Brazilian Umbanda religion in four traditional communities in the country’s northeast are resisting pressure to convert to evangelical Christianity.

image of Abel José, an Umbanda priest

Abel José, an Umbanda priest

Agencia Publica
Géssica Amorim

Among a host of images of saints and Afro-Brazilian divinities known as orixás, Abel José, 42, an Umbanda priest, lights some candles, picks up his protective beads and adjusts the straw hat that sits atop his head. He is preparing to treat four people from neighboring villages who have come to his house in search of spiritual help and treatment for health ailments.

The meeting takes place discreetly, in a small room that has been built in the back of the garage of his house. Abel lives in the quilombo of Sítio Bredos, home to 135 families. The community, located in the municipality of Betânia of Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco, is one of the municipality’s four remaining communities that have been certified as quilombos, the word used to refer to communities formed in the colonial era by enslaved Africans and/or their descendents.

In these villages there are almost no residents who still follow traditional Afro-Brazilian religions. Abel, Seu Joaquim Firmo and Dona Maura Maria da Silva are the sole remaining followers of Umbanda in the communities in which they live. A wave of evangelical missionary activity has taken hold of Betânia’s quilombos ever since the first evangelical church belonging to the Assembleia de Deus group was built in the quilombo of Bredos around 20 years ago. Since then, other evangelical, pentecostal, and neo-pentecostal churches and congregations have established themselves in the area. Today there are now nine temples spread among the four communities, home to roughly 900 families.

The temples belong to the Assembleia de Deus, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the World Church of God's Power, the latter of which has over 6,000 temples spread across Brazil and was founded by the apostle and televangelist Valdemiro Santiago, who became infamous during the pandemic for trying to sell beans that he had blessed as a Covid-19 cure. Assembleia de Deus alone, who are the largest pentecostal denomination in the world, have built five churches in Betânia’s quilombos.


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