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KARMANI: Since
the events of September 11, 2001 there has been growing pressure
on Muslim governments to reform educational curricula, the
belief being that the worldview currently being promoted at
schools, colleges and universities was partly responsible
for motivating the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon. For many such as Susan Glasser in her Washington
Post article (2 February, 2003) this means ‘more English
and less Islam’. What is your analysis of such formulas?
And, in your assessment, do you think English represents a
significant threat to Muslim languages and values?
PENNYCOOK: I
find this idea quite intriguing. I came across an article
recently suggesting that more English teaching in the southern
regions of the Philippines might be a good antidote to ‘terrorist’
activities. What could this mean? I am also struck by a question
that keeps returning: One of the things that most interested,
and initially surprised, me when I was looking at British
colonial language policy, was the way in the which British
generally promoted education in local languages, and denied
people access to English. Access to English was seen by the
British as a dangerous thing, while a limited and carefully
regulated education in local languages was seen as the best
way to develop and maintain a local workforce that could participate
in colonial capitalism and remain obedient to the new imperial
rule. English was only for a certain elite and a class of
translator/mediators between the rulers and the ruled. After
‘independence’ this changed, and English was hugely
promoted for very clear economic and political goals. Now
we might just see the first as British policy and the second
as American policy (after all, they started promoting English
in the Philippines a hundred years ago), but this seems inadequate.
The British promoted Confucian education through Chinese in
Hong Kong as the best means to maintain a compliant population;
why not promote an Islamic education through Arabic for similar
goals? Is it because, unlike under colonial rule, the content
of that curriculum can no longer be enforced? The question
that I often come back to is this: Why in the last fifty years
has it become evident that the promotion of English rather
than local languages is the best pathway to the current global
hegemony? I don’t think we should assume that the answer
to this is as evident as some would have us believe.
But let me return more closely to your question. The notion
that a language, English, could somehow be a threat to a great
religion looks on the face of it rather bizarre. How could
this system of grammar and vocabulary threaten a vast set
of beliefs and practices? Of course, you only have to take
one step back from this reduced view of what ‘English’
is to see at least two ways in which it can be a threat. First,
to the extent that there is a very special relationship between
Islam and the Arabic of the Qur’an (a relationship which
interestingly does not exist for Christianity, even though,
rather ridiculously, some seem to believe that English is
somehow the language of the Bible), the spread of English
may perhaps potentially sever this link (and perhaps more
so in non-Arabic Muslim populations, where the learning of
classical Arabic may be easily pushed out of the curriculum).
But this, I think, is not a great immediate danger. Second,
it is also possible to see threats to Islamic values in the
system of English itself, as you show so wonderfully in your
piece, ‘The Im-perfect Future’ (Karmani, 1997).
But again, I don’t think this is a major threat. I think
we have to take one more step back and look at the much bigger
package of cultures and ideologies that comes with English.
Many now claim that English is no longer tied to any culture
since it is now the ‘property of the world’ rather
than the possession of the English-dominant nations. But such
a proposition misses the point that English is deeply embedded
in a set of social, cultural, political and economic relations.
They aren’t so much part of the language as intertwined
with it, and thus to advocate, for example, a more secular
curriculum with greater access through English to certain
jobs, economies and cultural forms, is to advocate a set of
changes that may have profound affects on families, religious
affiliations, social movements and so on. But this is where
the I think the biggest challenge lies for Islam: The Muslim
world, in my view, needs to be cautious about setting itself
in opposition to globalization or English. On the one hand,
such a move can revive (or invent) traditional and conservative
modes of life and politics that run the danger of being more
repressive than the perceived threats of change. On the other
hand, an oppositional position overlooks the point that Islam
is part of globalization anyway: it is a spreading, transnational
religion, and as such is part of current globalization. The
hard question, it seems to me, is how Muslim teachers, students,
scholars and writers can acknowledge their complicity with
English and globalization and find a way not of simply opposing
English but rather of appropriating English for Islamic purposes.
Does this make sense to you?
KARMANI: Actually,
it makes a lot of sense. During the Soviet era in Afghanistan
the madrasahs (traditional Qur’anic schools) were seen
by the then US administration and the Pakistani government
of General Zia ul-Haq as being instrumental in the Afghan
Jihad against the Soviet Union or as the US saw it the war
against communism. And I imagine it was also believed that
the madrasahs kept the Afghan Mujahideen in a state of perceived
‘ignorance’ while effectively transforming them
into a formidable fighting force against the Soviet occupation
of a Muslim land. So it’s curious that as part of a
plan for a $3 billion US aid package to Pakistan, President
Pervez Musharraf is now negotiating a strategy on how to ‘modernise’
the madrasahs with English playing a key role (Washington
Times, 1 July, 2003). But what’s often glossed over
in these discussions is the fact that the purported 19 hijackers
of the 9-11 attacks came mostly from middle-class westernised
backgrounds and in all probability spoke fluent English.
I take your point about the need for Muslims to explore ways
of appropriating English and acknowledging a complicity between
(or perhaps a concurrence of) Islam and the globalisation
of English, but could you elaborate on why or how you feel
an opposition to English might result in more repressive modes
of life and politics.
PENNYCOOK:
OK. I need to be careful about this. I’m certainly not
trying to juxtapose a notion of necessary modernity with tradition.
And I should also add that I’m very wary about making
any suggestions about knowing what Muslim teachers should
or should not do. My comments are based on my understandings
of a range of different contexts. My comments about the dangers
of opposition possibly leading to repressive modes of life
and politics are based on the observation that opposition
to change and modernity is often used to rationalize reactionary
positions. Thus, the Christian Right criticizes modern ways
of life and uses notions of ‘family values’ to
justify limiting freedom and patriarchal forms of family life.
Or more generally, oppositional politics often find themselves
trapped by the definitions of the powerful, so in order to
oppose English, globalization, Westernization and so on, one
is pushed into an agenda that emphasizes language maintenance,
localization, Arabization, or whatever. Now on the one hand,
of course, these are very necessary counter-discourses to
current hegemonic forces in the world: We do need to support
other languages, local languages and cultures and so forth.
But on the other hand, such reactions raise other concerns:
First, by reacting against dominant forms of language, culture
and so on, they present only an oppositional strategy. They
don’t present us with ways of dealing with the forces
that threaten us. If we take on board the arguments of linguistic
imperialism, for example, we can support local languages and
so on, but it’s not clear what we as English teachers
are supposed to do. It seems to me that the issue is to take
up English and do something else with it. Second, reactions
against ideas such as linguistic imperialism often start to
look to me uncomfortably nationalist. While forms of nationalism
may be useful to group around politically, I always feel they’re
part of the problem. And what often happens as a result, is
that various majority groupings claiming to speak for the
nation then lay claim to the only oppositional discourse while
discounting many other people and possibilities. Mohamed Benrabah’s
discussion of the ‘Arabization’ of Algeria in
his book ‘Langue et pouvoir en Algerie: Histoire d’un
traumatisme linguistique’ (1999) [Language and power
in Algeria: A history of linguistic trauma] is an interesting
example of this, though we could draw examples from many parts
of the world. Thus my argument is that we need to be cautious
about how the terrain of opposition is formed; we need to
be careful about what gets left out in any oppositional regrouping;
and we need ways to move forward by using the tools of the
powerful against them.
KARMANI: One
significant area, since 9-11, in which the “tools of
the powerful are being used against them” is in the
recent language wars between global media networks. The increasing
use of English for instance by Al-Jazeera and other Arab satellite
TV networks has been troubling politicians and media moguls
in the English-speaking West. To counter the ascendancy of
Arab satellite news media the Bush administration has been
pouring millions of dollars into producing Arabic language
media that reflect US interests in the Middle East region.
Notably CNNArabic.com was launched only a few months after
the attacks on the World Trade Center and amidst an escalation
in violence in Palestinian occupied territories. Another related
phenomenon in which English is being increasingly employed
as a tool of opposition, particularly since 9-11, has been
in the proliferation of Islamic English-language websites.
Both of these areas, associated with new emerging technologies
in the Muslim world will be seen by some as examples of too
much English being a dangerous thing.
How significant do you feel these developments are particularly
in wake of the so-called “war against terror”?
Do you foresee any dangers? And do you incidentally agree
with David Graddol’s prediction (1997: 61) that the
dominance of English as the language of technology is a transitional
phenomenon and that in the next decade English may even experience
a decline?
PENNYCOOK:
Taking the last issue first, I find this sort of thing really
hard to predict. I certainly admire Graddol’s attempts
to work through these issues in a well thought-out way (there
are lots of far less thoughtful claims about the future of
English around). There certainly do seem to be shifts, for
example, in the number and percentage of non-English web sites;
and the potential of machine translation could be immense
in all sorts of ways (including language teaching). So the
argument that English is so embedded in the technological
domain that it will never change is probably suspect. But
if the argument that English spread will necessarily be technology-driven
may be questionable, we nevertheless have to deal with the
problem that English will likely remain embedded in many domains
for other purposes. And here I return to the first part of
your question. You give the examples of “too much English”
being seen by some as a “dangerous thing”. Yes,
of course it is, both because of its complex relationship
to other languages and because of its relationship to particular
cultural and discursive formations (as discussed above); but
in a struggle by Al-Jazeera and other Arab satellite TV networks
to reach a wider audience, to present a different picture
of the world through English than the one so commonly available,
surely this is also a necessary and urgent use of English.
In the same way that a reaction to the new CNNArabic.com may
be that this increased use of Arabic is not so welcome, so
a reaction to the increased use of English may also have to
be viewed as both positive and negative. The use of English
by Indians, Africans and South East Asians as part of the
anti-colonial struggle was a necessary part of that struggle;
it has had many other consequences, however, including increasing
the role of English in the world, perpetuating class divides
between English-speakers and non-English-speakers, developing
an English-speaking elite, and so forth. And all of this is
why, in the end, I think we have to face the prospect that
we always need to both oppose domains of pro-English policy
(and particularly policies such as those supporting native
speakers and opposing bilingual education, or using English
to promote particular ideological positions) and also at the
same time to work with and through English in order to get
alternative voices heard. And sometimes these two needs may
be contradictory.
I was just thinking about the article (Weiher, 2003) posted
on the TESOL Islamia website, about the American invaders
of Iraq knowing little Arabic. This is of course another dark
side of the role of English – its connection to belief
in the adequacy of English monolingualism. In a recent article
(Pennycook, 2003), I started discussing the role of English
as both a killer language (not in the sense in which some
use it where it is linked to the death of other languages,
but rather where it is linked to people’s deaths) and
what I called a language of discommunication (I was using
examples of the role of English in the field of medicine,
where it can play a pernicious role in dividing doctors, nurses
and patients). It strikes me that this is another context
of English as a killer language, where its role as a supposed
international language of communication means its monolingual
speakers endanger the lives of those who do not have access
to the language. Any thoughts?
KARMANI: I
think the emergence of the ‘dark side of English’
was very much the case as the post 9-11 events were just beginning
to unfold. Certainly one of the key reasons that communication
with the Taliban broke down was that the Americans pretty
much demanded to be understood in English without any of the
usual diplomatic niceties. I remember a Pakistani journalist
remarking that the reason Pakistan was spared by the Americans
was because the sort of communication that was possible in
English with President Musharaf had not been possible with
the Taliban and more recently with Saddam Hussein. And so
it was not surprising that Hamid Karzai and Ahmed Chalabi,
subsequently handpicked by the Bush administration, were both
notably well-versed in American English.
And in a similar yet more subtle vein, I think it’s
also revealing to consider how the media construction of ‘Comical
Ali’ has had a lot to do with attitudes towards certain
modes of speaking English. Bush, Rumsfeld and Berlusconi have
all committed political gaffes but I think in Al-Sahhaf’s
case he has been ridiculed mostly because of the perception
of his ‘flowery’ use of English and his strong
unmodulated Arabic manner. And it’s also interesting
how Tariq Aziz, who is often described as having flawless
English, was spared the same sort of ridicule and that there
were even calls for clemency when he eventually surrendered
to US forces.
Which brings me to my next question, which has also featured
significantly since 9-11. Back in the United Kingdom, David
Blunkett, the British Home Secretary, has been using English
(it would seem) as a tool against Muslims. In reference to
the summer riots of 2001 involving mainly Muslim youths he
suggested that British Asians ought to stop speaking their
ethnic languages at home to help prevent ‘schizophrenic’
rifts between generations of families (The Observer, 15 September,
2002). A year on, he proposed that asylum seekers and immigrants
(mostly Muslims) needed to improve their English to pass a
Britishness test (The Guardian, 4 September, 2003) and only
very recently he has been warning imams in Britain to start
speaking English in order to avoid ‘a clash of cultures’
(The Independent, 31 October, 2003). Well, one wonders that
if they all end up speaking like Al-Sahhaf, will they really
have passed Blunkett’s Britishness test?
But more generally, what do you think has brought about David
Blunkett’s outbursts in linking Islam with English?
Are there any similar parallels in Australia and the United
States? And do you see any fundamental distinction here between
the promotion of English in the Centre and in the Periphery?
PENNYCOOK:
I think you’re right about the ‘English connection’
with Pakistan and the attitude towards Al-Sahhaf. At one level
it seems utterly bizarre that major political orientations
can be so swayed by these linguistic connections, but on the
other hand we know that it has been overt British and American
policy to promote English for economic and political gain.
This is where Robert Phillipson’s work is perhaps at
its most useful – in documenting the intentions and
processes of this spread of English, though I’ve often
also wondered what exactly is gained by such promotion. Just
because the British Council loudly proclaims that it’s
going to spread English for cultural and political gain, doesn’t
mean that they’re right that it will have these effects;
though clearly there are a lot of economic gains now from
the teaching of English. But what this shows is that it does
seem beneficial to have become part of the ‘English
speaking community’ because you’re less likely
to be attacked by English-dominant nations. It’s also
quite clear that speaking English was an important part of
the UK-US-Australia alliance. I suppose the argument is that
there are cultural affinities and diplomatic channels open
with countries with higher levels of English use. And this
is a sad reflection, because it suggests that the English
monolingualism of the UK and US holds sway as a global paradigm
for communication. The problem is not just the global role
of English but the assumptions about how communication should
happen. And the Al-Sahhaf case is a good reminder for all
those who advocate a pluralist view of Englishes (acknowledging
different accents, styles, lexicons etc) that such liberalism
must always be accompanied by a constant struggle against
the majority view, which will continue to deride those other
ways of using English.
As for Blunkett, I was – I suppose rather naively –
taken aback by his extraordinary suggestions. I’d thought
that the UK and ‘New Labour’ might have moved
on from these outrageous views. I don’t think it started
with an opposition between English and Islam: It seemed to
be centrally that old argument that linguistic and cultural
difference is a threat to national unity, an argument that
arose again particularly in response to the ‘ethnic
riots’ in northern England. The British have long struggled
with trying to come to terms with diversity in their midst,
and particularly when that diversity is not white and speaks
other languages. The disgraceful Britishness test reminded
me of the arch conservative Norman Tebbit’s ‘English
test’ a number of years ago, when he challenged British
cricket supporters who cheered for India, Pakistan or the
West Indies (international cricket matches, by the way, are
called ‘test matches’) to either support their
‘national team’ (i.e. England) or to get out.
The UK is very backward in this respect (and this is another
aspect of the current government that makes it often indistinguishable
from its conservative counterpart), and has still done little
to develop bilingual schooling, language support and so on.
I think Australia and Canada are quite a way ahead on this
(despite their many problems and the constant threats in Australia
to retreat towards its White Australia past, particularly
under the current government and its appalling policy towards
asylum seekers). The US is locked into its own struggles over
‘US English’ with its retrenching of bilingual
education. Anyway, I think this is the background in the UK
– an ability as yet to see itself as a multilingual,
multicultural nation, and to get beyond seeing difference
as a problem. It was into this climate that the ‘threat
of Islam’ emerged, with new discourses about fundamentalism,
holy wars and so forth. The next step – to see Islam
and the use of other languages as a threat to Britain, and
to urge more use of English – was not a big step.
Is there a fundamental distinction between the promotion
of English in the Centre and in the Periphery? There are of
course many parallels – and it’s certainly useful
to emphasize this, since the Centre is often described as
‘English-speaking,’ and the promotion of English
is therefore overlooked. There are also interesting parallels
between these examples of promoting English for Muslims in
the UK and the attempt to promote English and curb the influence
of Islamic schools elsewhere in the world (the point we started
this discussion with). In a sense we can see all this promotion
of English as part of the attempt to develop a greater sense
of alliance to the new global Empire. But I also think there
are differences that we need to be aware of. While some of
the goals may be the same, the effects are different. When
English is promoted in the Centre, it is done through school
systems and other institutions that are part of the ‘state
apparatus,’ thus allowing for close connections between
English, culture and ideology. But when English enters the
diverse cultural worlds in which it is being promoted elsewhere,
it is doing so through a diversity of differently oriented
institutions and media. Perhaps the most worrisome image is
that new modes of control (and the dominance of the US) in
the globalized world are indeed becoming similar to the functions
of the state apparatus. Can difference survive this onslaught?
We will have to fight for it.
KARMANI: On
the surface, the new modes of control often seem surprisingly
similar to past modes under conventional imperialism. I’m
thinking of the alarming rise in the use of English language
teaching these days by Christian missionary groups particularly
in the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq. Recently, in your
excellent article with Sophie Coutand-Marin (2003) on teaching
English as a missionary language you wrote:
The recent shift in global relations, with the rampant ascendancy
of an aggressively conservative, capitalist and Christian
United States (supported particularly by Anglophone allies
in wars against Islamic states), alongside the ever-increasing
global clamour for English and its changing role in the world,
has led to a new and troubling set of relations between English
language teaching and Christian missionary activity.
So in wrapping up this interview, I want to ask you what
you see as the commonalities and differences, if any, between
old and new relations between English and Christian missionary
groups. And also what lessons do you think might be learnt
from the past about the link between Christian missionary
activity and English language teaching?
PENNYCOOK:
Yes, as you know, this is something that has been bothering
me for some time. As I have been trying to argue, I think
we need to understand the new modes of power as both part
of a long history of attempts to control the world, but also
at the same time radically different. This argument often
gets set up as needing to be decided between those who see
globalization as merely a continuation of the old forms of
imperialism (an argument often based on a position that sees
capitalist accumulation at the heart of all imperialism, and
thus suggests that the new era is merely more of the same)
and those who consider it to be a radically new era (and therefore
focus on issues of difference, such as new modes of communication,
changing patterns of human movement, new literacies, shifting
family relations and so on). I think we have to see it as
both: globalization is intimately linked to past forms of
imperialism (we lose this historical view at out peril) and
is also involves a very new and fast changing set of conditions
(we lose this sense of complexity and diversity at our peril).
So, current missionary work is indeed part of the long history
of missionary work but also very different. It is important
to note, first of all, that there are two distinct traditions
of Christian missionary work in relation to language. The
first, the missionary-linguist project, has been concerned
predominantly with the spread of Christianity through whatever
languages were available. And in order to make languages available,
this work spawned an industry of linguistic description and
bible translation. Bible translation projects are carrying
on as never before under the aegis of organizations such as
the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Wycliffe International.
As Wycliffe International (2003) (formerly Wycliffe Bible
Translation) explains its mission:
By the year 2025, together with partners worldwide, we aim
to see a Bible translation program begun in all the remaining
languages that need one. Wycliffe International's work is
to facilitate the translation of God's Word into every language
that needs it. Wycliffe has organizations in nearly forty
countries and has had a part in translating over 500 New Testaments
into minority and indigenous languages. Fifteen hundred more
translation projects representing over 70 countries, are in
progress….Three hundred eighty million people in over
3000 language groups still wait for the Good News in their
own languages. They have waited long enough!”
The point worth noting here – as well as the extraordinary
presumption behind the notion of languages that ‘need’
a Bible translation – is that such work has had and
continues to have profound effects on languages around the
world. Not only is the culturally impositional practice of
translating the Bible central to this missionary project,
but so is describing and preparing languages for such work.
These are some of the leading institutions involved in linguistic
work with various languages around the world.
The second tradition draws a much stronger connection between
English (or, of course, other European languages) and Christianity.
It too has a long history, since colonial self aggrandisement
constructed English as a language of God. This connection
was somewhat limited under colonial rule, colonial authorities
being more concerned with educating in vernacular languages
a subservient population able to participate in colonial capitalism.
It was generally left to a small number of missionary schools
to promote English through their schools. But things have
changed hugely now that English is so widely spread, and indeed
in the last few years many missionary organizations have used
the global demand for English as a means to reach ‘non-believers’.
These new conditions lead to a far more troublesome set of
relations whereby ELT is used as a cover for missionary activity
(at least it was pretty clear what was going on during colonial
times), and this missionary activity is frequently linked
to a range of current global ideologies.
The difficult questions we were trying to get at in our article
were the grounds on which one might object to this. On the
face of it, it might seem obvious to object to covert Christian
missionary activity in ELT classes. But there are several
different possible arguments here: From a secular humanist
position, one might just argue that there is no place for
religion or politics in the classroom (this is more or less
the position taken by the French state, leading of course
to difficult arguments about whether Muslim students in France
should be allowed to wear a headscarf). From a point of view
that argues that politics and ethics are inescapable in education,
the argument then centres on the grounds on which one set
of politics (say, feminist, environmentalist, or socialist)
is preferable over Christian. In addition there are also alternative
religious rather than secular positions: From an Islamic,
Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish etc point of view, it might be argued
that the problem is simply with the Christianity; if it were
the ‘right’ religious point of view, it would
be OK. But such a position is potentially as intractable as
the Christian missionary one (though not as powerful, since
the Christian is now so linked to the power of global English).
I think these are difficult questions to do with power, ethics,
difference and education, and we need to open up more discussion
around them.
In the meantime: As-salaamo alaikam - Peace be upon you.
END.
Alastair Pennycook is Professor of Language in Education
at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is the author
of The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language
(Longman, 1994), English and the Discourses of Colonialism
(Routledge, 1998), and Critical Applied Linguistics: A Critical
Introduction (Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001). His research interests
include global Englishes, colonialism, language policy and
critical applied linguistics.
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Benrabah, Mohamed (1999) Langue et pouvoir en Algerie: Histoire
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Glasser, Susan (2003) Qatar reshapes its schools, putting
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[accessed 30/10/2003]
Graddol, David (1997) The future of English? London: British
Council.
Karmani, Sohail (1997) The im-perfect future. TESOL Islamia
http://www.tesolislamia.org/satire.html [accessed 30/11/2003]
Pennycook, A (2003) Beyond homogeny and heterogeny: English
as a global and worldly language. In C. Mair (Ed) The politics
of English as a world language. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Pennycook, A and Coutand-Marin, S (2003) Teaching English
as a missionary language. In Discourse: Studies in the cultural
politics of education, 24/3 http://www.tesolislamia.org/viewpoint.html
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Weiher, Greg (2003) Get your ass down! The travails of occupying
people who are too dumb to speak English. OpEd News.Com, 1
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[accessed 30/11/2003]
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