knowledge of classical Arabic a necessary accomplishment of every educated Egyptian.
SHEIKH: There is another reason why we should maintain the use of the present written idiom. In Syria, in Morocco, in Egypt they speak different languages, different varieties of Arabic. Here in Egypt we say esh for ‘bread’: in Syria they say khubz. But in all these countries one language is written only. A book or newspaper published in Egypt is understood at Fez and at Beyrout. But, if we begin to write the spoken Egyptian, the Syrians and the Moors will find it hard to understand us, and little by little, as the differences become greater, they will not understand us at all. The Arabic language, as now written, unites the people of Islam. Remove it, and the union of Islam disappears.
CRITIC: I find it hard to believe that the unity of Islam depends on the maintenance of a single Arabic written idiom in all those countries where Arabic is spoken or studied. There was a time when everybody in Europe who wrote all wrote in Latin. Yet it did not have the effect of uniting at all the nations of Christendom, except, perhaps, superficially.
SHEIKH: I have no business to lecture you in these matters; but it seems to me that the unity of Islam depends not on Arabic language, but on the grand simplicity of its creed and the uniformity of its religious ceremonies - on the fact that five times a day, whether on the shores of the Bosphorus, the banks of the Nile, under the shadow of the Atlas or amid the rose gardens of Ispahan, the Muezzin proclaims the Unity of God from the minaret of the mosque: that the Moslem pilgrim who sets out from Moracco or Mongolia across vast distances on his journey to the Holy Cities of Islam, is hailed in each country which he traverses with the same form of mutual greeting between True Believers.12 These things, part of the daily life of all Moslems, learned and ignorant 1393 Minute of Dissent
