Languages in Libya: building blocks of national identity and soft power tools

ABSTRACT

Tracing the general lines of language policies in Libya since independence, this article discusses how Arabic has been instrumental in forging a national identity, and examines its role as a soft power tool used by Qadhafi’s regime through the World Islamic Call Society (WICS), established in 1972, which prioritised the teaching of the Arabic language. The article seeks to understand whether the 2011 revolution – at least until 2013, before the beginning of the ongoing internal conflict – has challenged the role of Arabic as the only constituent language of national identity.

KEYWORDS:

• Libya
• education
• national identity
• Arabic language
• Berbers

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Informed by Frederick Cooper’s reflections on the use of analytical categories (Cooper 2005) and by Brubaker and Cooper’s distinction between categories of analysis and categories of practices (Brubaker and Cooper 2000), in this article I do not use a ‘category of practices’, as defined by Brubaker and Cooper to mean: the ‘categories of everyday social experience, developed by the social actors’. Instead I refer to the ‘political practices’ of state actors.

2 Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome, Italy (ASDMAE): AP 1950–1957, 820/22, ‘Legge n.6 1952 sulla lingua araba’.

3 ASDMAE; AP 1950–1957, 897 L7/5, Legazione d’Italia to Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Tripoli 29 June 1953.

4 ASDMAE: AP 1950–1957, 958 L7/1, ‘Legge n. 5’, 1952.

5 The National Archives of the UK (TNA): FO 371/103108, Report of the British Embassy in Cairo, 4 March 1953.

6 ASDMAE: AP 1950–1957, 958 L7/5. ‘Insegnamento della Lingua Italiana nelle Scuole Arabe della Wilayet della Tripolitania’, Tripoli 24 February 1954.

7 ASDMAE: AP 1950–1957, 820/22, Legazione d’Italia to Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Tripoli 25 May 1954.

8 ASDMAE AP 1950–1957, 958, L7/5, Legazione d’Italia to Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Tripoli 24 February 1954.

9 TNA: FO 371/119717, British Embassy to Foreign Office, Tripoli 24 April 1956.

10 TNA: FO 924/1488, British Embassy to Foreign Office, Tripoli 14 May 1964.

11 TNA: FO 924/1488, British Embassy to Foreign Office, Tripoli 14 May 1964.

12 ‘Consolidation of Amazigh Language as a Key Factor of National Unity’, https://www.facebook.com/LibyanNationalAmazighCongress/info. Accessed 10 July 2013.

13 Un tournant dans le combat amazigh en Libye, 6 January 2013, http://tamazgha.fr/Un-tournant-dans-le-combat-amazigh.html.

14 Qarār al-Muʾtamar al-Waṭanī al-ʿĀmm, Raqm 18, 2013, http://www.gnc.gov.ly/legislation_page.aspx. Accessed 20 August 2013.

15 See for example Aḥmad al-Kasīḥ, al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya Shayʾ min al- Dīn wa Ḥayāt Lībiyā [The Arabic Language is a Part of the Religion and Life of Libya] ,December 30, 2015, http://www.libya-al-mostakbal.org/news/clicked/87781. Accessed 4 April 2016.

16 Daʿwat al-Ḥiwār ḥawla al-Jamʿiyya al-Islāmiyya al-ʿĀlamiyya wa Kulliyyat al-Daʿwa al-Islāmiyya [Call for dialogue on the World Islamic Society and the Faculty of Islamic Call], November 21, 2011, http://www.alwatan-libya.net/. Accessed 1 April 2016.

17 Parliament Archives, UK, HC Deb, 24 January 2014, cols. 340-1W. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm140124/text/140124w0001.htm#14012438000256.

18 Parliament Archives, UK, HC Deb, 1 February 2012, Col 328WH. https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2012-02-01/debates/12020178000001/ForeignPolicy(SoftPower).

19 Interview with a former director of the Italian Cultural Institute in Tripoli, 14 February 2016.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was kindly supported by the fund ‘Ricerca di base 2015’, Department of Political Sciences, Università degli Studi di Perugia.