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Teaching Arabic and Propaganda
- Article from:
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The Washington Post
- Article date:
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July 5, 2008
- Author:
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At Harvard, the star of Arabic A is a girl named Maha. Maha
Muhammed Abulaal, to be precise. She's the pouty protagonist in the
melodrama that runs throughout "Al-Kitaab," the standard beginning
text in Arabic classes at Harvard and other American universities.
We are taught to speak our first Arabic sentences by expressing
Maha's incurable angst. We learn in Chapter 1 that Maha is
desperately lonely. In later chapters, we are told that she hates
New York, has no boyfriend and resents her mother.
Soon we encounter her equally depressing relatives in Egypt --
such as her first cousin Khalid, whose mother died in a car accident
and who was forced to study business administration after his ...