(France 24) French conservative and far-right political forces on Tuesday blasted Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer’s welcome of a proposal to “revive the teaching of Arabic” in schools in a bid to combat Islamism in the country.
The proposal stems from a 617-page report entitled “The Islamist Factory” released Sunday by Paris’s Institut Montaigne think tank. Among its conclusions, the report suggested that rejuvenating Arabic-language learning within the French school system was key “especially since Arabic courses have become for Islamists the best means of attracting young people to their mosques and schools.”
Asked for his thoughts on the proposal, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer told BFMTV that Arabic is “a very important language, like other great civilizational languages” including Chinese and Russia[n], and that such languages needed to be “developed” and “ascribed prestige.”
