I COULD not agree more with the lucid article ‘Making Arabic compulsory’ (Feb 13) regarding the impracticalities of teaching Arabic to our children as a proper medium of instruction.

Our educational experts should understand that learning Arabic as a full-fledged subject will not help in professional growth of our youth to any noticeable extent. Our young professionals may then have a slight professional edge in the Arab world, but the ability to speak, read and write Arabic can definitely not compensate for the overall technical, economic, art and scientific skills which our young generation should really master to excel in the modern, competitive world.

Moreover, our children will come under additional mental stress if they have to undergo this onerous task of learning a foreign language in addition to the multitude of compulsory subjects, which are part and parcel of their curriculum.

More importantly, knowing Arabic provides no guarantee at all that a person tends to be a good Muslim. The Arabs constitute hardly 25 per cent of the population of Muslims all over the world and we can safely assume, in all probability, that many non-Arab Muslims must be much better persons and professionals. This is not meant as an offence to our Arab friends, but an expression of simple logic.

Just to emphasise further, the top five countries with largest Muslim populations — Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria — do not feature any Arab country. Essentially, we should teach the elements of character-building, tolerance, morality and ethics to our children right from the very beginning as is done in countries like Finland and Japan.

Only then will our future generations be able to project a soft and liberal image of Pakistan to the outside world.

Umar M. Makhdumi
Karachi

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2021