The urban petty bourgeoisie driving ‘religious fervor’ are often English-educated professionals

Evidence

Said’s way of posing English against Arabic is odd. In Arabic-speaking countries, certainly, the characterization of Arabic as the language of Islam (as of everything else) may be substantially true, but in so far as he speaks constantly of larger things (Asia and Africa, Commonwealth Literature, Rushdie and ‘the Khomeini threat’) it may be worth recalling that the vast majority of Muslims in the world neither speak nor understand Arabic. More to the point, any number of studies exist to show that the urban petty bourgeoisie which normally constitutes the cutting edge of ‘organized religious fervor’ in a number of countries is educated in English as much as in any other language; in the ‘Islamic world’, certainly, English-knowing professionals occupy key positions in such movements, and the representatives of orthodox Islam who led the campaign against The Satanic Verses in England knew English very well, while a great many knew no Arabic. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 902

Categorization

• QUESTION: This is a striking empirical counter to Said’s civilizational framing of Arabic vs English — worth chasing which ‘studies’ Ahmad cites and whether the claim holds across countries.