EU Makes Arabic Official Language; ‘Has The Most Speakers Here’

“Already, Arabic has the most speakers here of almost any language, or will within just a few years if current migration trends remain steady,” said Raisa Weissflagg, a spokeswoman for the European Parliament.

Brussels, September 25 – The large numbers of migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa have confronted Europe with formidable demographic and economic challenges, which the European Union has only begun to address, with its first long-term move the adoption of Arabic as the official language of the Union.

Hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim immigrants have flooded into the Continent in the last several years. Until today, no unified policy on the wave of immigration has emerged to address long-term integration concerns, as basic welfare and shelter for the newcomers have taken precedence over steps to smooth the migrants’ integration into the local economy and society. The slow-moving bureaucracy of the European Union finally took its first measures along that front today (Saturday) as delegates from the member states voted to replace English with the mother tongue common to so many of the new arrivals for use in official documentation, publications, and proceedings of EU business.

The governing body decided to dismiss hundreds of French- and German-language clerks and translators to make room for candidates fluent in several dialects of Arabic, including the North African, Levantine, and East African versions, along with the pan-Arab literary dialect commonly used for speeches, poetry, and high prose. A Union official explained the decision as more or less inevitable, considering the pace at which Arabic is expected to supplant the local languages within decades.

“Already, Arabic has the most speakers here of almost any language, or will within just a few years if current migration trends remain steady,” said Raisa Weissflagg, a spokeswoman for the European Parliament. “What our member nations have done today is, essentially, recognize that within a generation Arabic will be the dominant language, and Islam the dominant culture, in Europe, and that it would be wiser to simply smooth the path toward that inevitability than waste effort, lives, and trouble fighting a losing battle.”

Along with the language switch, Parliament approved draft legislation to make sexual harassment, rape, polygamy, child marriage, female genital mutilation, and other common features of Arabic-speaking societies legal in communities with a sizable Muslim population. Individual member states will be free to set the threshold beyond which a community’s Muslim population is considered “sizable,” but other details of the legislation have yet to be finalized, such as whether or not to impose Sharia law immediately across the Continent, or to simply leave it as a recommendation for member states to implement following their own timetables.