This past August, according to a CNN report, Nicholas George, a senior at Pomona College, was detained at the Philadelphia International Airport after the Transportation Security Administration found Arabic flashcards in his belongings. In February, George filed suit in federal court against the TSA, the Philadelphia Police Department, and the FBI for civil rights violations. This is not the first time a person has been profiled at an airport for carrying items written in Arabic and it will not be the last.

Language defines the Arab world: design by Basel Almisshal; courtesy english.aljazeera.net & baselonline.co.ukFollowing 9/11 and the start of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, there has been a surge of interest in the Middle East and Arabic language, according to the Modern Language Association and other sources. Since 2002, Arabic enrollment is up 126.5%, making it the tenth most studied foreign language in U.S. universities. Additionally, the number of schools offering these programs has doubled, from 264 in 2002 to 466 in 2006. Even the U.S. government has emphasized studying this language. In 2006, President Bush introduced the National Security Language Initiative which aimed at increasing the number of Americans learning "critical-need" languages, which include Arabic alongside Russian, Farsi, Hindi and Chinese.

And yet, with all this movement towards trying to understand Arabic language and culture, what progress are we actually making?

As a student who has studied Arabic for the last two years, I have found our methods to be dangerously lacking. Arabic is spoken in more than 20 countries, by over 280 million people as a first language and by more than 250 million as a second language. The uniting element in the Arabic speaking world is the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam. Qur'anic Arabic, or classical Arabic, has remained unchanged since its compilation but is not used in daily conversation. Some dialectical variations of Arabic are drastically different, to the point that, for example, a Syrian walking on the street in Morocco might not understand the conversation around him or her. Similar to Qur'anic Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), which is used in news publications, is not spoken on the streets anywhere in the Middle East, but is still the main variant taught in American universities. Most Arabs do understand MSA, which is also known as Fus'ha. However, while learning Fus'ha enables our future cultural ambassadors to watch Al-Jazeera, it prohibits them from understanding a cab driver's joke or truly conversing in a family's home.

There is strong evidence that America's cultural understanding of the Arab world needs to be improved. The most frequently used Arabic textbook in the U.S., al-Kitab, focuses on Fus'ha supplemented with the Egyptian dialect. There are very few alternative textbooks. While including small portions of Egyptian in a curriculum of Fus'ha demonstrates how different the dialects are from what the student is learning, the portions are too small for any practical use. By streamlining a language study to one specific and formal standard such as Modern Standard Arabic, students lose the opportunity to understand the remarkable diversity of cultures found throughout the Middle East.

A further indication of American ignorance to the many faces of the Middle East is illustrated in American television shows and movies. Not only are many Arab characters played by actors of Indian decent, but Arab characters frequently speak in the wrong dialect for their respective identities. In Lost and The Hurt Locker,  Iraqi characters use Egyptian and Jordanian Arabic, and in the show Community, a Palestinian father and son conduct full conversations in Modern Standard.

The danger of homogenizing American perceptions of the Middle East is made apparent by what has been a continuous increase in hate crimes and discriminatory actions against Muslims and Arabs each year since 9/11. Just in 2005, more than 1,500 cases of harassment and anti-Muslim violence were reported in the U.S. In 2007, the number of hate crimes, 115 against Arabs and Muslims, was more than four times as many as were reported in 2000.

So what can we do to reduce confusion about the Arab world and language?

For starters, we need to emphasize learning colloquial Arabic. There are a few institutions that teach colloquial Arabic, such as the Levantine Cultural Center in Los Angeles. The Levantine Center's courses in Lebanese, Jordanian, and Palestinian give students the opportunity to really interact with that region's culture through films, music, and discussion. By studying a specific dialect, students are able to delve deeply into the intricacies of a region and culture, creating potential for direct intercultural exchange. Learning Arabic as its spoken in the streets and homes across the Middle East empowers students to become cultural advocates and combatants against bigotry and ignorance.

Arabic classes link.

Frieda Becker is a media and program associate at Levantine Cultural Center.