This article contains an interesting comment on how the use of the Arabic language influences extremism and emotionalism at the expense of rational thought.

July 18, 2016
France vs. ‘The Prettiest Sound on Earth’
By Daren Jonescu

President Obama says the Muslim call to prayer is "one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset." Meanwhile, millions of Muslims are eager to kill, rape, or enslave you at sunset in the name of their faith. There is no contradiction here; in fact, the relationship may be causal. For we cannot understand the murderous extremism of modern Islam without considering the hypnotic quality of its language.

When Islamists stormed several locations in Paris last November, killing 130 people, German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed "shock" at the event, as though she couldn't imagine what might cause someone to do such a thing.

When an Islamist walked into a nightclub in Orlando and killed 49 people, President Obama called it "an act of hate," but claimed the killer's motive was unclear.

Now, once again, France has suffered a massive suicide attack, as a man has driven a truck through holiday crowds in Nice, killing dozens, until he was finally killed. We all knew immediately, from seeing this pattern so often, how the West's leaders would respond: "There is no justification for such horrible acts. We must stand together and reject hatred -- especially hatred directed against Muslims, who are uniformly peace-loving and moderate people. The terrorist was not a real Muslim. No real Muslim would do such a thing."

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The issue turns on the politically correct refusal to admit that Islam could have an inherently fanatical element, as though such a thought were regressive and culturally insensitive.

But perhaps it is the progressives, with their refusal to acknowledge self-declared jihadists as "real Muslims," who are the culturally insensitive ones. They are denying a sizeable faction of global Islam the violent enthusiasm for Allah that is central to their understanding of their faith, merely because it doesn't comport with our Western, modernized notions of what "real" religious adherence means.

Perhaps our progressives, whose two greatest areas of intellectual deficiency may be religion and common sense, are simply out their depth here. For one of the spiritual founders of their movement, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, had this issue figured out over two centuries ago.

Consider the Islamist hostage-takers who systematically release captives who can recite verses from the Koran. This is significant, for Islam is the only major religion in which people may be judged believers or infidels on such a basis. Speaking the Arabic words of the holy book -- speaking them aloud, recitation-style -- is essential to proving oneself a genuine Muslim. The sounds of the words themselves, spoken in their original tongue, are essential to the faith.

In his Essay on the Origin of Languages (John H. Moran translation, 1966), Rousseau criticizes modern European languages for evolving toward practical, rational functionality, and hence away from the quasi-melodic or "natural" representation of passions and imagery, which he believes to be the original purpose of speech. In contrast with the inherently musical characteristics of early language, which allowed ancient generals to move whole armies, and poets whole cities, with mere intonation, most modern languages are not calibrated to communicate easily (without shouting) in large crowds or across long distances. Ours are languages for "murmuring on couches" (p. 73), or for silent reading -- for logic and reflection -- and are therefore less suited to sweeping pronouncements that transport the masses into ecstasies of unreflective action, as powerful music can do.

He cites Arabic as the prime example of a current tongue that has retained its emotional, non-rational core, and therefore speaks first to the passions, rather than to reason. It persuades the feelings, creating what Rousseau calls "moral impressions," merely through its inherent accents and rhythm -- "one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset." Hence it is a most effective language for rallying men to immoderate enthusiasm for a cause, against sober judgment.

And this leads Rousseau to a most striking observation, one which, given its eighteenth-century vintage, never ceases to startle my graduate students when they first encounter it:

Zitat

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Thus, if one who read a little Arabic and enjoyed leafing through the Koran were to hear Mohammed personally preach in that eloquent, rhythmic tongue, with that sonorous and persuasive voice, seducing first the ears, then the heart, every sentence alive with enthusiasm, he would prostrate himself, crying: "Great prophet, messenger of God, lead us to glory, to martyrdom; we will conquer or die for you." Fanaticism always seems ridiculous to us, because there is no voice among us to make it understood. (pp. 49-50, cosmetically edited)

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Fanatical tendencies or commands are moderated by the inherently logical, unmusical character of modern languages, which is why "fanaticism seems ridiculous to us." Arabic's intrinsic musical elements, however -- not its grammar and vocabulary, but its melody and rhythm -- actually heighten those tendencies

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http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/...d_on_earth.html