According to Murad, this constituted a setback to the national language and consequently Arab national sentiment. A number of advocates of this trend affectionately remember that the call for the Arabisation of commercial and street signs, symbols and advertisements was a recurrent theme in the writings of renowned author and famous columnist the late Ahmed Bahaaeddin. They are always ready to cite some of these passages verbatim. The opposition paper Al-Shaab even published an article on 1 November 1996 in which Kamal Habib, subscribing to a conspiracy theory, claimed that the United Nations were planning to eliminate several languages, among them Arabic, which was utterly deprived of political support. Champions of the Arabic language suggest that the extensive tendency to use foreign names and sentences is a symptom not to be taken lightly, the indication of an identity crisis afflicting Egyptian society.
Billboards are only the tip of the iceberg.
There is much work to be done to reform our system of education before we attack some futile manifestation of ignorant snobism, she advises. Regardless of the reasons behind the adoption of a foreign vocabulary by those dealing commercially with the public, however, one should not ignore the reality on the ground. Commercial enterprises are established primarily as money-making ventures whose sole aim is to rake in clients. Perhaps the new decree, and the concerns it reflects, are simply a case of putting the cart before the horse by trying to address one of the consequences of some of our problems, rather than their cause.