Former French diplomat and director of the Language Centre at the Arab World Institute, Nada Yafi has published "Plaidoyer pour la langue arabe" in the Orient XXI collection of the Libertalia publishing house. In it, she identifies several problems blocking the teaching of Arabic and its development in France:
- the demonisation of the Arabic language associated with extremism and terrorism
- a confusion of the Arabic language with Islam or even Islamism.
Nada Yafi looks back at key historical moments, such as the development of the Arabic language in the pre-Islamic era, but also such as the renaissance of the late nineteenth century, the "Nahda", which saw translations into Arabic from European languages.