Anti-Americanism and a further emboldening of America’s enemies sure to come will prove the recklessness of the administration’s pronoun crusade.
Anti-Americanism and a further emboldening of America’s enemies sure to come will prove the recklessness of the administration’s pronoun crusade.
‘P ride Month” celebrations, common throughout much of the U.S., now have a global footprint as well. U.S. embassies in Kosovo, Montevideo, and even Vatican City have flown Pride flags this month. Going beyond mere symbolic action, the State Department has decided to add a vernacular element. On May 17, a U.S.-embassy official in Brazil delivered a public-service announcement about the importance of gender-neutral pronouns. The Biden administration believes that foreign nations need to adapt, adopt, or assemble gender-nonconforming pronouns to “modernize” their centuries-old languages — make them more inclusive and equitable.
Lecturing a country and culture about the deficiencies of its language represents a Biden foreign policy mixed with 21st-century cultural imperialism. In April, to promote LGBTQ rights, Ambassador Rahm Emanuel attempted to subvert the democratic process in Japan. His transgression followed USAID’s establishment of the Rainbow Fund to cultivate indigenous LGBTQ activists and leadership throughout the world.
Joe Biden’s “civilizing mission” — reengineering how foreign countries behave, think, and talk — places American overseas interests and security at risk. It distances the United States from allies critical to upholding U.S. policy, while further antagonizing their domestic opponents. The deleterious effects of the policy will be most acute and visible in the Arab-Muslim world.
The pronoun public-service announcement is part of a policy to assimilate the rest of the world into a provincial, progressive-belief structure. U.S. officials believe they have been chosen to dissolve systems of oppression and realize a just world order. The announcement by the official with the U.S. embassy in Brazil demonstrates that many languages in their current form discriminate against individuals who identify as gender-nonbinary — those who do not identify as male or female. The absence of pronouns specific to them prevents them from proper self-expression, thereby negating their existence. The administration hopes that its advocacy of the adoption or creation of gender-neutral pronouns will erase the injustice and result in a more inclusive language.
That Joe Biden and his woke stewards at the State Department expect to eventually convert the entire world to gender-nonconforming pronoun usage and to tolerance for nonbinary behaviors and identities is beyond risible. To help understand why, just look at the Arabic language and the social mores of the Arab-Muslim world. Arab-Muslims will consider such efforts condescending and insulting, and will reject them.
The first reason the policy is foolish is that the male–female binary structures the Modern Standard Arabic language. Its Quranic classical Arabic origins make the language not amenable to the neutrality espoused by gender-nonbinary pronouns. Some individuals have noted the usefulness of the dual form in formal Arabic — the designation of two individuals — to express gender nonconformity. However, given the obsession of gender-nonconforming individuals with identity — at last check, LGBTQ Nation on its website claimed the existence of at least 85 pronouns — the dual form will be neither sufficient nor tolerated in formal settings.
A second issue is the religious and cultural significance of the Arabic language. For the Arab-Muslim, Allah chose Arabic as the language in which to reveal the Quran — for Muslims, the literal word of God. Allah’s decision demonstrates to the Arab Muslim the sophistication of the Arabic language. And now the U.S. State Department thinks it can tell them that their language is not sophisticated enough? And that’s not even to mention how Arab culture and Islam writ large consider such identities deviant.
Pronoun proselytization in the Arab-Muslim world will be the equivalent of pouring gasoline on a smoldering fire. Last year the Biden administration aggravated relations with Kuwait when the embassy issued a tweet supporting LGBTQ rights. Additionally, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has stated that he presses his Saudi counterpart on LGBTQ issues every time they speak. But if the State Department attempts to extend its understanding of pronouns further, it will challenge the maintenance of U.S. policy in the region while providing Arab Islamists with bulletin-board material.
U.S. partners in the Arab-Muslim world will grow further distrustful of the president’s pursuit of an objective that threatens their power. Leaders in the Arab-Muslim world often derive some legitimacy representing Islamic teaching or publicly portraying themselves as devout. For example, the king of Saudi Arabia is considered the custodian of the two holy mosques in Islam, and the king of Jordan traces his lineage to the family of the Prophet Muhammad. Capitulating to Biden on pronouns would challenge that legitimacy, taint their image as pious Muslim rulers, and jeopardize their rule.
The creation of distrust among critical partners in the Arab-Muslim world would then complicate the maintenance of already challenging U.S. policies and security interests in the region. How long would Egypt cooperate with the United States in facilitating the realization of an Israeli–Palestinian peace after being pressured to adapt a fundamental element of Egyptian culture? How long would Saudi Arabia cooperate on the issue of nonproliferation of nuclear capabilities?
Biden’s progressive agenda will intensify the governing and security challenges for his partners. Arab Islamists, who generally exist outside political processes and oppose U.S.-supported leaders, will add America’s perversion of their culture and heritage — the Arabic language — to their list of grievances.
The Biden administration will further convince Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, and other Islamists of the righteousness and necessity of their cause. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, already speaks to Shia Muslims about America’s corruptive influence, citing the foisting of the LGBTQ lifestyle on the region. Anti-Americanism and a further emboldening of America’s enemies sure to come will prove the recklessness of Biden’s pronoun crusade.