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110-446: Al-Manar ( Arabic : المنار , romanized :  al-Manār , lit.   '' The Lighthouse '') is a Lebanese satellite television station owned and operated by the Islamist political party and paramilitary group Hezbollah , broadcasting from Beirut , Lebanon . The channel was launched on 4 June 1991 as a terrestrial channel and in 2000 as a satellite channel. It is

220-486: A Lebanese militia that had founded LBC in 1985, was militarily and financially weakened by Lebanese civil war which ended in 1990 and its leader Samir Geagea was imprisoned in 1994. In 1992, Pierre El Daher had founded LBCI along with other shareholders and registered it at the Commercial Register of Baabda. In April 1996, El Daher and other shareholders launched LBCsat, a free satellite channel. The new channel

330-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as

440-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By

550-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to

660-515: A formal co-operation agreement with IRNA since 2012. On its websites it also republishes material verbatim from Russia 's state broadcaster RT . It extensively screens Iranian films (which it sees as "culturally in harmony with Arab values and Al Manar’s mostly Shiite audience") and television series including soap operas , dubbed into (and later more often subtitled in) Modern Standard Arabic , as well as Syrian series. Several talk shows are regularly aired on al-Manar. According to Avi Jorisch of

770-503: A four-part drama based on the life of Izz al-Din al-Qassam , an early-twentieth-century Arab, after whom the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades are named. The 2002 program Faris bi la jawad ( A Knight without a Horse or The Horseless Rider ), which was produced by an Egyptian , was based on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion , an old Russian antisemitic text claiming a conspiracy of Jews control

880-733: A game show in the style of Who Wants to be a Millionaire but with questions on Arab and Islamic history and the victor winning a virtual trip to the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem , and even a children's program called Al-manr al-saghir ( The Little Manar ), which is in the style of the US show Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood , targeting three- to seven-year-olds. During Ramadan , al-Manar features special programs, many of which are self-produced. In 2001, Izz al-Din al-Qassam: Qisat al-jihad wa al-muqawama ( Izz al-Din al-Qassam: A Story of Jihad and Resistance ),

990-483: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic

1100-663: A member of the Arab States Broadcasting Union . The station reaches around 50 million people. The station is considered one of Hezbollah's most important global propaganda tools, with the Danish Institute for International Studies describing it as "the very centrepiece of the entire [Hezbollah] media apparatus". It is banned in the United States, France, Spain, and Germany, and has run into some service and license problems outside Lebanon, making it unavailable in

1210-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb  [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak

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1320-650: A news programme in which someone presented as an expert on Zionism Al-Manar warned of ng of "Zionist attempts" to transmit AIDS to Arab countries; in 2004 it screened a multi-episode Syrian series that included the blood libel and drew on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion . As a result, Jewish groups have campaigned about the station. In 2004, the Conseil Représentatif des Institutions juives de France (Crif) complained to France's Conseil supérieur de l'audiovisuel (Higher Audio Visual Council, CSA) that scenes in

1430-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from

1540-678: A satellite channel on 9 March 2000. Muhammad Ra'd, a Hezbollah member of parliament and al-Manar's largest shareholder, submitted the request to the minister of transmission, which was approved in April 2000. Although the launch of the satellite station was originally planned for July, the date was moved up in order to coincide with the end of the Israeli occupation of South Lebanon on 25 May. This success led other television stations to follow in launching satellite stations, including Murr TV in November 2000, but it

1650-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",

1760-536: A senior manager at al-Manar, was part of a Houthi delegation in peace talks relating to the Yemeni civil war . A 2021 report by the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT), a conservative thinktank at Reichman University , noted that Farahat, now al-Manar CEO and a Hezbollah member is on the board of Tehran -based Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU), described as a soft power operation for

1870-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for

1980-471: A success. According to Israel's Market Research, the channel's popularity rankings in the Middle East leapt from 83rd to the 10th slot between July 15 and 28. This meant a substantial increase to the estimated 10 million people that tune in daily to its terrestrial and satellite channels in normal times. In 2006, it began to broadcast online to complement its terrestial and satellite output. By 2008, its website

2090-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means

2200-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as

2310-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted

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2420-727: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic

2530-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak

2640-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It

2750-469: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in

2860-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon

2970-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and

3080-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference

3190-836: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not

3300-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As

3410-530: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that

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3520-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into

3630-510: Is unlawful to attack facilities that merely shape civilian opinion; neither directly contributes to military operations"). The incident was condemned by the International Federation of Journalists . The Israel Association of Journalists withdrew from the federation in response, claiming that Al-Manar employees "are not journalists, they are terrorists". The New York based Committee to Protect Journalists , also expressed alarm over

3740-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while

3850-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary

3960-669: The American Jewish Congress , the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies , American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Middle East Media Research Institute all campaigning against it and taking credit for some successes in its deplatforming. Their campaigning led to corporations such as Pepsi removing their ads from the station in the mid-2000s, costing it an estimated $ 2 million in revenue. Al-Manar

4070-459: The Foundation for Defense of Democracies , the best known of these is Beit al-ankabut ( The Spider's House ); its title alludes to a metaphor , Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah often employs to describe Israel. It is dedicated to uncovering the "weakness of the Zionist entity", i.e. Israel, and attempts to convince the Arab world that Israel could easily be destroyed, for example, by an increase in

4180-558: The IAF launched two massive air raids across Lebanon. One of the targets was the al-Manar radio station's offices in a four storey building in Baalbek which was completely demolished. The attacks also hit Beirut's power stations and bridges on the roads to the south. An estimated $ 52 million damage was caused. Eleven Lebanese were killed as well as two Israelis in Kiryat Shmona . During the 1990s,

4290-583: The Netherlands , Canada , and Australia . According to the RAND Corporation in 2017, "Al-Manar has an annual budget of roughly $ 15 million, much of it supplied by wealthy expatriate Lebanese donors and various Iranian community organizations, and income from the sale of its shows." Al-Manar first began terrestrial broadcasting from Beirut, Lebanon on 4 June 1991. The station was located in Haret Hreik in

4400-637: The Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut earlier that morning. Despite the attack, the station remained on air, broadcasting from undisclosed locations. The IDF bombed Al-Manar's Beirut complex again on 16 July causing fire in the complex and surrounding buildings. The station's signal disappeared briefly several times, then continued normal programming. Human Rights Watch said the bombing of media outlets violates international law when they are not being used for military purposes ("it

4510-483: The Samir Kassir Foundation, the majority owner of the station is Pierre Daher and his family who owns 50.6% share. Other key shareholders include former Deputy Prime Minister Issam Fares and his son Najad owning 10% each, Maroun Jazzar with 4.4%, Investcom, which is owned by Prime Minister Najib Mikati's family, with 4% share and Salah Osseiran with also 4% share. In December 2019, LBCI announced that

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4620-561: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to

4730-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic

4840-500: The "evil Europeans" about his organization. Jeffrey Goldberg wrote in 2002 that the channel "broadcasts anti-American programming, but its main purpose is to encourage Palestinians to become suicide bombers", and ARD said in 2023 that some of its content glorifies suicide bombers, and this was also noted in some early reports about the channel; however, a 2006 analysis by the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies said that it

4950-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In

5060-719: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c.  8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. LBCI The Lebanese Forces ,

5170-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to

5280-562: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of

5390-812: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ    [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized

5500-745: The Arab population. Further talk shows include Hadith al-sa'a ( Talk of the Hour ), Matha ba'ad ( What's Next? ), Ma'al Hadath ( With The Event ), Bayna Kawsayn ( Between The Brackets ), Milafat ( Files ), Al-din wa al-hayat ( Religion and Life ), and Nun wa al-qalam ( The 'Nun' and the Pen ). Guests include well-known journalists, analysts, writers, Lebanese politicians, spokespersons of terrorist groups, and Islamic scholars, who then discuss current religious, political, and cultural, regional and global topics. Al-Manar often airs music videos and fillers in between full-length programs and during commercial breaks. Much of

5610-510: The Arab world. Al-Manar was soon carried by many satellite providers. However, starting with the removal of the station from TARBS World TV in Australia in 2003, many satellite television providers stopped featuring it. Until then the station was featured by the following providers at one time or another: According to the BBC on 26 July 2006, Al-Manar had three satellite signals: By 2004, Al Manar

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5720-596: The French response was political and not legal, influenced by Israel and Jewish lobbies . Later, however, "Al-Manar’s management apologized for airing the series, dropped it, and explained that the station had purchased it without first viewing the entire series, according to Franklin Lamb [in CounterPunch ]." In 2002, Jeffrey Goldberg interviewed members of the station's staff and reported some of their comments about Jews. He quoted

5830-922: The Iranian state. Interviewed by Jeffrey Goldberg in 2002, Al Manar's news director, Hassan Fadlallah, said that Al Manar does not aim to be neutral in its broadcasting, "Neutrality like that of Al Jazeera is out of the question for us," Fadlallah said. "We cover only the victim, not the aggressor. CNN is the Zionist news network, Al Jazeera is neutral, and Al Manar takes the side of the Palestinians...He said Al Manar's opposition to neutrality means that, unlike Al Jazeera, his station would never feature interviews or comments by Israeli officials. "We're not looking to interview Sharon," Fadlallah said. "We want to get close to him in order to kill him." The Israeli government and its supporters have consequently lobbied Western governments to ban it, with Anti-Defamation League , CAMERA ,

5940-798: The LDC brand would be discontinued by the beginning of the year 2020 and that all programs will be broadcast via LBCI. The main reason behind the decision was that the LDC branding was no longer needed since the battle for the LBC brand and channels with Al Walid Bin Talal has been resolved and won by LBCI current owner, Pierre El Daher. LBCI has produced many shows including: Star Academy Arab World , Ya Katel Ya Maktoul (Arabic version of Greed ), Miss Lebanon , Hellha wo Ehtalha (Arabic version of French TV Show Fort Boyard ), Survivor Middle East, and El Wadi (Arabic version of The Farm ). Its most famous talk show

6050-582: The Lebanese government granted broadcasting licenses to five television stations, not including Al-Manar. Approximately 50 stations were forced to close at the time. Several stations appealed the government's decision, but only four of them were finally granted licenses, one of which was Al-Manar. On 18 September, the Lebanese Cabinet decided to grant Al-Manar a license after having been requested to do so by then Syrian president Hafiz al-Asad . Al-Manar received

6160-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around

6270-769: The Palestinians, and it shows militants setting off explosives and shooting at Israelis and American troops, often to musical accompaniment." Citing the Washington Institute for Near East Policy , the Post said it often features Islamic sacred texts and images of martyrdom. According to the Washington Institute's 2004 analysis, it consists of 25% music videos and fillers , 25% series and dramas , 25% talk shows , and finally 25% news and family shows. A 2007 analysis described 65% of its content as entertainment and 35% as political. The news programming includes much footage from

6380-672: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from

6490-561: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With

6600-805: The Syrian-made series, Al-Shatat (The Diaspora), which purported to depict the history of the Zionist movement , portrayed the killing of a Christian child by Jews to use the victim's blood. On 13 December 2004, the French Conseil d'État , the highest administrative court in France, ordered the French-based Eutelsat Satellite organisation (owner of Hot Bird 4, which had transmitted the station) to shut down Al-Manar broadcasts. Initially, Al-Manar defended Ash-Shatat as "purely factual", and said that

6710-436: The US assassination of Qasem Soleimani , leader of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on January 3, 2020, "Al-Manar went on a daily attack on U.S. policy on Iran and the region, promising revenge." Al-Manar translates its content into Spanish for circulation in Latin America . On 25 October 2023, as the 2023 Israel-Hamas war spread to southern Lebanon , Al-Manar reported that its camera operator, Wissam Qassim,

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6820-411: The US would be subject to expulsion procedures. Al-Manar was also removed from the satellite provider in the US, Intelsat , and Globecast , the TV service that hosted its US programming. Lebanon's ambassador to the United States, Farid Abboud , protested: "If you want simply to demonize or eliminate one side, you're not going to advance the issue. If you are going to focus on one side simply because of

6930-403: The United States for ‘using’ COVID-19 to ‘undermine’ its adversaries". Al-Manar was designated as a " Specially Designated Global Terrorist entity", and banned by the United States on 17 December 2004. A US government spokesman said the decision was taken because of "its incitement of terrorist activity", and that anybody linked to Al-Manar would be refused a visa to enter the US or if present in

7040-496: The appeals for the destruction of Israel, and the depiction of the future of Arab youths. The videos are on average three minutes long. The videos are usually professionally produced by the station itself and each usually takes about three to four days to make. The filler material usually consists of appeals to donate money to the Hezbollah, lists of demonstrations taking place worldwide, and slogans in English, Hebrew , or Arabic. The station also offers sports broadcasting such as

7150-412: The cause of its constituents, initially, the disadvantaged and poor Shi’ia of [Lebanon's] South and the Beka’a valley; later expanded to include the Arab and Islamic worlds." Its adopted slogan is “The channel for Arabs and Muslims”. In 2001, the station's chair, Nayyef Krayyem, said "Al Manar is an important weapon for us. It's a political weapon, social weapon, and cultural weapon." According to Jorisch,

7260-662: The channel and the Statue of Liberty is depicted "as a ghoul , her gown dripping blood, a knife instead of a torch in her raised hand." According to Orayb Aref Najjar, this stance is reflected in the language used, for instance calling the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) the "Israeli Occupation Forces" (IOF). Its Hot Topics section lists “The Israeli Enemy” as a search category. Al-Manar calls fighters Israel killed martyrs. Hezbollah fighters often leave archived video wills that explain why they chose martyrdom. The station also archives short video clips of family members or friends of martyrs praising their sacrifice and explaining why it benefits

7370-509: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after

7480-478: The country. The station glorified its martyrs on Martyr Day on November 11, 2019, with a speech by Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah, and in song and resistance videos. According to German public television ARD in 2023, al-Manar broadcasts calls for the destruction of Israel, such as statements from Hamas . Hashem Safieddine , chairman of the Hezbollah Executive Council, used the channel to warn US President Joe Biden, Israel's Prime Minister President Netanyahu and

7590-412: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of

7700-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around

7810-447: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From

7920-501: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and

8030-637: The government repression of them. In late December 2013, the Lebanese Communication Group that includes Al-Manar apologised for its partisan coverage of the events at a meeting of the Arab States Broadcasting Union . In response, Hebollah forced the Director General of the station, Abdallah Qasir or Kassir (a former MP of Hezbollah’s Loyalty to the Resistance parliamentary bloc), to resign. He went to Iran. According to Orayb Aref Najjar, after

8140-457: The incident as "it (Al-Manar) does not appear based on a monitoring of its broadcasts today to be serving any discernible military function, according to CPJ's analysis." The Israeli bombing increased the station's popularity: With other channels turning to Al Manar for the latest line from Hizbullah, it could set the regional news agenda and bring viewers to its extensive coverage of the war. Indeed, purely by staying on air, Al Manar could claim

8250-579: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward

8360-579: The international press. Additionally, as of early 2004, the station subscribed to wire services including Reuters , Associated Press (AP), Agence France Presse , and Deutsche Presse Agentur . As of 2004, the station airs eight news bulletins a day in Arabic in addition to one in English and one in French . AP severed ties with the station shortly after this. Al-Manar primarily uses Iranian and Syrian government news agencies for news and documentaries. It has had

8470-608: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about

8580-445: The largest shareholder after acquiring the absolute majority in PAC (a content provider for both LBCI and LBC SAT) and LBC SAT, based on an understanding that the capital increase would be invested to improve the programs’ network and upgrade productivity under the supervision of Sheikh Pierre Daher. In 2010, Rupert Murdoch joined the group and PAC and LBC SAT were merged with Rotana. Rumor

8690-599: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c.  603 –689)

8800-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA

8910-473: The license in July 1997. It started in this period to embed journalists with Hezbollah fighters, showing video of Israeli casualties, and including Hebrew so Israeli viewers could follow, with the aim of sowing fear among Israeli viewers. The station's website was launched in 1999, at first hosting some recordings of Hassan Nasrallah speeches to a background of religious and nationalist music. On 24/25 June 1999

9020-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya

9130-507: The music praises Hezbollah and its martyrs or the Palestinian intifada . According to Jorisch, the music videos are generally dedicated to the following seven purposes: the promotion of the Hezbollah, highlighting the importance of armed resistance against Israel, the glorification of martyrdom , spreading of anti-Americanism , denunciation of Israel and Zionism as the embodiments of terrorism,

9240-768: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum  [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve

9350-534: The news director, Hassan Fadlallah, as saying “Many Europeans believe that the Holocaust was a myth invented so that the Jews could get compensation. Everyone knows how the Jews punish people who seek the truth about the Holocaust.” He quoted the director of English-language news, Ibrahim Mussawi, calling Jews “a lesion on the forehead of history.” According to The Washington Institute for Near East Policy , al-Manar "condemned

9460-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on

9570-568: The operator of the Palapa C2 satellite owned by Telkom Indonesia , in which the Indonesian government is the majority shareholder. By 2009, al-Manar was watched by some 18 million people globally. By 2010, its annual budget was $ 10 million. Iranian-backed Shia groups were involved in demonstrations starting in mid-2011 (as part of the " Arab Spring ") against Bahrain 's ruling Sunni oligarchy, and al-Manar backed these demonstrations and condemned

9680-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on

9790-803: The political message, it's unacceptable and it's a grave breach of the freedom of speech .". Reporters without Borders opposed the designation, saying "Some of the anti-Semitic statements broadcast on Al-Manar are inexcusable but putting this TV station in the same category as terrorist groups worries us and does not strike us as the best solution". The decision was also opposed by the International Federation of Journalists , who called it political censorship, and by French academic and Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson . Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized :  al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )

9900-517: The popularity of satellite broadcasting greatly increased in the Arab world and in Lebanon. The first Lebanese station to use this technology was Future Television , launching Future International SAT in 1994, while LBCI and the Lebanese government followed by launching LBCSAT and Tele Liban Satellite respectively. In order to compete with these emerging stations, and in order to find an international audience, Al-Manar announced its intention to launch

10010-537: The programming would be adapted to the pan-Arab audience, leading to a slight difference between the local broadcast and the one via satellite. At first, only three hours of satellite programming were broadcast per day, but by December 2000, the station was broadcasting around the clock. The timing of the satellite launch - covering the Israeli withdrawal and also the start of the Second Intifada - boosted its audience in

10120-524: The programs Goal and Tis'in daqiqa ( Ninety Minutes ), family programming such as Al-mustakshifoun al-judud ( The New Explorers ), Al-Muslimoun fi al-Sin ( Muslims in China ), and Ayday al-khayr ( Hands of Benevolence ), game shows including Al-mushahid shahid ( The Viewer Is the Witness ), where contestants attempt to guess the names of Israeli political and military figures, and Al-muhima ( The Mission ) -

10230-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within

10340-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there

10450-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of

10560-517: The southern suburbs of Beirut, close to Hezbollah's headquarters. Originally, the station had only a few employees, who had studied media in London during the mid-1980s. But almost a year later, Al-Manar was employing over 150 people. Initially, Al Manar would broadcast five hours per day. Shortly before the 1992 election , it began broadcasting regular news bulletins in order to help Hezbollah attain more votes and spread its message to more people. In 1993,

10670-556: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of

10780-657: The station expanded its broadcasting to seven hours a day and extended its signal to the southern part of the Bekaa Valley . Ahead of the 1996 Lebanese parliamentary elections , additional antennas were erected in Northern Lebanon and throughout the Mount Lebanon range, so that the station could be viewed not only in Lebanon, but also in western Syria and northern Israel. Broadcasting was extended to 20 hours in 1998 but reduced to 18 hours in 2000 and 24 in 2001. In 1996,

10890-535: The station manager Mohammad Afif Ahmad (later Hezbollah's head of media), said in the 1990s that Al Manar belongs to Hezbollah culturally and politically. As of 2022, its former CEO, Abdallah Kassir, is now a member of Hezbollah's governing council. According to Jorisch, writing in National Review in 2004, Al-Manar's programming adopts a strongly anti-Israel and anti-US point of view. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah often "calls for ' Death to America '" on

11000-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to

11110-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study

11220-685: The world. The 29-part series Ash-Shatat ( The Diaspora ), which was aired in 2003, was also based on The Protocols ; Commissioned by Al-Manar and produced in Syria , its screening on the channel led to the banning of al-Manar in France . The station archives the complete speeches of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and those of Iranian leader Ali Khamenei . It also promotes Hezbollah social services , for example showcasing public health initiatives. According to The SAGE Encyclopedia of Journalism , "Al-Manar does not claim neutrality but bills itself as partisan to

11330-500: Was a success, especially to the Lebanese diaspora, disseminated throughout the world. In 2003, as a result of an agreement between Saleh Kamel , founder of LMH company (Lebanese Media Holding, owner of 49% of LBC SAT and Pac's shares) and Saudi prince Al Waleed bin Talal , the latter, through Kingdom, replaced Kamel in LMH. By the end of 2008, it was decided to increase the capital of LMH considerably. Accordingly, Al-Waleed Bin Talal became

11440-405: Was estimated to hold 10-15 million viewers daily worldwide. The station's website team expanded in 2004, from four members to thirteen. During the 2006 Lebanon War , the channel was continuously struck by missiles during Israeli air raids. The Israeli Air Force attacks on 13 July 2006 led to injury of three employees. The attack on Al-Manar's facilities shortly followed another strike against

11550-476: Was hosting 100 new items a day, and reaching over 26,000 daily viewers, and as many as 55,000 according to its management. By the end of the 2000s, as well as TV broadcasts in Arabic, Hebrew, French and English, the station's website was available in Spanish as well. As a result of removal from some satellite services in the 2000s, it signed new deals with smaller satellite providers, e.g. in April 2008 with Indosat ,

11660-501: Was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Hasbaiyya , southern Lebanon, alongside two employees of allied website Al Mayadeen , while they slept in chalets used by journalists. The station's studios in Dahiyeh , southern Beirut, were hit in Israeli airstrikes in early October 2024. Al-Manar's programming is diverse, including music shows, children's programmes and news. The Washington Post , said in 2004 that "It heavily covers events involving

11770-457: Was no longer screening this type of content. Al-Manar was once described as one of the channels, among other complex reasons, of the spread of Shiism in Syria in the years before 2009. In a 2011 poll, 52% percent of Shia Lebanese identified Al Manar TV as their first choice for news, compared with only 4% of Sunnis and Druze and 1% of Christians. The station is also closely aligned to Iran. In 2015, Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Nasser Akhdar,

11880-490: Was one of the originators of the myth that Israelis stayed home from the World Trade Center on September 11 2001 due to foreknowledge of the attacks, publishing the story on 17 September. In the past, Al-Manar TV has aired material deemed antisemitic by Reporters Without Borders as well as Jewish groups, including content based on " The Protocols of the Elders of Zion ". For example, on 23 November 2004 it transmitted

11990-537: Was shut down for "violating an election law prohibiting propaganda " – a fate which al-Manar did not meet, although its programming was also considered propaganda by many analysts. ArabSat , a leading communications satellite operator in the Middle East , headquartered in Riyadh , Saudi Arabia , was at first wary about collaborating with al-Manar, because of the station's Shi'a agenda – the two companies agreed, however, that

12100-558: Was that this merger would improve and develop the group. These expectations did not materialize. At the end of the year 2002, LBC SAT and the London-based Al Hayat newspaper owned by Saudis, merged their news programs. LBC SAT daily news bulletin was called the "Al Hayat-LBC SAT news bulletin". The cooperation ended in 2010. According to the Media Ownership Monitor, an initiative by Reporters Without Borders and

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