Sacred Language, Creolized Difference

This article reads Raphaël Confiant’s 2012 novel Rue des Syriens (Syrian Street) alongside Annette Damayanti Lienau’s book Sacred Language, Vernacular Difference: Global Arabic and Counter-Imperial Literatures to trace a convergence between creolization theories and Islamic discourses of ʿajamiyya otherness. Through the figure of Wadi Abdallah, this article argues that Confiant elaborates an ethics of ethnolinguistic parity resonant with Lienau’s account of ʿajam as a relational, counter-imperial category. By situating both the creole and the ʿajam within shared colonial language hierarchies, the article endorses a South–South comparative framework that rethinks Arabophone and Caribbean studies beyond national and Eurocentric paradigms.