Here are two authors worth recommending for Americans who would like to deepen their understanding of the Arab world through study of the Arabic language:
Available for free as a podcast (downloadable audio file): Understanding Arabic: an interview with Karin Ryding. An informative and entertaining listen for everyone, plus a few additional tips and motivation for the serious student.
Karin Ryding grew up in Detroit and is the author of A Reference Grammar of Modern Standard Arabic. From 1995 to 2008, she held the Sultan (of Oman) Qaboos bin Said Professorship of Arabic at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.
Prof. Ryding in turn recommends Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Westerners by Margaret Nydell. (Don't be deterred by the potentially patronizing-sounding title, say reviewers.)
Excerpt from Prof. Ryding's 2005 interview below the fold.
Ryding: I and my colleague Margaret Nydell are engaged in Arabic linguistics. Other colleagues are in Islamic studies or Arabic literature. So we're constantly involved in speaking at conferences, advising government agencies, and also publishing works on Arabic and the Arab world.
Interviewer: And Margaret wrote a wonderful book.
Ryding: Yes! I would like to advise our listeners, if they would like a book that addresses Arabic culture as a kind of guide for Westerners, that my friend Dr. Nydell …, my colleague at Georgetown, has produced a wonderful book called "Understanding Arabs: A Guide for Westerners." This book is now in its third edition and she's working on a fourth edition [that is, at the time of interview in 2005; the 4th edition is now available].
It has been a great success. It deals with many aspects of Arabic culture and society and because Dr. Nydell has spent so much time in the Arab world and is a fluent speaker of Arabic, she's able to balance the impression that many Americans and Westerners have of the Arab world with actual cultural and social situations. So that it counterbalances the kind of constant negative and violent images that come to the West via the media. And she presents a very coherent and clear picture of Arabic culture. And chapters, for instance, on courtesy and manners and Arabic language a little bit, and Islam that are directed toward the general reader.
Interviewer: Now all of us think that "jihad" means holy war.
Ryding: "Jihad" may mean holy war, but actually, technically it means "struggle." And you can struggle with your own soul, for example. So it really just means any kind of situation where you put forth a great deal of effort.
Interviewer: Why is it that it's so hard for us to pick up the paper, read the news, and really understand why they do certain things?
Ryding: I'll tell you, it's hard for me to pick up the paper and read the news (laughter) because I know it's only a tiny percent of what is going on in the Arab world at any time. We tend to — the media focus on what they think will get people's attention, and that tends to be negative and violent. And it is such a small percent of what goes on in the Arab world every day. Remember there are twenty Arab countries. Twenty countries where Arabic is spoken as the native language; where the majority of the population are Muslim. These countries stretch from Morocco all the way to Kuwait. They cover a great geographic area, they have diverse populations, some of them are very friendly and close with the United States. So it's unfair to look at Arabs as one thing, or with one attitude toward the United States.
Needless to say, for the past three months the Arab world has now been "rewriting the book" on the role its people will play in planetary affairs. More than ever, for all of us observers who are not native speakers of Arabic, learning something of the language would be a great help.
Update: I should also mention the book Kullu Tamam: An Introduction to Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, which simone daud recommended to me a couple weeks ago.