Every time I come across the words “a pioneering project”, particularly when the said project is to be paid for by a government “authority”, I think: “Oh no, what a colossal waste of time and money!” And generally I am right. Over the last few years we have seen rather a lot of money thrown at well-intentioned projects doomed to fail. But for once, I have to eat my words, because today I read about a pioneering project that strikes me as an excellent idea well executed.

It’s about reading. Have you been in an Arabic bookshop lately? Pretty depressing landscape, isn’t it? Whether it is books written in Arabic or books translated into Arabic, there’s just not much of it about, and what there is — with some highly notable exceptions — is generally published in very poor quality, be it the quality of the language or the quality of the print and paper.

Back in 2003 we all gasped in shame when a UN report pointed out that more books are translated into Spanish a year than have been translated into Arabic in a millennium. We gasped but we were not surprised, not really. Those with an elite view of the world shrugged their shoulders and said, “Well, that’s because we read in English”. Some took a predictable political stance: “Well yes, why should we translate works from the West when our own culture is so rich?” And my personal favorite was: “Who needs books when you have the Internet?” But all of it masked an important truth: We don’t read enough. Books have almost lost their rightful place as a critical building block of contemporary Arab culture.

Here is an illustrative anecdote. When I was a teenager I read One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I found it a rather gripping read, so gripping in fact that I stayed up until the early hours to continue reading. When my grandmother woke for her dawn prayers, she found me seated where she had left me, reading. She saw that the book was in English, a language she did not read. What are you reading, she asked me. I described the book to her. You mean it’s a story? You stayed up all night to read a story? And she looked at me as if I had committed the unthinkable. Then she shook her head at me and took the book away. Go pray she said, you should not waste your time with meaningless books.

Of course it is just a personal anecdote but it does illustrate a rather pervasive belief that literary fiction is no different to Hollywood blockbusters or Egyptian soap operas: Entertainment with little educational or formative value.

That is unless the book has a clear political message. If you consider modern Arab language novels that have gained notoriety and respect — the works of Abdulrahman Muneef for instance — you will note that much of their popularity comes from their ability to convey a political message. Put another way, it is the message which draws the reader to literature, fiction seen as a medium, a tool even, through which ideas which cannot be expressed openly are developed and conveyed.

That of course is one of the great powers of fiction, but the point I am making is that we often read for the wrong reasons or, quite simply, that if we think that novels are only there to provide light entertainment or to convey a political message, we are missing a large part of the joy of reading.

Ditto for nonfiction. Why should we read the great works of Western civilization? For the same reasons as we should read the great works of Islamic civilization: Because being intellectually curious is the first step to enlightenment. If you only read what you already know or what you know to be from you own point of view, how will you develop any critical thinking?

But most of us agree that knowledge is a good thing and lament the poor state of libraries and bookshops in the Arab world. Reading in English, as many of us do, is not enough. Something needs to be done to put more good quality translations on our bookshelves.

Well something is being done. The Abu Dhabi Culture and Heritage Authority has launched the Kalima project. They are to translate seminal works of literature, science, political thought, philosophy and history into Arabic. The titles of the first one hundred books to be translated have been released. I am ashamed to say I have read only a tiny percentage of the books on the list, but in a way that is their strength. They have shied away from blockbusters and popular works and instead come up with an eclectic list of books. And this is the only first hundred, more will follow.

Besides the issue is not one of quantity but quality. What we need is to revive Arabic as a language, both in terms of what is written in Arabic and what is translated into Arabic. This project is just one step in that direction, but it is a good one.