The new century opened with an extraordinary event at an international level, influencing Western society and the Arab world. The incident marking this is commonly referred to as the September 11 attacks or 9/11, which had repercussions in the field of Arabic language learning and teaching: people were prompted to study the language to understand Arab culture and behavior better (cf. al-Ḥamd). The number of students of Arabic in American universities increased sharply, and as Nielsen (2009, p. 154) indicated, figures showed an increment of 92.5 per cent between 1998 and 2002. Student numbers almost doubled from 5505 to 10,584 (cf. Welles) and a similar growth occurred in Europe and in the Arab region. For instance, the Department of Arabic and Near Eastern Languages and the Center for Arabic and Middle East Studies (CAMES) of the American University in Beirut experienced a revival after the attacks (cf. Wilmsen, p. 145). The events of September 11 were not the only reason for the augmented enrollment rates of Arabic language courses at university level. Cultural and economic globalization, together with the political changes in the Middle Eastern region, were also decisive factors. The context once again consisted of the Arab world at the center of the international political scene, including the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, contested elections in Egypt, political assassinations in Lebanon and the beginning of the war in Iraq in 2003. Moreover, there was a growing phenomenon in Western societies: Arab migrants now represented a significant proportion of the population, bringing their culture with them and making Arabic a minority language spoken in many parts of the public sphere in Europe and the United States (cf. Nielsen 2009). At a time of significant turmoil, Marwan Kraidy stressed the developments of MSA as an oral communication language in international Arabic news media. The scholar affirmed that a media-compatible simplified version of MSA, which he named ‘white Arabic’, was becoming a lingua franca for regional public discourse. Furthermore, in 2010, UNESCO officially established World Arabic Language Day (al-yawm al-ʿālamī li-l-luġa al-ʿarabiyya), which is observed annually on 18 December as a celebration of multilingualism and cultural diversity.