Globalization's Effects on Font

I was scanning through the blog Brand New and I found a link to an article, mostly of pictures, in which the photographer compared English (or Western) logos with their Arabic counterpart. For instance this Dunkin' Donuts Logo. 

I'm taking ARB 102 and thought this was really interesting because the Arabic language has such a rich history of being written--painstakingly--in beautiful calligraphy, particularly in the Koran, but also in poetry, etc.  This tiger was drawn by Hassan Massoudy, and it says 'tiger' in Arabic. 

In my opinion, the westernization of Arabic script into fonts that mimic their Roman

 Alphabet counterpart underscores (a little satirically) the invasion of globalization and American culture into the Middle East. 

We took an entire class period to study

the history of Roman Alphabet fonts, and why they've transformed the way they have. This might be common knowledge, but Arabic is a phonetic language written right to left. Arabic is 

derived from Aramaic and shares common roots with Hebrew and Persian. 

Although I do not know the history of Arabic script and whether it has gone through artistic stages, the language is easily distinguishable by it's fluidity and has been a source of cultural pride for the Arab world for over a millennium. The text below is taken from the Koran.

Obviously, American or European companies would want the logo recognition across culture, and some would argue the ability to induce recognition across cultural lines is evidence of a growing global community. 

However, in my opinion it's also a little tragic because I expect this western font design will become associated with wealth and luxury, and will be incorporated more and more into Middle Eastern culture, while they already have their own rich (and beautiful) font history that will probably be associated with the past and the lower class. 

Hopefully, there will be some renaissance of classic Arabic script somewhere down the line. 

This pink logo is for a Arabic Ad Magazine. 

Finally, as a side note, it's interesting that companies that want to be associated with a clean, elegant, and traditional image prefer to simple write the name of their company out in clear, classic Arabic script, rather than match the English version perfectly. For example this Burberry Logo is simple and doesn't even try to mock the serif font that store like Banana Republic did.