 In March of 1999, the -then Moroccan State Secretary for Family Affairs-
Saïd Saadi, introduced a bill known as the "National Action Plan for
Integrating Women in Development" to change some classic notions of gender
in Morocco. As in many Arab countries, this plan inspired heated
controversies between opponents of the plan deeming it a threat to our
Islamic values and proponents who saw in it an avenue of liberation. Beauty
and the beast or terrorism and freedom fighting seem to be again in the
heart of politics where people have to be either with 'us' or with 'the
others'. A Moroccan joke informs us that once upon a time a person was
caught and then asked: "are you with 'us' or with 'the others'?", and in the
hope of saving his skin he said that he was with the 'us' camp.
Unfortunately for him, he had made the wrong choice since he heard: "we are
'the others'." This joke is very enlightening in the sense that it informs
us about the triviality of binary oppositions and dichotomies and their
power-driven rationales in an age where structures seem to dissipate. I will
not ask the question "How is raising the legal age for marriage from 14 to
18 going to threaten the attachment of our women to Islam?" since raising
the age of marriage is completely allowed by Shariaa but I will seek
desperately to understand the rationale of the 'raising demand'. If we want
to raise the age of marriage on the premise that the girl is a kid, we
should expect to see all kids from 15 to 18 completely behaving as kids. A
quick descent in Ain Diab- our cherished walking brothel- or an in depth
interview with tourists from the Gulf can allow us to strip the 15-18 female
population from its innocence, and definitely poverty is to be blamed.
Reducing women to objects is not only the work of some 'backward'
theologians but is an emblem of the same people who took it upon their
shoulders to liberate Moroccan 'women' from the haunting specter of its
slavery. The proof resides in the linguistic framing of the plan-solution
that was highly debated. Integration can be translated either as 'indimaj'
or 'idmaj' in Arabic, but their Arabic version used the word 'idmaj' which
objectifies women leaving them only as 'objects' to be liberated rather than
subjects of liberation, an idea that the word 'indimaj' clearly conveys.
"According to recent statistics, of 100 seven year old girls, 51 will enroll
in school, and only 7 of these lucky 51 will finish high school. The rest
will end up as maids working 16 to 20 hours a day in very abusive homes, or
in sweatshops similar to Nazi concentration camps." I want all Moroccans to
be bright and intelligent, because it is the only way constructive criticism
will be their currency. I look at the recent 'reform' of the university
educational system, and I see more obstacles and barriers to learning. I
look at maids-and the majestic work by the deceased professor Mohammed
Salaheddine- and I see the bourgeoisie and the urban elite, often with
Andalusian heritage, engaging in some practices that would certainly endow
their country with some negative points from Amnesty International. I call
upon some popular Moroccan figures in the mountain, Bouya Omar and Lalla
Chafia, and I do not see any maids. I have spent one night the last summer
in Moulay Abdeslam ben Mchich, as a guest at Lalla Aicha's place, a
wonderful women from the churafa, and she sat with us for dinner laughing
and chatting in this place of Morocco that is not a 'modern' site by the
standards of those who learned form their masters to speak Arabic with some
French accent and to cling with their teeth to an exotic image of Morocco so
dear to Matisse and Delacroix.
I have always been amazed by the matriarchal social order in the South of
Morocco, and I am more surprised to learn that the same 'backward'
moudawwana rules my fellow Hassani countrymen, not impeding them from giving
the reign of power to Eve's progeny. Is law a vehicle of social change or a
tool of gaining legitimacy through the legislating ritual? Both parties,
traditionalists and modernists, used the women plight to advance their cause
and campaign for their slogans. I am at odds with the 'divide and rule'
strategy because I do not subscribe to a Hobbesian view of politics. Why was
Mahdi Elmandjra banned from giving a lecture on women in Morocco in FES in
1999? Why did the ministry of Islamic affairs, at that time, side against
another ministry in the same government?
I love women, and I am completely moved by the serious scholarship on gender
and Islam (Amina Wadud, Mona Abulfadl, Barbara Stowasser, Annemarie
Shimmel.) but what is fascinating about this school of thought is that it is
performing ijtihad once it has reached the position of doing so, and when
they are engaging in deconstructive endeavors, they never forget that the
Quranic text is a sacred one. Unfortunately, the traditionalists in Morocco
lack the sufficient understanding of western methodologies, and the
'modernists' lack the sufficient knowledge of their beautiful traditional
heritage. There is this whole project of Argana to empower women in Souss,
but it introduced for the first time the idea of the 'patent', whoch comes
certainly from the United Nations WIPO rather than from the legacy of the
Imazighen. Luckily enough, the institution of the monarchy in Morocco acts
as a bridge between yesterday and tomorrow, and intervenes as an arbitrator
between joumoud and jouhoud.
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