The Female Quran Experts Fighting Radical Islam in Morocco

 

 “I’ll tell you frankly, the women scholars here are even more important than men,” said El-Azaar, a thin grandfatherly man in a cream-colored Moroccan tunic and a burgundy fez. “Women, just by virtue of their role in society, have so much contact with the people—children, young people, other women, even men. ... They are the primary educators of their children. So it is natural for them to provide advice,” he said. “We give them an education so they can offer it in a scholarly way.”

The morchidat program leverages a woman’s familial and social influence to combat radical Islam at the level of the sidewalks—and at individual mosques. “We’ve found over the years that if we have women organize something at the mosque, 450 people show up. If the men are put in charge, they’re lucky if 25 guys make the effort,” El-Azaar said.

Zineb Hidra, a morchidat whose cherubic face and tortoiseshell glasses make her look much younger than her 49 years, was in the first graduating class of women 11 years ago. Since then, she has been working as a full-time employee of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in the inner-city neighborhoods of Casablanca. “It was hard at first,” Hidra told me. “People didn’t trust us. … They’d never seen anything like that before.”

One afternoon in 2006, Hidra was rushing down a middle-school corridor when six students and their teacher barreled out of a classroom into the hall. The teenagers wore robes and billowy izaar pants that hit above their ankles—the supposed style of the Prophet Mohammed—and they stood in a circle berating their teacher. His history lesson, they said, was blasphemous, contradicting the words of the Prophet. Hidra felt her heart begin to race. “These were exactly the signs we were told to look for—how they dressed, how they acted at school, and how they talked about religion,” she told me later. “It was clear they had picked up ideas about Islam that were taking them down the wrong path.” Hidra asked them if she could help. It was, she recalled with a smile, her very first radicalization case.

As Hidra continued her work in Casablanca, she faced resistance. When she went to call on mothers in their homes, knocks went unanswered, even though “we knew people were inside,” she said. Local women avoided her at the mosque. Even school administrators wondered what she was doing in the hallways, concerned that if she found radicalized youth among the student body then the schools themselves would suffer.

Hidra said it required quiet patience to earn their trust. “As they saw more and more of us, we became easier to accept,” she explained, and people in the community began asking her for advice or suggesting she go talk to this young man or that family where a problem with radical ideas might be developing. “It probably helped that we didn’t argue with [the young people we talked to],” she said. “We just answered their questions. We helped their families. We sat with the mothers and taught them how to help their children.”

Many of the young Moroccan men and women who turn to groups like ISIS feel isolated, come from violent homes, or have been involved with petty crime. Radical Islamists offer them community and tell them that a full-throated embrace of their religion—an embrace that includes violence against nonbelievers—is the solution. Morchidats like Hidra suggest the solution is less doctrinaire. They walk young people through Quranic passages that emphasize tolerance, and provide gentler interpretations of passages that could be taken to promote violence. The idea is that young people eventually learn that their faith is not at odds with their families or society more broadly, and that this provides a lasting bulwark against terrorist recruiters.

L’Institute Mohamed VI sits in a neighborhood that feels more southern California chic than North African Maghreb. The school is surrounded by white stucco houses and colorful explosions of bougainvillea. The campus itself is hidden behind a succession of wrought iron gates; security is tight, as many Islamists don’t approve of their moderate teachings.

Admission is highly competitive. Students apply from all over the Arab world and Africa; only about 10 percent are accepted. To be eligible, students must have already completed an undergraduate degree and be in good standing in their communities—without, for example, a criminal record. Successful women candidates must have committed half the Quran to memory before they arrive; men, many of whom will go on to become imams, must have it memorized in its entirety. This is an important requirement because it typically takes years to memorize the Quran, and if incoming students are already deeply familiar with the texts, the center can focus on interpretation instead of memorization.

Once enrolled, students pay nothing. The Moroccan government picks up the tab for tuition, room and board, books, medical care, flights home, and small monthly stipends.

Of the roughly 250 new students accepted each year, nearly half are women. There is no strict segregation of the sexes, but there is separation. Men and women attend classes together in the same modern lecture hall, and women fill the last 10 rows in the back. Even from their separate perch in the hall, they offer a visual representation of progress. (Often, in devout Muslim-majority countries, men and women are educated in separate classrooms.)

The program has two tracks: One for Moroccan students and another for foreigners. Moroccan candidates study at the center for 12 months, 30 hours a week. The foreign students are placed in a two- or three-year program, depending on their Arabic language proficiency, and then grouped by country so they can receive specific instruction in their nation’s laws, rules of civil society, geography, and history. The goal is to create not just an Islamic scholar, but a respected intellectual who can answer a variety of questions, El-Azaar explained.

Morocco may be perfectly positioned to offer this kind of instruction. Its monarch, King Mohammed VI, is believed to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. Constitutionally, he is considered the Amir al-Mu’minin, or Commander of the Faithful, which gives him both religious and political authority over the Moroccan people, 98 percent of whom are Sunni Muslim.

“In recent years, we’ve relied on the military to combat terrorism on its own,” El-Azaar told me, referring to the nation’s beefed up intelligence and security forces. “Now we’re fighting this on two fronts—the military and the ideological,” he said. “We’ve found over the past ten years that women are uniquely placed to spread moderate messages in a way that imams and fathers can’t, and we’re focusing on that.”

How effective the morchidat program is at preventing young people from joining groups like ISIS is difficult to quantify. While the women undoubtedly have helped young people with questions about their religion, it’s impossible to know how many of those youth might have become radicalized enough to join a terrorist group or launch an attack if not for the presence of the morchidat. The program is also only 11 years old—not long enough to meaningfully measure the success of such an initiative.

For the women in the program, however, there’s a side benefit that they find indisputable: It has elevated their status as women in society. Faitha El-Phammouti, 25, is in the class of scholars graduating later this year. She says the whole experience hasn’t just changed the way other people look at her, it has changed the way she sees herself. “I used to think men were superior to women,” she told me. “Now I don’t just think we’re equals, I think women come out ahead. We aren’t forced to work; we have a lot of autonomy and as morchidats we can have a profound impact on society, even more than men can, because we can talk to the young people and explain to them about the true Islam and they are willing to learn from us.”

El-Phammouti seemed unbothered by the possibility that it does not really change the role of women in society, because women at the institute are not permitted to follow a more rigorous course of study and become imams—that job is still reserved for men. Of the program, she said simply, “It’s very exciting.”

And what of those six radicalized students Hidra met years ago in a middle school corridor? She ended up meeting with them three times a week for six months. “Our religion tells us to be patient and insistent and that’s what I was,” she told me. “They asked questions and I gave them answers, guiding them to the right path. It took a long time, but slowly they started changing their clothes and started looking like the rest of the kids. They began engaging in school and stopped challenging their parents. Eventually they got to the right place.”

Today, all six of the young men have jobs. Three have graduated from college. One happily announced to Hidra that he’d just passed the officer’s exam for the police. He didn’t want to talk about what had happened in middle school—he had put those kinds of “foolish ideas,” he said, behind him.

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IN MOSQUES ACROSS MOROCCO, WOMEN ARE LEADING A QUIET REVOLUTION

Hidra works at the Aïn Chock mosque, located in a busy, working-class neighbourhood of Casablanca, Morocco’s largest city.

Her domain is the women’s section: a long rectangle of a room above the men-only main sanctuary, where plastic chairs line the edges of the worn carpets, and a wall of shuttered windows face the qibla, a compass that points in the direction of Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.

Hidra has a doctorate in Islamic studies, and though the Quran prohibits women from leading prayers, her responsibilities are otherwise similar to those of an imam: she teaches lessons, offers counsel, consoles the sick and bereaved.

As a mourchida, her job is to promote the education and protect the rights of her female congregants, primarily by teaching them what scripture does and does not say about women’s status, but also by educating them about health care and legal rights, among other subjects.

'You really live [the women's] problems,' adds 33-year-old Fatima Ait Said, who works at the Makka mosque in Rabat. 'It’s not a simple job that you do just to earn money. It has to be a vocation.'

Then in 2005, the first training program for mourchidat (for women) and mourchidin (for men) launched in the cosmopolitan capital, Rabat. The 50 women and 100 men admitted were scrupulously selected—requirements included a bachelor’s degree and memorisation of half (for women) or all (for men) of the Quran, Islam’s central religious text.

Once enrolled, they studied theology and law, but also philosophy, history, comparative religions and psychology. The government guaranteed that all graduates would be placed in jobs at mosques around the country.

Since its launch, the number of women admitted annually to the program has doubled, and the school has been so successful that it moved from headquarters in a medieval madrassa on the edge of Rabat’s old city to a gleaming new campus by the university. The program, which now draws students from across Africa and parts of Europe, has proven wildly popular; nearly 2000 people — half of them women — applied this year for the 250 slots.

'Every year, two or three men drop out,' says Abdelsalam Lazar, the director of the Mohammed VI Institute for the Training of Imams and Preachers. 'But never any women. They’re more serious.'


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The Female Quran Experts Fighting Radical Islam in Morocco

It’s one of many countries around the world experimenting with various “countering violent extremism” (CVE) or de-radicalization programs. As Maddy Crowell noted in The Atlantic, “Germany, Britain, and Belgium have developed programs that focus on further integrating radicals into their community. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, focuses on finding jobs and wives for recruited jihadists.” But programs that reach people once they’ve already been radicalized might come too late. “The most effective kind of rehabilitation and reintegration is the rehab and reintegration that doesn’t have to happen, because the person was afforded an off-ramp before they got to the point of no return,” Nathan Sales, the coordinator for counterterrorism at the U.S. State Department, told me. “What does that look like? It looks like early intervention and not necessarily and maybe not ideally by government officials.”

Early intervention spearheaded by local community leaders and groups, as opposed to government officials, was a focus of America’s CVE approach under the Obama administration. “Community leaders, neighborhood leaders have a comparative advantage in a number of different dimensions,” Sales said. “They will know more than government officials will about problems that might be cropping up and they also have a way to intervene in a way government people wouldn’t be able to … to steer somebody who is at risk of taking a wrong path and bringing them back into the fold.” President Trump recently stripped funding from several groups aiming to counter extremism through this kind of outreach. Meanwhile, Morocco has continued to invest in it. Through various experimental initiatives, the country is attempting to show how a certain kind of religious education can prevent extremism.

One particular initiative comes with a twist: It places a special emphasis on women. Eleven years ago, Rabat saw the opening of an elite new school called L’Institut Mohammed VI Pour La Formation Des Imams, Morchidines, et Morchidates. It turns young women into religious scholars and then sends them out into pockets of the country where radical Islamists are known to recruit disenfranchised youth—to provide spiritual guidance that contradicts the messages they might receive from violent extremists. Making school visits and home visits, each woman—called a morchidat, or spiritual guide—talks to young Muslims and contests interpretations of the Quran that terrorist groups use for recruitment. For women to be employed by the government to do this kind of work within Morocco’s Islamic communities, where spiritual leadership is generally the domain of men, is unusual. Men are also trained at the Rabat school, but it’s the hundreds of female graduates who are having the most impact, according to the program director, Abdeslam El-Azaar.

“I’ll tell you frankly, the women scholars here are even more important than men,” said El-Azaar, a thin grandfatherly man in a cream-colored Moroccan tunic and a burgundy fez. “Women, just by virtue of their role in society, have so much contact with the people—children, young people, other women, even men. ... They are the primary educators of their children. So it is natural for them to provide advice,” he said. “We give them an education so they can offer it in a scholarly way.”

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Morocco: the hellish world of sex tourists

How Morocco's Islamic Women Preachers Are Leading A Social Revolution

Girls are "like a timebomb ready to explode and ruin the family's reputation," the Moroccan jewelry trader tells his customer as she admires a display of necklaces.

The solution is to "get rid of this bomb" by marrying your daughters off as soon as you can, he explains.

His customer, Hannane, replies firmly that Islam does not advocate child marriage and that women can also play an important role outside the home.

Hannane is one of a new generation of female religious leaders, known as morchidat -- part of a quiet social revolution in the North African country.

Their groundbreaking work is the subject of a British film, "Casablanca Calling," which will be showcased on Tuesday night at an international conference on child marriage in Morocco's famous port city.

The morchidat were introduced in 2006, partly in an attempt to counter Islamist radicalism following suicide bombings that rocked Casablanca in 2003.

The hope is that these female spiritual leaders can both encourage a more tolerant Islam and improve the position of girls and women in Moroccan society.

"The morchidat are a rare experiment in the Muslim world," the film's Moroccan associate producer Merieme Addou told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"It's the first time in a Muslim country that a religious role has been given to a woman."

The morchidat give guidance to women and young people in mosques, schools, orphanages, hospitals, prisons and rural villages.

But Addou says they have their work cut out as they try to overcome the many problems facing Moroccan society.

"So many cultural traditions -- from early marriage to women's education -- have become confused with religious teaching and it is challenge to separate them in people's minds," she adds.

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Sayyida al-Hurra, the Beloved, Avenging Islamic Pirate Queen

 

Sayyida (as she's commonly called) was also known as Hakima Tatwan, which means governor of Tétouan, the northern Moroccan city that she ruled. She was born sometime around 1485 to a prominent Muslim family in the kingdom of Granada, which is part of present-day Spain. Her early childhood was happy, but in 1492—the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue—Sayyida's life changed dramatically. Catholic Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella conquered the Muslim Granada at the close of the Reconquista, and Henry Kamen estimates in Spain 1469-1714: A Society of Conflict that Spanish armies murdered and enslaved up to 100,000 Muslims and forced another 20,000 to flee.

Among the refugees were Sayyida and her family. Sayyida never forgot the indignity of being forced to flee her home, and she vowed to avenge herself on her Christian enemy.

Sayyida decided to play the long game—she didn't enter piracy until 23 years after her family's exile. In the meantime, she and her family settled in Chaouen, a city in present-day Morocco. She she married a man named Abu al-Hasan al-Mandri, a man many years her senior to whom she'd been promised to as a child. Al-Mandri was the head of another prominent refugee family from Andalusia who lived in and governed nearby Tétouan. (Some sources claim she married the son, al-Mandri II, and not the father, but it seems from the place she obtained in Tétouan's government that she most likely married the elder al-Mandri.)

Despite the age difference, there seemed to be genuine affection, or at least respect, between the pair. Sayyida was her husband's "partner in the diplomatic game," according to Fatima Mernissi in The Forgotten Queens of Islam. They ruled the city side-by-side, united in their hatred of the Spanish and the Portuguese. Together the al-Mandris restored Tétouan, which had been destroyed in 1490. The high walls that fortified the city were re-erected first, and then the Grand Mosque was built. Narrow, mazelike streets warded off invaders, where jewelers and and leather workers hawked their wares in front of low, white houses. The Old City of Tetouan is now a UNESCO World Heritage site, in part due to the restoration work done by Sayyida and her husband.

full article:

Casablanca Calling: An exploration of women and Islam in Morocco through the story of three female Morchidat or spiritual guides.

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How NGOs helped change Moroccan law on rapists marrying their victims

In parts of Morocco, particularly in rural areas, a girl or unmarried woman who is not a virgin, even if she lost her virginity through rape, is seen as bringing dishonour to her family. Marrying the rapist is thought to alleviate this stigma.

 Another horrific consequence of this law was that if a man wanted to wed a woman who was unwilling to be his bride, by raping her he could, in effect, force her into marriage. It took the tragic case of Amina Filali, 16, who was forced into marriage after she was raped, and who killed herself seven months into wedlock, to be the catalyst for action. Her plight caused such outrage across the country it triggered protests in several cities. Last August, several women's rights groups joined forces to tackle child marriage. We organised a so-called peace and white march – "peace" because our protest was non-violent; "white" to represent the colour of doctors' coats.

Our aim was to show how rape and forced and child marriage had a negative impact on women's health. A pair of doctors who work in our clinics joined us on the rally. We waved placards, but fell silent as we marched on the parliament building in the Moroccan capital, Rabat. Many women suffer in silence and we wanted our demonstration to emphasise that. The peace and white march was followed with a pink march – to symbolise women's rights. Each demonstration increased public interest. Victory came last month, in January, when we discovered that the law had been changed, though the clause relating to child marriage has been postponed for further consultation. Source

Morocco repeals 'rape marriage law'

Morocco's parliament has unanimously amended an article in the penal code that allowed a rapist to escape prosecution if he married his underage victim.

The amendment to Article 475 of the penal code, first proposed by the country's Islamist-led government a year ago, was amended by lawmakers on Wednesday, parliamentary sources said.

The article in question made international headlines in March 2012 when Amina al-Filali, 16, was forced to marry a man who had allegedly raped her.

After seven months of marriage to the 23-year-old man, she committed suicide in 2012. Her parents and a judge had forced the marriage to protect the family honour.

The incident sparked calls for the law to be changed. The traditional practise of forced marriage can be found across the Middle East and in countries such as India and Afghanistan, where the loss of a woman's virginity out of wedlock puts a stain on a family's honour.

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Mother of Morocco suicide victim speaks out

Morocco: Escape for 16-year-old Amina Filali from her marriage came in the form of a pill of rat poison she bought in the market for 60 cents.
Pressured by a conservative rural Moroccan society, a judge and her own mother to marry the man she said had raped her at 15 and then abused her for the rest of her marriage, she could only see one way out: Suicide.

"I had to marry her to him, because I couldn't allow my daughter to have no future and stay unmarried," said her mother Zohra in an interview with The Associated Press in their tiny village in northern Morocco, a week after her daughter killed herself.
The Justice Ministry suggests Filali was consenting and not a victim. But her death has called attention to - and prompted outrage over - an article in the penal code absolving the perpetrator of the rape of a minor if he marries the victim.

Activists and social workers are calling for its repeal. On Saturday in front of parliament in the capital Rabat, some 300 people waved signs and chanted slogans calling for a revised penal code that specifically outlaws violence against women.
Zohra Filali said she found her daughter being attacked in the forest after hearing she had been waylaid by a man with a knife. She immediately took her daughter to the family home of the man, who was 10 years older, and demanded they marry.
In many conservative societies, a family's honour rests with the women and intercourse outside of wedlock brings a deep shame that can only be remedied with the girl's marriage.

The practice dates back to the Old Testament and takes place in conservative or tribal parts in the Muslim world, such as Afghanistan.
In the story told by Amina's parents, it becomes clear that the mother was the primary force behind her daughter's marriage, which was then sanctioned by a judge and the law which permits underage marriages to "resolve" rape cases.
Morocco updated its family code in 2004 in a landmark improvement of the situation of women, but activists say there's still room for improvement. In cases of rape, the burden of proof is often on the victim and if she can't prove she was attacked, a woman risks being prosecuted for debauchery.
The French version of Article 475 of the 1962 penal code says that the "kidnapper" - a term that can refer to an attacker or rapist - of a minor cannot be prosecuted if he marries his victim.

The Arabic version refers to the one who "kidnaps or deceives" a minor. Whatever the wording, the article is cited in justifying the minor's marriage.
An online petition calling for a change to the law has garnered about 3,500 signatures and a protest was held on Thursday in front of the courthouse of the nearby town of Larache.

After at first remaining silent about the case, the Justice Ministry issued a statement Friday saying the judge acted correctly and followed the law in accordance with the wishes of both families and the victim.
"The victim had relations with the man who (later) married her during which she lost her virginity with her consent," said the statement, which did not address concerns about the nature of consent between a 15 and a 25-year-old.
The parents, poor farmers in Morocco's fertile coastal region, maintain Amina was raped. The Associated Press generally doesn't generally identify alleged victims of sexual abuse, but in this case her family agreed that she could be identified.
Amina's husband and his family could not be reached for comment on what happened to her. When the family of the man at first refused to marry Amina, her mother took her to a doctor to get a medical certificate saying she had been raped.
The doctor informed Zohra that her daughter had lost her virginity earlier and did not confirm that a rape had occurred. "She finally told me that he had first raped her more than a month ago," the mother said.

Regardless of how it happened, said her mother, a small woman in a light blue headscarf who kept her eyes downcast until the subject of the family honour came up, her daughter had to marry or her life would be over.
"We would be the laughingstock of our neighbors," she said, with a rising voice, her eyes flashing fiercely. The societal pressures on young women are fierce in rural Morocco, where an estimated two-thirds of women are illiterate.
In this village alone, four young women have attempted suicide, according to the local chapter of the Moroccan Association for Human Rights. Two were successful, including an unwed pregnant teenager who also took rat poison.
"Women are the first victims of people's social and economic situation," said Fathiya Al Yaakoubi of the AMDH, as the human rights group is known by its French initials.

"Poverty pushes families to marry off their underage girls." She also holds the state responsible for allowing these underage marriages to take place, despite an official minimum age of 18.
Amina's father, Lahcen, was finally informed of the attack on his daughter and he went first to the nearby town of Larache and then north to the port city of Tangiers seeking justice.
There he said the prosecutor pushed them to marry his daughter to the man, whose family had finally agreed to the match, in the face of his imminent prosecution.
"I was against the marriage from the beginning, but when the state wanted to marry them, what could I do against the will of the state," said Lahcen, who has six other children ages ranging from 5 to 23.

He said at first he refused to do the paperwork, but said his wife pushed for it to be completed. "The law allowing judges the authority to allow marriage in the case of rape has to be canceled," said Al Yaakoubi, the activist.
"Marriage is not the solution for a rape, which is a crime that should be punished."
According to the mother, the forced marriage did not go well, as neither the groom nor his family, also quite poor, welcomed the new addition. Amina lived with her unemployed husband in a small shack next to his family's home and was reportedly beaten regularly by him and his mother.
"She came home a lot because she was scared and she said they hit her," said Zohra Filali about her daughter, her composure cracking as she told the story. "I didn't tell my husband because I was hoping it would improve."
It didn't and on March 10, three and a half months after a judge authorised the marriage, Amina poisoned herself. She lingered in the hospital for several hours and the last time her mother saw her was through a glass window when she said she was feeling better and asked for a yogurt.

Three hours later she was dead. Amina is buried on a simple hilltop cemetery of white tombstones. Her grave is marked by a cairn of stones covered with palm fronds with a view of the beautiful rolling hills and nearby forest.
On Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, her family recited the opening verse of the Quran over her grave, breaking into tears. "I thought she would have no future, no marriage, but now it would have been better if she had just stayed home," her mother said.
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Moroccan girl commits suicide after being forced to marry her rapist

A 16-year-old Moroccan girl has committed suicide after a judge ordered her to marry her rapist, according to Moroccan media reports.

Last year Amina al-Filali’s parents filed charges against their daughter’s rapist, a man 10 years older than her but it was only recently that a judge in the northern city of Tangier decided that instead of punishing him, the two must be married.

The court’s decision to forcibly marry Amina to her rapist was supposed to “resolve” the damage of sexual violation against her, but it led to more suffering in the unwelcoming home of her rapist/husband’s family.

“After I filed a complaint against him, he said he will marry her. And when he married her and took her to his family's home he mistreated her, beating her and leaving her starve with no food,” Zahra Mallim, Amina’s mother told the Morocco's 2M TV.

Traumatized by the painful experience of rape, Amina decided to end her life by consuming rat poison in the house of her husband’s family, according to the Moroccan daily al-Massae.

According to the newspaper, this type of forced marriage is rooted in local rural traditions to safeguard the honor of girls who are raped.

Moroccan penal code exempts a rapist from punishment if he agrees to marry his victim.

“When the judge said they will marry, I did not agree, but I could not challenge the law. I wanted that man (the rapist) to go to prison,” Lahsan al-Filali, Amina’s father, told the 2M.

“At first I did not agree to this marriage, but when the court of family affairs called me and pressured me, I agreed,” he added.

Feminists have long demanded an amendment to this article.

Hafida Elbaz, director of the Women’s Solidarity Association told a-Massae that the article provides an opportunity for a perpetrator to avoid punishment.

The story has widely spread on Twitter and on Facebook with many in Morocco demanding action against the judge who issued the ruling.
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Hijab revival: fashion, religion or strategy?

Moroccan schoolteacher Rhimou Bachtioui has been engaged three times. Each time, she called off the marriage because her fiancés wrongly believed she was "subservient, docile and very conservative".

Like a growing number of young women across the Maghreb, she wears a veil.

"The hijab is merely a matter of dress that concerns no one other than the woman who wears it. Although the veil indicates that a woman is religious and adheres to the values of Islam, this is no reason to overlook her personality," she tells Magharebia.

Thami Bahmad, a sociologist, says that the hijab ceased to be a matter of religion during the 1990's. "Some conservative parents used to make their daughters wear the veil, but things have begun to change," he says.

"Well-educated young girls are now deciding for themselves whether or not they will wear the hijab. It remains a personal liberty that does not reflect women's personalities. It's not just a conviction, but also a matter of image," Bahmad adds.

Indeed, the only study on the subject found that young women who wear the hijab have only "patchy and distorted knowledge of the Qur'anic verses and hadiths that concern the veil".

According to the 2007 study by the Association of Moroccan Women (ADFM), the hijab was seen as a symbol of religion and militancy in the 1980s but from 2000 onwards it became a secular matter and eventually just one style of dress among many. The ADFM also noted that most women choose their clothes, apart from headscarves, according to popular fashion.

As with Morocco, the appearance of the hijab in Algeria was linked to the beginnings of the Islamist movement. Decades after the dissolution of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), which advocated wearing of the veil, the style remains.

Yet while some complain that the haiek (Algerian traditional dress) has given way to the Islamic headscarf, the veil is increasingly popular with young Algerians to the point that they consider it a new style trend.

"Algerian women have always been accustomed to wearing a head covering, be it the Algerian haiek mrama or the colourful Kabylie scarf, but then there is an imported type of headscarf that does not have its roots in Algeria," said senior citizen Youssef Ferradji.

At an Islamic clothing shop in one of the busiest streets of Algiers, women are delighted by pink scarves with sequins and rhinestones designed to attract Algerian fashionistas.

There is now a "typical Algerian hijab" which has no basis in religion.

"Most of our girls wear headscarves with tight pants. It is as if they're caught between the duty of repentance before God and the desire to please," notes Mrs. Boudia. She chooses to complement her headscarf with a long black tunic.

The hijab revival in Algeria has prompted a nickname: the "Kinder Surprise" veil.

"Like the famous chocolate egg, the Algerian hijab hides surprises. It's also called 'El M'hadjeb', the name of the Algerian dish," jokes Merki Mohammed.

"It is very difficult being a woman in Algeria. One can understand that they want to protect themselves from violence and attention that a different kind of look might attract in public," he adds.

Meriem, his fiancée, tells Magharebia that the hijab represents "the hypocrisy of Algerian society".

"Many of my girlfriends decided to wear the scarf in the hopes of getting married," she explains with a smile.

Tunisia faces a similar phenomenon. Nearly 20 years after former President Habib Bourguiba issued a decree banning headscarves or hijabs in public institutions, veils are visible everywhere, from universities and government offices, to the beaches and hotels, to stores and coffee shops on public streets.

Many link the veil's return to the growing phenomenon of spinsterhood.

"Wearing the veil by some girls to hunt down husbands has become a rampant phenomenon on Tunisia," Saeeda Sweileh told Magharebia. "My chances to attract a would-be husband have become greater since I started wearing the veil," the 31-one year old unmarried woman says.

"Most of the girls who access the marriage chat websites on the internet wear the veil and practice all religious duties in order to attract the other party," Saeeda adds. "Other girls take the veil as a tool to hide their past and to win the trust of men. In this way, they become less monitored by their families."

Eman al-Zaidi says that she wears a scarf out of conviction, rather than out of a desire to get a husband. But she is well aware that other girls have different reasons for putting on the hijab. "Unfortunately, we can't deny it. This bad mentality that exploits religion for worldly ends does exist."

The phenomenon of wearing the veil to win a husband has indeed increased in recent years, Monia Bou Abd tells Magharebia. "I reject this exploitation of religion and veil for personal ends," adds Monia, who does not wear a veil. She believes that "good conduct and respectable clothing" are enough, without having to wear the veil to prove virtue.

"The most important thing is for the girl to behave without false pretences that would fall off with the first clash with her life partner," Monia adds.

Nadia al-Uamari agrees that "some girls in Tunisia spare no effort in order to reach their ends". She explains that those who are looking for work often wear short clothes.

"However, when it comes for looking for a husband, they dress differently," she says.

For her part, Farida Aiari says, "This phenomenon does exist in Tunisia, but I don't recommend these twisted ways for looking for husbands." She performs all of her religious duties, she adds, without having to wear the veil.

Men, meanwhile, are becoming aware of the practice.

"These tricks no longer deceive young people in Tunisia. They understand well that good manners and exemplary behaviour can't be proven just by the veil or long clothes, given that the matrimonial relation is much deeper," Wahab al-Jamani tells Magharebia.

"We shouldn't get involved with a life partner merely based on appearances that are in most cases deceiving," he adds.

Anis Slim, agrees, saying that he did not care whether his future wife is veiled or unveiled.

"What's important is good manners, good conduct and education and being a good mother."

With so many different opinions on the cause of the headscarf's renewed popularity in the Maghreb region, Magharebia asked an imam for his opinion about using the hijab to attract a husband.

"If men or women resort to appearances for the purpose of deception and trickery, and if these appearances are contrary to what is truly inside them, then this is hypocrisy itself," the imam said.

He cited a hadith: "God doesn't look at your images or bodies; rather, He looks at your hearts."

source

Dictatorship, not Freedom for Morocco

From The Guardian:

About six or seven years ago, I began returning regularly to my birthplace of Morocco, a country I left as a child in 1989. The Morocco of my childhood was an isolated, quasi-feudal dictatorship in which the regime of the late King Hassan II brooked no dissent. During the 1990s, in the face of global changes after the fall of the Soviet Union and a greater concern for human rights among the governments and publics of Morocco's western allies, King Hassan began a slow transformation of his ossified regime. By the time he died in 1999, he handed over to his son a political system that had the long-shunned opposition in government, a much-improved human rights record, clearer economic governance and one of the freest press in the Arab world.

I had missed out on all these developments, and was astounded at the difference a little over a decade had made. For a while, like many Moroccans, I was optimistic that the new king, Muhammad VI, would continue his father's reform process. The early years of his reign seemed to bear this out, with landmark reforms of human rights, the region's only truth and reconciliation commission over past human rights abuses, and a focus on addressing poverty that earned him the monicker "king of the poor".

However, it was Le Journal Hebdomadaire, an irreverent and audacious magazine, that seemed to me – perhaps because I was editing a like-minded publication in Egypt at the time – to most embody the changes that had taken place. Le Journal gave me hope that the new Morocco was real, and that the new king would allow a gradual and peaceful transition to democracy.

Last Thursday, I learned from the man behind Le Journal, Abou Bakr Jamai, that bailiffs had come to the magazine's office, just as its journalists were putting the final touches on a new issue, to seize its assets. A series of crippling libel fines and debts to the tax authorities had driven it to bankruptcy. "We can already officially announce the death of Le Journal," Jamai told me. I was shaken to learn that no more issues of Le Journal would appear, although not surprised. It had become clear for several years that the palace – whether the king himself or his coterie of advisers – had given up on trying to co-opt or intimidate the magazine, as it has done with many other publications, and would sooner or later succeed in pushing it into oblivion by economic means.

Le Journal first hit the newsstands in 1997 and very quickly became one of the most daring publications in the country. It issued an early attack onDriss Basri, the all-powerful interior minister who for 20 years controlled Morocco through a web of informants and ruthless security forces. Attacks on Basri became commonplace after the new king dismissed him, but at the time it was considered suicidal. This was one of many taboos that Le Journal blasted away.

It uncovered and publicised human rights abuses, taking the regime to task on its claims that it had broken with its bad old ways. It provided a detailed and continuous critique of the "hostile takeover" the new king's advisers were making on the private sector, bullying their way into unnatural monopolies and dampening entrepreneurial spirit. On theWestern Sahara conflict, Le Journal pleaded that the best argument for Morocco would be respect for Saharawi human rights and a genuine democracy. It was socially progressive, but politically smart and conscious of Morocco's conservative traditions, avoiding the facile Islamist-bashing of the Francophone elite.

Most of all, Le Journal tried to keep officials honest about the democratisation that they promised in speeches. It relentlessly campaigned for constitutional reform that would shift political power from the palace to parliament. For many of my generation of Moroccans, it provided a political education and an inspiring example of outspokenness.

The government could not simply close down a magazine, particularly one renowned at home and abroad as one of the symbols of a "Morocco on the move". Instead, it chose to suffocate it. Over the past decade, Le Journal has had numerous issues banned and faced a campaign to label its journalists as irresponsible "nihilists". Security chiefs have manipulated Islamists against it, and it has suffered countless other indignities. Most important, though, were two weapons. First, an advertising boycott that deprived the once-profitable magazine of revenues, not only from state-controlled firms and those owned by the royal family, but also from private advertisers who were warned the palace would look adversely at any support for Le Journal, even though it was one of the best-selling publications in its category.

The second weapon was the use of Morocco's crooked judicial system to obtain the largest libel fines ever imposed in the history of the Moroccan press. By 2007, after a long confrontation with the judicial system and the regime, Jamai decided on self-imposed exile to protect Le Journal, which continued without him for two years. While this bought some temporary breathing room, his return as an editorialist in 2009 appears to have sealed the magazine's fate: by September last year, a final verdict from the highest court in the land found against Le Journal. It has been living on borrowed time ever since.

The most worrying thing is that its closure comes amid other signs of a renewed authoritarianism. The methods originally used against Le Journal have become a commonplace method of disciplining the press. Other critics of the monarchy, for instance in Morocco's vibrant blogosphere, are now dealt with severely. Political reform has hit a standstill, and the regime's human rights record has regressed.

Le Journal's sad demise is now only one of many signals that something is rotten in the kingdom of Morocco.

Moroccans ready to welcome Ramadan

Like billions of Muslims around the globe, Ahmed Al-Mahdi, a 22-year-old student, is getting ready to welcome the holy fasting month of Ramadan.

He has bought a new copy of the Noble Qur’an and a new set of cloths to wear for the tarawih prayers.

“I want to turn a new page in my relations with Allah,” he told IslamOnline.net.

“I’m planning to fill this new page with fasting, prayers, Qur’an recitation and all sorts of good deeds.”

In Ramadan, adult Muslims, save the sick and those traveling, abstain from food, drink, smoking and sex between dawn and sunset.

Muslims dedicate their time during the holy fasting month to become closer to Allah through prayer, self-restraint and good deeds.

It is customary for Muslims to spend part of the days during Ramadan studying the Noble Qur'an.

Many men perform i`tikaf (spiritual retreat), spending the last 10 days of the month exclusively in the mosque.

“We all are readying to welcome Ramadan,” says an enthusiastic Zohor, a 36-year-old teacher.

“Ramadan is a great month that we must not miss.”

Many Moroccans started preparing for Ramadan, expected to start on August 22, by fasting days in Sha`aban.

“Fasting duing Sha`aban has become a habit for many men and women in Morocco,” notes Zohor.

Ali Mudan, a Justice Ministry employee, agrees.

“Some of my friends have rearranged their vacations in order to spend more time worshipping in Sha`aban to prepare for Ramadan,” he told IOL.

“Fasting in Sha`aban is like a training course one takes before the holy month of Ramadan.”

Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) used to fast during Sha`ban more than he did in any other month, expect Ramadan.

“We love the Prophet and want to follow in his foot steps,” says Fatimah Deamash, an elder housewife.

Ramadan preparations are not only faith-oriented.

"I have cleaned up my house to be ready for Ramadan,” says Aisha Aroub, a civil servant.

Haleyah Benasi, a housewife, is also making special preparations for the Ramadan kitchen.

"I have bought many traditional food items to be served on our iftar banquests during Ramadan," she told IOL.

Iftar banquests are a good chance for many friends and families to come together and renewed their relations.

Mohammad Kamal, a young preacher, says all these different preparations speak of one fact.

“Muslims, and particularly Moroccans, are determined to renew their faith and turn a new leaf.”