Islamism and Liberalism in Morocco: Divergence or Convergence?
Only when power is believed to be limited to one side as long as oppression is involved does resistance emerge. Moroccan women have been suffering for decades as a result of this unjust and unfair system. They were treated as minors, unable to make their own decisions, in the name of religion. In fact, no access to education was provided, which meant no access to the labor market. Moroccan women performed a significant role in society but received no recognition. Starting from raising generations to participating in the independence of Morocco, they were always present in all domains. In a society operating under a patricentric government, women were always working under the shadows of men's dominion. The law did not provide any protection to either a wife or a mother. Women have been and continue to seek the most basic of rights. They began their journey of rebellion through various periods of history in order for their voices to be heard. Their subdued voice gradually began to force themselves to be heard. The journey continues, but a look back in time would help us understand how this battle began. What are the origins, evolution, and types of Moroccan feminism?
Moroccan feminism took its first steps in the 1940s when the country's major political parties began to take an interest in women's issues. Moroccan women founded Akhawat Assafa, which translates as "purity sisters." In 1944, they made a number of demands to improve the lives of mostly illiterate and impoverished women. Akhawat Assafa's desired goal was to respect domestic workers, to demand a family law that did not exist at the time to protect women within the private sphere of marriage and to raise awareness about the various forms of violence against women. Moroccan women had to come out of their shells and fight for their rights after feeling oppressed and denied their rights. This brings us to the progression of Moroccan feminism through four major stages or waves. The first stage lasted from the 1940s to the 1960s. It was distinguished by the establishment of the Purity Sisters. Another feature of this period is the communist party, which attempted to unite the Moroccan working class through the association of Moroccan women. Finally, the progressive union of Moroccan women emerged as the first independent women's organization. The second stage began in the mid-1980s, with Marxist women who decided to take control of their own destinies outside of political parties. During this period, many frameworks arose, such as the Moroccan Student Union and numerous other associations that served underprivileged women. The third wave (Arab Spring and February 20th movement) was characterized by women activists who took the lead by protesting in the streets or using technology to mobilize others. The Arab Spring's impact on Morocco fueled its citizens' rage, both women and men. The movement was started by a woman, and the streets were crowded with people of both genders demanding freedom. Finally, there is the fourth wave. This new generation advocates for individuality, diversity, freedom, peace, and equality. They aimed to highlight the diversity of Moroccan women.
Moroccan feminism was divided into liberal and Islamist waves throughout its history. These two types of Moroccan feminism held opposing viewpoints on a variety of issues. However, it is worth noting that both benefited from the experiences of the other.
Liberal feminism has its roots in liberalism, which dominated Western thought in the 18th and 19th centuries. Liberal feminism initially appeared to be limited to the western context in which it first emerged. Later, it spread to even the most obstinate patriarchal societies, such as Morocco and many other conservative communities. Moroccan feminism took on a more liberal tone in the 1960s and 1970s. Secular feminists wrote journalistic articles about the importance of girls' education, the need to balance tradition and modernity, the importance of legal reforms, and the importance of women's political participation. Furthermore, changes in the dress code and other practices accompanied liberal feminism. For example, as a symbol of women's liberation, King Mohammed the Fifth allowed his eldest daughter to give a public speech in western clothing for the first time. Liberal feminism can also be found in feminist journalistic and academic writings in French and Arabic. Zakia Daoud, for example, was expressing fervent feminist ideas through journalistic means in which she criticized the socially constructed position of women. Academic feminist writings, such as those of Fatima Mernissi and Leila Abouzeid, have also sought to demonstrate and reflect on how gender differences were constructed within specific sociocultural contexts. Academic liberal feminism's discourse has questioned patriarchy and emphasized that gender roles, sexuality, and even the division of labor are not divinely prescribed or ordained by nature, but are historically and socially constructed. Liberal feminists chose to express their legal demands in terms of liberalizing society and did not concentrate on religion. They chastised the government for failing to prioritize women's issues, putting pressure on the government to reform family law and demanding greater legal, civil, and cultural rights, as well as freedom and dignity.
Islamic feminism, on the other hand, has primarily emerged from conservative political parties and associations that use Islam as a political tool to gain power. However, Islamic feminism was largely initiated and instigated by male Islamist politicians' tactics to counter secular feminists who were gaining significant momentum. The male Islamist leaders of the time recognized that the success of their project hinged on their ability to quell the female secular feminists by introducing a new brand of female-veiled Islamic feminism. Female Islamic feminists gradually emerged on the scene, initially to support the political Islamist project and later to challenge paternalism within this movement, which saw Islam as the sole source of women's rights. They believe that Islam provides women with rights, adherence to the veil, and a belief in complementarity between men and women, between rights and obligations, as well as a tendency to consider women's problems within an Islamic framework.
We can deduce that secular and Islamic feminist trends in Morocco are the result of specific contexts in which historical, social, political, and international factors collide. While secular feminism was largely a product of a leftist ideology that deemphasized the political use of religion, Islamic feminism was a product of Islamist ideology that emphasized the political use of religion. Because these two perspectives are ideologically opposed, the two trends are essentially divergent. In other words, while Islam is present in both trends, it is not used in the same way. As a result, this core difference gave rise to other discrepancies, such as issues of reference, goals, perspectives on tradition, religious identity, equality vs complementarity of rights, gender issue, and knowledge production. In terms of reference, secular feminists value international human rights conventions and universal values. Islamic feminists value sacred texts such as the Qur'an and Sunna. The fundamental difference between the two is that, while Islamic feminists oppose Western values and recognize Islam as the sole source of inspiration for any reform, secular feminists emphasize universal values and lean toward a more human rights interpretation of sacred texts. In terms of goals, while secular feminism focuses on women's rights, Islamic feminism focuses on preaching, charity, and global activism to advance the Islamic movement rather than women's rights. The way secularists and Islamists address women victims of violence on the ground, for example, is particularly telling. Whereas secularists use listening centers to raise women's awareness of their rights as citizens, Islamic feminists use family consulting centers to enforce Islamist project values such as solidarity and the justification of polygamy. While the former emphasizes legal action in line with the secular feminist movement's core goals of combating patriarchal legal Islam, the latter emphasizes family and social solidarity in line with political Islamist ideology, which tolerates and often thrives on such patriarchy.
The two distinct rallies of March 2000 that took place in Rabat and Casablanca clearly depicted the struggle for political power between the entangled feminist and Islamist movements. Women and men of all ages and social backgrounds marched together in Rabat. Men and women gathered in blue jeans and T-shirts, veiled and unveiled, to support governmental reform. There were also representatives from international funding programs and international feminist groups among the crowds, as well as several parliamentary deputies and government members. The march was organized by a network of sixty women's rights organizations as well as women's sections of political parties and labor. In metropolitan Casablanca, forty miles away from Rabat, Islamists and conservatives took to the streets in a powerful display of public dissent. It was dominated by veiled women, the majority of whom wore the Moroccan djellaba as a statement of national identity. Qur'an in the one hand, women alternated religious citations from the Qur'an and hadith with political slogans such as: "No to the international conventions on women's rights”. The gendered division of space was strict, in contrast to the secular feminist rally. Men and women marched in separate columns, with some men holding hands to form lines that circled their columns and separated them from the women.
In conclusion, both the secularist and Islamist movements share the same goal of freeing women from the deadly patriarchal claws. Yet, they do not share the same opinions and viewpoints when it comes to certain controversial topics such as abortion, single mothers, inheritance, and many more issues. For them to achieve their desired common goals, they have to find and reach a practical middle ground where they can work in harmony with one another. The two movements have greatly contributed to the feminization of a once-male-dominated public space in Morocco. By espousing universal values and adopting local, appropriate and pragmatic strategies, they have succeeded to involve the major political actors in the promulgation of the new Family Law reforms. Are then these two movements divergent or convergent? The only correct answer to this highly ambivalent question, according to me, is that they are neither. By transcending their own flagrant differences, they can form an efficient alliance that would at least help in the change and alleviation of women’s plights in Morocco.
References:
Salim, Zakia. Between Feminism and Islamism: Human Rights and Sharia Law in Morocco. University of Minnesota Press, 2011. Print.
Sadiqi, Fatima, and Ennaji, Moha. “Feminization of Public Space: Women’s Activism, the Family Law, and Social Change in Morocco” Indiana University Press. Print.
About the author:
Firdaous Naim is a Cultural Studies masters student and a participant in our#Women4Leadership program. She is an avid reader and a passionate writer. Moreover, she is also a woman who aches for all women’s issues and the exacerbation of their rights around the world.
