Opinion
September 3
"Allllaaaahhu Akbar!" ("God is great") screams an imam from across the street. The call to prayer is taken up from the loudspeakers of dozens of other mosques tucked into the old medina of Rabat. Shops close momentarily, radios are switched off and many people quietly duck into nearby mosques. Even the hash dealer shadowing me pauses his sales pitch as we navigate our way around the chaos of the medina market.
Morocco appears to be a startlingly conflicted culture, although if you ask a Moroccan about it, he'll tell you that's how it's always been. Sunni Muslims make up 98 percent of the population, but speakeasy-style bars are the crowded hotspots many afternoons.
Old women wear cloaks and simple scarves around their heads and middle-aged women often opt for the more religious hijab, but the girls turn heads decked in designer jeans and jackets. At first discordant and startling to see, the mixing of western and traditional is very much part of the Moroccan identity. It is not unusual for a imam to speak five languages fluently, or for little kids on the street to sing and dance to tektonik (the new wave of European techno).
Five blocks later, the hash dealer finally gives up as I cross towards a large Jewish graveyard. Overgrown but still startlingly beautiful, the graveyard extends all the way to Rabat's beach, the most popular hangout for young amorous couples. Escaping the watchful eyes of parents, couples well into their late twenties establish their own independent space outside societal norms.
Here in Rabat, the influence of European style, gleaned from fashion magazines and the ubiquitous satellite dish, is evident in the fake designer clothing. Only 30 yards from a group of kids playing soccer on the beach, several young men take refuge from the sun with a hash-filled hookah and a few bottles of wine.
How can a culture adopt so many opposing customs simultaneously? The conservative religious movement imported from the Iranian revolution and the expanding power of Saudi Arabian wahhabism is growing side-by-side with European fashion and Western styles of living.
A man in full Islamic dress, complete with a dark spot in the middle of his forehead from years of praying, walks out of his mosque in matching white Crocs. He stops for a second to chat with some young men listening to music while passing around a joint.
This is the beauty of cultural mixing — a fluid mélange of culture in a country at the crossroads between Africa, Europe and the Middle East. But Morocco's usually graceful cultural mixing cannot escape the power dynamics of today's international politics.
Western governments have been pushing Morocco to do more to challenge its strong drug trade and rising religious fundamentalism. King Mohammed VI has responded strongly in hopes of attracting more economic and political benefits.
Self-identifying fundamentalists that are so maligned by Western and Middle Eastern governments are responsible for many social welfare programs throughout the Muslim world. At the same time, many commit horrendous, inexcusable acts of violence and terrorism.
On May 16, 2003, 14 young, home-grown suicide bombers killed 33 civilians in Casablanca in the deadliest terrorist attack in Morocco's history. This incident was packaged by most of the Western media in an orientalist perspective, reaffirming many people's beliefs in a monolithic, violent fundamentalist Islam. However, this only serves to conflate serious, disciplined practices of Islam with terrorism.
Moroccan political leaders reaffirmed this tie between devout Muslims and terrorism by indiscriminately jailing over 2,000 people in the aftermath of the bombings. Many of these people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong type of beard.
Does this make Europe and the United States feel safer? These police-state actions only further galvanize extremists and radicalize those caught in the middle. What about the far greater threat of conservative Islamic teachers proselytizing in vast slums and shanty towns? The suicide bombers were recruited from these places where it is hard to imagine an escape from the indignity of continual poverty.
Outside of Rabat, Casablanca and the northern Spanish border towns, there are increasing numbers of marginalized families living in these large shanty towns. Jobs are non-existent even for those with an education; in fact, around 40 percent of Moroccan students with master's and doctorate degrees are unemployed.
The lack of jobs has only increased the incentive to emigrate to Europe, and this exodus of talented Moroccans hurts the future of Morocco's development. In this light, the American and European focus on physical security seems, at best, myopic.
Instead, bring choice, bring jobs, bring opportunity. Strategies based on human rights and community-level development offer a life outside of hate, anger and terrorism.
Of course terrorism is a complex phenomenon found in areas ranging from Morocco to Columbia to Chechnya, and context is vital to policy choice. But there is no good, long-term end to repression and persecution regardless of context.
Today's unjustly persecuted, jailed, beaten man is tomorrow's international terrorist. We should look to fight terrorism through advances in human rights and economic development, not by supporting repressive regimes in the name of stability and security.
So, when you hear that a dozen men have been rounded up in an autocratic state under threat of terrorism, don't celebrate a defense of our democracy and freedom. Mourn a world where dictators and despots carry international support while suppressing human rights.
Alex Marqusee is a senior majoring in economics and Middle Eastern studies. He studied abroad in Morocco last semester.
