Published in 2006 in Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society. Autumn Issue. Vol. 32, no. 1.

The Impact of Islamization on Moroccan Feminisms

Introduction The concept of Islamization is loaded with sense. The one relevant meaning to this essay is the intrinsic link between this concept and the political manipulation of Islam. Such a meaning is country-specific and depends on the immediate ground realities in each country. The story of Moroccan women and Islamization is unique in at least two ways: not only is it linked to the success of multilingualism and multiculturalism in a country where only one religion dominates: Islam, but it also explains the paradoxical situation where a very high level of female (and male) illiteracy co-exists with a spectacular achievement of the Moroccan feminist-movement: a very progressive Family law. Moroccan women engaged with Islamization at various stages of modern history. This engagement resulted in the interesting changes of Moroccan women’s (political) consciousness and power negotiation. Women’s changes of consciousness have been triggered by three factors that interact in complex ways and that chronology alone cannot explain: (i) feminist political consciousness that comes with urbanity and education, (ii) global synergy consciousness which is usually an extension of local feminist consciousness, and (iii) democratization consciousness and awareness of the intriguing role of religion in the (political) power game.

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These three types of consciousness kept a strong, albeit “invisible”, link not only between legal demands of (literate) feminists and illiterate women but also between feminists and the state rulers. Women’s issues and their marginalized mother tongues (Berber and Moroccan Arabic) became state issues (a means to fight Islamists) while retaining their “feminist” edge allowing women to problematize the centuries-old Islamic practices on which the state itself is based. The clever use of “cultural” and “symbolic” Islam by Moroccan feminists blocks the road in the face of radical Islamists, rallies illiterate women to women’s issues and forces the state to satisfy women’s legal demands (which also serve current state purposes). Women’s multi-faced and fluid involvement with Islamization has turned out to be a central element in the Morocco’s post-colonial overall policy where ideologies of modernity, Islamism, democratization, feminism, and global synergy constitute an interesting blend.

Islamization and Feminist Political Consciousness

Islam was introduced in Morocco during the Arab conquest of North Africa in the 7th century. It became the state religion of the country after the independence of the latter from French colonizers in 1956. Feminist consciousness has never been the sole prerogative of literate feminists in Morocco. Along the rich literature in French (Mernissi) and Arabic (Abouzeid, Bennouna) that characterized the 60s and 70s coexisted an older often anonymous oral literature (Sadiqi 2003 and the Women Writing Africa Anthology, to appear). It is, however, important to note that the ones who used

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writing focused on the family law, and, thus, had, as proponents of a social movement, much more impact on the decision-makers. These pioneer feminists may be termed “liberal” insofar as they chose to articulate their legal demands in terms of “liberalizing” society and did not concentrate on religious texts. They used literate languages and addressed issues of legal rights and modernity. These women often belonged to upper urban classes (Sadiqi, 2003, Ennaji 2005). It is interesting to note that liberal feminists never targeted Islam as a religion; on the contrary, attacks on patriarchy have been supported by Islam’s ethical ideals where men and women enjoyed the same rights. Faced with modernity issues, liberal feminists sought to play down the narrow religious aspect, and vis-à-vis international feminisms, they sought in Islam a characterizing identity and a strategy of liberation that standard Western explanatory frameworks, often based on egalitarian and individualistic assumptions, do not include. In their approach, liberal feminists were conscious of the use of Islam by patriarchy. They challenged the separation and opposition between the private and public spheres which constitutes the pillar of patriarchal Islam and sought to politicize the private sphere. As Mernissi states

One of the functions of theological discourse on women is to slide the debate on real economic, political, and social problems into religious debates. Thus, instead of debating the obstacles to rural girls’ schooling, the causes of women’s absence in the food industry, the theological discourse moves the debate into “Is such a law or measure authentic?”, “Does such a law or Measure conform to tradition in Mali or is it an innovation?” This movement of real problems towards problems relating to Fiqh or religious debate, during the rare meetings about women which have occurred in Arab countries, may be considered one of the hemorrhages which have aborted the skilled potential of

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public administrators, political parties, associations, and intellectuals who have tried to reflect on women’s condition in these societies. (Translated by Fatima Sadiqi)

Sabbah (1984: 45) also states: If the dominance of one human being is to succeed, it must be justified, legitimated; that is the function and raison d’être of ideology. It is the objective of the patriarchal discourse.

Liberal feminist scholars also understood the central role of women in the discourse, rather than the term, of Islamization and endeavored to “use” their share of this discourse. This is enhanced by Islam’s capacity to provide Muslims with powerful tools of social analysis (See Dale Eickleman and James Piscatori, 1996). As such, Islamization for liberal feminists is a continuous rethinking process where their voices needed to be “well positioned” in order to be heard. These feminists knew that they had to continuously negotiate position in the Moroccan Islamic discourse and “package” their demands with the right dose of “Islamic intensity”. The voice of the pioneer liberal feminists resonated very well with the then very popular leftist ideology of the political opposition. The pioneer political women such as Nouzha Skalli, Rabea Naciri, etc. espoused easily the ideas of the liberal feminist scholars. The state (very authoritarian in the 60s and 70s), for them, constituted the antithesis of their demands. For many liberal feminist activists, cultural ideas were harnessed and often exaggerated in the service of political ideologies and practices. For example, women and their sexual purity were often linked with the honor of men and families, and this discourse was “legitimated” through connecting it with Islam. For these activists, this

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linkage was meant to control women by men and their surrogates, in combinations of age, stage, position, class, etc (within and beyond the family) through dress.

Women and the Global Context: A “Re-Islamization” Process? From the mid-1980s onward, globalization created a context where religious and gender identities arise and develop in relation to one another. One of the tokens used in this respect is the wearing of the veil which facilitates the investment of the public sphere and the appropriation of the religious discourse. The veil facilitates access to the increasingly hostile public space at a time when unemployment, social and political crises are soaring, creating, thus, a form of , at least superficial, “re-Islamization”. Advancing levels of education, a greater permeability of political boarders, and the rise of new communications media. More and more women participate in public debates over issues of family law about their role in society, ideas and practices that have long been taken for granted and understood as Islamic, are being confronted and challenged by these women. Women’s such participation is part of “public Islam” (Eickleman and Piscatori 1996) whereby thinking about Islam is not limited to selfascribed religious authorities. The new generation of women is conscious of the burden of patriarchy. Most of them are affiliated to Islamic associations and/or Islamic political parties and do not voice themselves as “anti-liberal”. Their relationship to liberal feminists has never been confrontational as the latter have attacked Islam and have been consistently fighting Islamic patriarchy.

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Moroccan women’s re-Islamization at least at the “appearance” level may be explained within a broader theoretical framework where tradition and religion are not seen as fixed and “regressive” concepts that are fundamentally incompatible with economic development. From the mid-1980s onward, researchers in the field have highlighted two things: (i) an increasing role of tradition and religion, as dynamic concepts, in the overall global context and (ii) a re-questioning of the modernity vs tradition dichotomy. Globally speaking, and contrary to the prevailing theories of modernity and modernization of the mid-twentieth century, religion is said to play an increasingly important role in politics and public life (Casanova 1994, Eickleman and Piscatori 1996). This is very different from the 1950s-1970s decades where academic and social modernization approaches to the Third World attributed the Muslim world’s lack of modernization to the pervasive influence of tradition and religion (Halpern 1963, Almond and Powell 1966). The latter theories were reinforced by the Marxist-Leninist views that religion would disappear with the socio-economic structures which fostered it in the first place. The unfolding of facts from the mid-1980s onward have shown that tradition and religion interact in deep but complex ways with economic progress and modernity (Hudson 1980, Bill and Leiden 1974, Binder 1986, Weiner and Huntington 1987, Higgot 1988, Wong 1988, So 1990, Eickleman and Pasha 1991, Findley 1992). Consequently, women are more and more aware that religious beliefs and values play an increasing role in thinking about self, society and politics at the local and world levels. Coupled with Islamization, globalization started to make sense for the younger generations of

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Moroccan women. Globalization has yet another impact on Moroccan society: the beginning of democratization.

Islamization and Democratization From the mid-1990s onward, Morocco has started to witness more political opening and more democratization: the first ever socialist government in 1998, a new and more open king in 1999, a quota system in election in 2001, 35 women in the Parliament in 2002, a new family Law in 2003, more women in the highest religious offices in 2004. The twin fact of the veil gradually losing its political edge (the veil became multifunctional and fashion-based) and of the liberal feminists never jeopardizing Islam as a religion reconciled the views of liberal feminists and “veiled” women in Islamic associations and political parties. Many liberal feminists are veiled and many younger “religious” feminists espouse liberal views. Morocco is unique in the sense that one cannot really speak of “Islamic” and “secular” feminisms as categories in complementary distribution. All Moroccan feminists, whether liberal or religious, confront patriarchy and do not put Islam as a religion into question. Today’s feminists, liberal or conservative, veiled or non-veiled, are genuinely interested in re-visiting the sacred texts with aim of gaining more public power and voice. Feminist re-interpretation of the classic texts is a new development which constitutes a sweeping challenge to the central assumptions and presuppositions of academic political theory. Women are more and more conscious that they have been deliberately excluded from the sacred not because Islam prescribed so but because Islam was revealed in a

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heavily patriarchal society which managed to engrave a specific picture of women in the Muslim Unconscious. According to Sabbah (1984: 44):

The essence of maleness and the essence of femaleness unfold in relation to each other in a three- dimensional space, each having a position, its own dynamics (or lack of it), and a precise mode of conduct that defines it and opposes it to the other in an immutable and determining hierarchical relationship”.

Sabbah goes on to give the hierarchical relationship of male and female essences as follows: so far as position is concerned, male is vertical and female horizontal. As for dynamics, male is mobile and dynamic and female immobile and inanimate. Concerning the mode of conduct, male is endowed with will whereas female is not. Moroccan feminist scholars are more and more conscious that women have been targeted in moments of crisis (Sabbah, 1984:15):

It is always at moments of crisis that the links between economics and sex appear with the most clarity […]. Michel Foucault, in the first volume of his history of sexuality, brilliantly demonstrates that the management of the sexual area is not only linked to the economical and political areas, but also constitutes the very basis of all the strategies in the two domains.

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Re-looking at sacred texts and re-interpreting them from a feminist point of view is certainly opening new venues to Moroccan feminist scholars. It is a means of addressing patriarchy. The way Islam has been implemented from the 7th century until now has consistently been geared to serving and consolidating patriarchy through imposing a strict a strict space dichotomy where men relate to the public space and women to the private space (Ait Sabbah, 1987, Ahmed, Sadiqi). Muslim political rulers have always sought the support of religious leaders to maintain the status quo for 15 centuries. It is true that the Age of Enlightenment in Europe, the reforms of Christianity and Judaism, as well as the Industrial Revolution brought about some fresh rethinking of Islam in the 19th century. The great reformers of this period, Jamal Eddine Al-Afghani, Rachid Redha, and Mohamed Abdu made genuine attempts to reform Islam and give more space to women in the Arab-Muslim world. However, the painful experience of colonization put a heavy brake on these attempts by pushing Muslims back into a search for identity by going back to orthodox Islam.

Conclusion The story of women and Islamization in Morocco is a story of constant rethinking process. Re-visiting the sacred is certainly not the end of the story. Geo-spatial, economic and political contexts will always be accompanied by feminist rethinking of Islam. The co-habitation of Islamization, modernization, democratization and feminism in Morocco is part of the larger power negotiation where patriarchy is still very strong.

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