FIGHTING FOR RIGHTS

On 12 March 2000, the streets of two of the main Moroccan cities witnessed two spectacular but contrasting demonstrations. They were organized in response to a government project to encourage the more complete integration of women into the economic and legal life of the country. The plan, as well as including measures on education and health, also contained proposals for the reform of aspects of the Moudawana (mudawwanat al-ahwal al-shakhsiyya) [the laws of personal status]. In Rabat, an estimated 70,000 people marched through the streets in support of reforms that promised to improve the rights and status of Moroccan women. Songs, banners and speeches added to the drama of the event, as the avenues and squares of the capital filled with women and men calling on the new king, Muhammad VI, to implement a plan originally put forward in 1999. As the chants and slogans proclaimed, this would not only create a fairer society, but would also enforce the rights of Moroccan women under a constitution that had long stipulated the complete equality of all Moroccans.

At the same time, however, and organized to counter the Rabat event, a demonstration of possibly double the size took place in Casablanca. It filled the streets of Morocco’s largest city and commercial capital with hundreds of thousands of people protesting against the plan and especially against any revision of the Moudawana. It had been organized by Jama`at al-`Adl wa-l-Ihsan (Justice and Charity Association) of Abd al-Salam Yassine, in collaboration with other conservative associations, some Islamist, some secular. The marchers used familiar techniques of dramatic representation to underline their belief that any revision of the Moudawana would be against Islamic principles and would allow the culture and identity of Morocco to be dictated by foreign, mainly Western, powers.