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Does Morocco Knows a war around Identity?
The vital transfers which the world witnessed during the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 90s of the past century, especially those transfers which the fall of Berlin Wall is considered a title for it. The fall down of the Soviet bloc and so the deterioration of the communist camp legend and the rise of minorities were hidden by the repression. The winds of Transfers blew over some sites in the Middle East area. This is how the identity and nationality returned to the front and the discussion around religious, ethnic, linguistic or foreign minorities began again.
This cause was absent till the borders of the near past within the area from the gulf to ocean because of the common culture bond to the ruling elites who control the political decision making.
In the middle of this defining procedural democracy don not stop only at the monitors of: real political well the negotiationable constitutional document, effective active civil society, economic, social and administration reform, independent justice, free and responsible media, There are two monitors had been added to this which are respecting the minorities and cultural linguistic plurality.
Plurality:
We mean by identity the social cultural self- consciousness, and identity is not still it changing according to the reality changes. There is more inside each identity there are many identities with different levels, it's not a pre- given humans create it according to the transfer.
The discussion around identity in morocco never been proposed as strongly as it is today. It had been evoked decently at the end of the 70s which witnessed the beginning of a political cultural movement to confront the stored, when Amazij Activists moved to face the Arabic nationality surveillance which witnessed some kind of retreat after the 67 war.
The Amazij movement itself is the one who evoked the problem of identity. May be its rich literatures and intellectual product always referring to this obviously. And here we should refer to that the interest in the African dimension also evoked by activists in this movement. Lately we followed an initiative at the area of Rashedya moving towards forming an association for the defense of "The African Morocco". The attitude is justified for them as Morocco had been bond the Arabic East more than four centuries ago. The amazij which is a full ideological theory with definite demands begin at making the Amazij language a constitutional one and ends at making the international treaties and conventions a part of the national law and reviving the traditions as one of the legislation sources, as the citizens managed to benefit from the developed human sciences and went through the linguistics trying to unsolved the dilemma of the language and proving that the amazij is a language has its own roles and grammars as the Arabic language. Others went through history trying to uncover its stations to assure that the amazij culture is an ancient one in Northern Africa prior to the Islamic culture and the Christ's naissance. A civilization that has its own historical symbols such as Massinissa, Gobi and Yougartus and just like big kingdoms like Nomidia and there were different religions other than Islam and Christianity. On the opposite the Moroccan communists did not propose the identity issues as their programme depends mainly on the social classes, class conflict and Proletarian dictatorship. But their alleys the socialists almost all of them did not get out of the nationalism ideology which their home was Nasserism in Egypt then afterwards in Syria and Iraq. Those nationalists fought any cultural plurality that gives the amazij its normal position within the social cultural geography. For example Mohammed Abed El-Gaberi talked about the necessity of eliminating the amazij culture, and Abdul Ellah Belqreez called for "dictatorship of culture". The same thing marked the writings of Ben Salem Hemish that despises Amazij.
As for the Moroccan Jews, despite of that they were historically bond to Morocco but their real situation did not allow them to propose such a thing, noting that Morocco witnessed a wide immigration of its Jews to different directions to Europe, America and the "appointed land" thanks to the efforts of the international Zionist movement and the facilities given to the Moroccan Jews to immigrate, This reality did not give them the chance to touch the identity problem especially after the rise of the Arabic- Israeli conflict.
As for the Jew minority inside Morocco today, a big number of them has a developed social position so they do not need to enter the mazes of looking for answers to identity question. The reasonable causes for this is margining this minority at different levels besides the attacks they exposed to by many different fundamental streams which made them feel endangered and demonstrate for the first time along the Moroccan history against terrorism on 16th of May and asking for peaceful living among different religions and also defending their being Moroccans since the seventh century when the Jews used to live socially settled all over the kingdom. They had then Hebron courts and during the occupation almost all of them showed patriotic souls, only a few of them agreed on the reforms planned by the French. But during the WWII the Moroccan government supported them and King Mohammed V refused the directions of the Vichy Government that targeted isolating the Jews and eliminating them. And after independence the first government marked by the Jews representation as the Mail ministry had been given to the Jewish minister Benzkeen.
It is to be mentioned here that the Jewish elite was active in the progressive parties either within the lines of the national union for public forces or the Moroccan communist party. On the other hand the Christians were so far from thinking about this. But we assure that the Christianity witnessed a clear increase during the past few years because of the openness which facilitated the mission of attracting new advocates especially among youth. The spread of internet and different media channels helped provoking this point too. And also because of that the country no more arrests the Christians as it used to before. The reports on human rights which consider these assassinations as black clouds in the sky of the kingdom which comes as an implied confession under the sovereignty of the interest of individual and collective rights and the government's trials to cut the road for the Radical Islamic streams.
The Islamists and the Arabists either nationalists or Hassaneoon (who exist at the desert area) or those who came from Granada after 1492 all of those discuss the identity question on the basis that the Moroccan Identity had been constituted from the duality of "Arabic and Islamic" inherited from the patriotic movement during the era of struggle against French and Spanish occupation which is affected by its parallel example in the Arabic East headed by Shekeeb Arslan and others.
The Transfer:
The philosophy of 16th May noon 1930 controlled the elite's culture who shouldered the responsibility of running the public policy after independence and also controlled the vision of the Central French example in building a patriotic state and expelling whatever can be a cause to harm the unity of the country and distracts it. This is besides the stored culture used to fear the margin that tired the custody and afterwards the independent state, and so we witnessed for example expelling the amazij from the \development projects and afterwards Arabicizing the education and administration.
Morocco adopted a moderate policy regarding religion by adopting the Malki as the only religious Islamic stream and so it protected itself from other fundamental streams like "Wahbbi" - The one in Saudi Arabia- At the first constitution for the kingdom it stated that Islam is the State religion and the Khilafa is one of the bases of the religious authorities, and the only guarantee for respecting all the religions. It also advocated the tolerance and coordination. It even worked on making it so profound and deep in the community through special organizations and associations formed especially for this reason and benefited from the governmental financial and symbolic support. The basic law of the kingdom issued on 1961 stated that Morocco is an Arabic Islamic kingdom and the Arabic language is the formal national language of the state, but at the first constitution the phrase "Arabic kingdom" fell down and the Language part remained.
The kingdom managed to bit over the sociological changes in the country as the regime counted on it to create new sociological balances that help advocating its authority through creating safety built protecting it from the public. During the governance of King Hassan the second the state depended on creating social groups alleys. During the struggle era the kingdom institution allied with the patriotic movement to get out of the occupation phase as winners through gaining common legitimacy, keeping the kingdom institution and attaching the independence to the return of the Expelled King this is at one hand. On the other hand sharing the authority with patriotic movement and also instituting for the Sultan legitimacy and keeping the mutual interests for the tow parties of this contract.
After independence we witnessed the political clash between them (the ambition to ultimate authority for the King and the desire of the patriotic movement to share drawing the public policies). This clash happened because of the different visions and priorities, on this regard the kingdom will work on getting the symbols of the rural world closer to cut the road for the independence party which was being socially formed by elites from the cities of Fas, Sala, Rabat, and Dar Al-Baidaa.
The kingdom gets those people closer to it through giving them important responsibilities just like what happened with Al-Hasan Alyoussey and Ambarak Al-bkay, the kingdom will also work on encouraging the initiative of forming the public movement headed by faces like Mahgouby, Ahradan, Abdul Kareem Al-Khateeb, and Abdullah Alwakouty. Later it will be clear that nature of the economic policies followed helped the regime controlling the running political confrontations among different social forms.
But after the two trials to turn over the regime the kingdom margined many parties among the mini-Porchoise because they were in the middle of watchers seats to watch the militant repellants. As a part of this stream the issue of the Arabic Identity as a socio-alley has the first position in the political equation which King Hassan the second put after the conciliation around the West Desert cause and organizing the "Green March" with all its political and symbolic loads, through which the ex-king got out of his isolation. During this phase the kingdom knew the issue of Moroccan Identity which benefited many parties such as Altagamou'e and the National Democratic Party. In this way some of the supposed to be Arabic Identity Defenders will shoulder the responsibility inside the administration that lately helped weakening the military institution by hitting some of the Amazij soldiers. And
also shoulder responsibilities inside the security departments and public sector. The same conditions lasted during the 80s and 90s which witnessed a sort of conciliation between the Fasies (from the City of Fas) and royalty resulted in the retreat of the Arabicization inside the State institutions benefited those parties via the transfer Morocco witnessed during the late 90s.
The Clue:
Religion and Culture became two major factors in crystallizing any developmental strategy this because the cultural values became so important to the international movements. More over all the security strategies began to put religion and culture as the major important factors in solving conflicts especially when almost all the current conflicts are mainly built on those factors.
We think that Globalization will help building multi cultural democracies within its frame many religions and cultures will live together peacefully on the basic ground of democracy.
The different races, religions or languages do not threaten the unity of the country but using one or more of these differences to achieve political goals does. Also foreign involvement to support those minorities in the conflict with the state threatens the state in many ways first it will not be able to combine the minority into the community, secondly the minority will adopt demands oppose the states directions, thirdly those minorities will be shouldered the responsibilities for any crises in the state.
For sure the countries with multi identities will not settle down unless there is a system represents all the minorities together and this cannot be achieved outside the frame of secularism.
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