we would like to establish a frank dialog without a wooden language, stimulating, enriching, constructive and creative in order to confront the choices and analyzes that sometimes clash, sometimes complement each other, but always illuminate the effort to confront useful contradictory ideas and thus the flourishing of creative energies.
we would like to start a dialog free of clichés and biases, a dialog aimed at laying the real intellectual and spiritual foundations of openness to the Other in all its humanity and complexity, a dialog with an approach that recognizes that other religions also hold a part of the divine message.
There are certain dogmas that stand in the way of the emergence of a peaceful society that must be deconstructed: “ (…) This ability to regard ourselves as holders of the “Divine Truth”, excluding all those who refuse it, is the initial matrix of all the violence, symbolic or real, of yesterday, today and those still to come… It hinders what is the very essence of monotheisms, namely the divine liberating uniqueness, which should be for believers “the common theological place” *(1). It is therefore necessary to have the intellectual and spiritual courage to take a non-apologetic and pragmatic approach to the Texts.
we would like to revive a permanent and intimate life together between Muslim, Jewish and Christian populations who understand each other, cooperate together, respect each other, rub shoulders with each other more convergences than differences, more lucidity than blindness, more civics than confrontation, more hospitality than hostility, more friendship than enmity, more solidarity than distrust, rejection, contempt, denial… If we fight for this wisdom of Islam, full of wisdom, compassion and denial Love is neither forgotten nor despised nor caricatured, we should do the same and with the same passion for all other religions.
we would like to say Stop to the superficiality of the dialogs as they have been initiated in our society where the real questions articulated around cultures and religions are completely absent from the very rare « debates » past or present, incantatory, repetitive and sterile and which, quite often, only reproduce and confirm civil amnesia and single thinking. « » … The philosopher Hannah Arendt, sentence that the writer Mohamed Sifaoui quotes in his book “Une seule voix, l’insoumission ”, is inscribed in the emptiness of thought. According to the philosopher Abdennour Bidar*, the Moroccans have so internalized a culture of submission to tradition, to the “masters of religion”, to all those who govern us and who teach us, that they do not even understand that we are talking to them about spiritual freedom. This confusion between spirituality and servitude is ingrained in people’s minds from a very young age, and spiritual education is so poor that everything that has to do with religion remains something too sacred!
we would like to promote a philosophy of action and mobilize all the bangs of the Moroccan civil society in order to raise awareness on the issue of minorities. It is a tremendous work that must be done at the level of public opinion, elected officials and parliamentarians, debated in newspapers and broadcasts of radio and television, in mosques, associations and youth centers, in order to free Morocco from the grip and the hegemony of Islamists of any kind. To popularize this knowledge and these ideas to the general public, Prof. Nouzha Guessous*(2) (Economiste 19/11/2015) suggests even “(…) to open schools and cultural centers to NGOs and citizens who could lead groups of clarification, awareness and discussion with students from primary school on the values and behaviors of citizenship, freedom and responsibility…”
we would like to widen the scope to all those who aspire to the blossoming of a plural citizenship and to the unity in diversity where all the Manichean exclusions will be banned and where the difference will not be a handicap, but a productive value.
we would like to stop the simplistic and reductive readings that abound on websites, social networks and satellite channels where everyone proclaims himself a scientist or a scholar, where each one allows himself all the delusions in line with the radicalization of thought and the alienation of minds.
we would like to participate in the emergence of a new Moroccan educational system which has fundamental cognitive deficiencies and shortcomings that are in our opinion almost irreversible.
The Moroccan school, its failed emanation, is the product of a historic process with deceiving “insignificant measures” and of sly reforms enacted for a long time by our political class, all components confused. The Moroccan public school is today dismembered and it is not the jolts of a few “scholars” that will prevent the almost definitive downfall of the entire teaching staff.
We can come up with the best reform in the world, but in the face of inert and opportunistic political forces and a very powerful conservative teaching body that draws its strength from a wandering conservative society without reference points or objectives, the Moroccan public school will, unfortunately, remain frozen in beliefs, myths, whims and mental structures of another age. To illustrate the above, I quote this thought of a great physicist Albert Einstein: “We spend at least 15 years in school, and not once are we taught self-confidence, passion and love, which are the foundations of life”.
For a radical change of course, the fquihs, the teaching staff, the parents as well as our political class will necessarily have to change beforehand. They will have to reform themselves in order to get our schoolchildren back on the road to a better world. They will have to purify their inner world and purge it of any conservative, archaic and unproducible desire and adorn their outer world with values based mainly on self-confidence and self-esteem, a sense of responsibility, knowledge of the other, the positivation of differences, the creativity of encounter, common action, probity and freedom. Albert Einstein said almost a century ago “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without our thinking.”
For a radical change of course, we should commit ourselves to thoroughly reviewing the textbooks programmed by the Ministry of National Education in accordance with the instructions given by King Mohammed VI on several occasions
The late Mohamed El Ayadi*(3), a writer, historian and sociologist, had no words to describe the omnipresence of religious discourse at school “It is through the school curriculum, he says, that a discourse on the other, especially on the Jew, is infiltrated with binary logic. Apologetic for Islam, shown as positive, in contrast to the other (Jewish, Western, Christian, miscreant…), shown as negative. It is in this simplistic logic that the child immersed from the first years of his schooling. I think this kind of learning has brought about a fundamental change in mentalities.”
The textbooks on civic education, history, artistic education and initiation to technology and Islamic education (Tarbiyya islamiwyya) are full of expressions that not only stir u intolerance, incite racism and hatred under the guise of religion, but risk establishing fitna and subsequently destabilizing the unity of Moroccan society. Simon Lévy, director of the Museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca and one of the main historical figures of the PPS (former Moroccan Communist Party) laments that “schools do not teach that our people have a Jewish component and a part of Jewish culture. (…) in the time of Hassan II, Moroccan textbooks were expunged from the word Jewish (…) It is not poverty or frustration that created Islamism, it is Islamism as a political movement that uses frustration. “
According to Ahmed Assid, Moroccan writer, researcher and political activist, « (…), it is essential to review our teaching and introduce Moroccan Judaism in national debates, in the media, in colloquia. The Moroccans do not know anything about their Jewish past (and I would also like to add our Berber and Christian past). They are ignorant of the 2,500 years of Jewish presence in Morocco. A radical reform of education is absolutely necessary. » (Zamane, January 2014).
It’s a fact that we don’t know our history. We have been given outdated, truncated and even erroneous facts. Unfortunately, the history of our country remains very little known, clumsily taught, widening the gap between the official version and the realities of our past.
We know the history of Morocco only since the advent of Islam. But what about Morocco before? What about this period which the official literature summarily and pejoratively refers to as « Jahiliya »? What about this ancient Morocco? *(4). What about the Phoenician, Egyptian, Carthaginian, Roman, Vandal, Byzantine and Persian influence…
Knowing who we are, and which paths history has taken to give birth to the Moroccan nation, is essential to navigating the present and orienting ourselves towards the future. Everything we do has meaning and scope only if it takes into account our true history, its potentialities and its shadows…
It is quite natural that the Moroccan child comes out completely confused and disoriented from school, trapped in an unreal and chimerical concept, full of contempt, rejection, hatred where there is on earth only the Muslim city with a single lifestyle and a unique type of civilization…
A radical change of course requires a new style of education that will merge religious knowledge, philosophical and scientific knowledge, morality and spirituality in order to produce truly enlightened people with hearts illuminated by religious sciences, and minds illuminated by philosophy, the humanities, social sciences and sciences, “ disciplines that awaken intelligence and promote the openness of learners to other knowledge, beliefs, cultures and civilizations” according to Abdou Filali-Ansary, Moroccan writer, theologian and philosopher.
Already in the twelfth century, the giant of knowledge, the philosopher Ibn Rochd*(5) of Cordoba (better known in the West under his Latin name of Averroes), has professed throughout his life an Islam where reason has a role to play in the recognition of the existence of God and the understanding of the Koran. He majestically undertook a synthesis between revelation and scientific truth. For him, the Koran and philosophy are necessarily coherent and say the same thing, even if it is not in the same way. “Here, there is no question of faith: there is only reason, Koranic in the Law, scientific in philosophy…”. For Ibn Rochd, the rational investigation that resorts to demonstrative reasoning necessarily leads to the recognition of the truth that would not contradict anything that is set forth in the revealed Law, « because the true is not contrary to the true, but agrees with it and bears witness to it… ».
we would like to interact together as an antidote to fanatics of all stripes and provide convincing arguments to those who would resist identity-based drifts so that every citizen is not subjected to any discrimination based on color, religion, ethnicity…, so that every citizen recognizes himself in the society in which he lives, in his social system and institutions.
Of course it’s not that simple. But when we realize that what is at stake is the very survival of the nation, its prosperity, its civil peace and its place in the world, we give ourselves the means at all costs to fight obscurantism, fanaticism, despair, distress, incivism…
We know that in the past, the vitalism of many Moroccans lasted only the time of the roses. It weakens, it exhausts itself and dies in forgetfulness and indifference. But we also believe that today the ingredients are there to make this great adventure feasible. We can do it together as a responsible citizen who aspires to an ideal of living together.
This coexistence between religions and cultures has been constantly deconstructed and reconstructed over centuries, when the different communities have long lived side by side, together or separately, and have experienced moments of great tension, tumultuous and tragic, persecution, degrading and humiliating status, but also phases of peaceful coexistence, conviviality and cordial ties between Christians, Jews and Muslims.
This so rare coexistence between religious and cultures is being reborn again in order to establish a true golden age of radiance generous and inventive under the reign of King Mohammed VI who is trying to put the Moroccan citizen back at the heart of his time by deflecting the lines of memories (which often fluctuated in parallel) in order to cross and even merge in order to overcome the prism that isolates each of the three entities and this time to trace the true paths of reconciliation (and this without necessarily concealing the part of the irreconcilable).
Upon his inauguration, King Mohammed VI made his 1st visit abroad to Pope John Paul II in April 2000 to advocate already inter-religious dialog and work for the easing of conflicts and solidarity between peoples and cultures.
A new constitution, passed in 2011, has broken “Moroccanity” into several components. The new Constitution, from its preamble, reflected the sovereign’s constant concern and commitment to the establishment of a just, multi-religious and multicultural society: equity, equality, consideration, respect, fraternity, justice and mercy among all the ethnic groups of society. The 2011 Constitution has established bridges between the different components of society to show them the way of reason, the way of wisdom, the way of the future, the way of living together in a common destiny. The 2011 constitution mentioned several ethnic groups as fully-fledged elements of Moroccan culture as a body composed of organs and members that are linked to each other: « its “unity… has been nourished and enriched by its African, Andalusian, Hebrew and Mediterranean tributaries.” Moroccanity is a whole, and should be. It is these components that become sub-identities that cling together to form a single entity. As Hassan Aourid, a political scientist and teacher-researcher, pointed out: “A cappuccino is made of milk, coffee or cinnamon, but it is only milk, coffee or cinnamon and how much you want to dissociate them, you cannot. It becomes an entity of its kind” or this maxim of René Barjavel*(6): “There were eleven, two blacks, two yellows, four whites, and three ranging from coffee to milk to olive oil. But their eleven-blood mixed in a cup would have made only one red blood.”
Another very significant example of the King’s willingness to protect religious minorities in the land of Islam is the organization of the Marrakech Symposium held on January 27, 2016, in Marrakech. Nearly 300 personalities from about 120 countries participated, including the UN Secretary General, leaders from Muslim-majority countries around the world, scholars and high-ranking dignitaries. The objective of this symposium was to promote justice and peace and to eradicate the sectarian and radical ideas that have infiltrated the Muslim world.
An excerpt from the message of H.M. King Mohammed VI to the participants of the Marrakech symposium on religious minorities in the land of Islam:
“Morocco has been a forerunner in religious dialogue. In fact, after independence in 1956, every summer a gathering of intellectuals and thinkers was held at the Toumliline monastery – located on a mountain in the region of Fez and formerly occupied by Benedictine monks – in which prominent figures such as the famous Christian thinker Louis Massignon took part.
Another important example is the visit in 2019 of Pope Francis to Morocco in order to strengthen the inter-religious “dialog” and work for a better, wiser more just and more merciful world. The speeches of Pope Francis and King Mohammed VI converged on the same objective: to counteract fanaticism, hate speech, whether racial or religious, and the instrumentalization of religion for political purposes.
Morocco is an ancient crossroads. For millennia, every conflict towards this country, upsetting and enriching its history. Morocco is the land of all mixtures, cultural and civilizational. Several civilizations have succeeded one another and superimposed themselves on it to give birth to a rich historical heritage marked by the ties of understanding and coexistence between religious communities. The Moroccan citizen who, over the centuries, is neither quite the same, nor quite someone else. He became the symbol of this blending that has developed over time, a unique blend of diverse influences and a particular cultural trajectory. A diverse and complex identity that integrates dissimilarities to form a nation.
According to Abdellah Tourabi, journalist and columnist, Morocco, in its particularity, is neither of the East nor of the West, nor totally Arab, nor entirely Berber and “nor partially Jewish”. It is what the twists of history and the vagaries of geography have shaped it to be.
I have constantly dreamed of seeing Morocco as the world capital of dialog, the world capital of understanding, the world capital of a knowledge of living together where all the constituents of society will become a single entity, indivisible and inseparable, like the cappuccino of the political scientist Hassan Aourid.
Jalal Boubker Bennani
Asma Lamrabat, medical biologist, writer and essayist committed to the issues of Islam, she was director of the Center for Women’s Studies in Islam (Cerfi) within Ar-Rabita Mohammadia of the Ulemas of Morocco, (Tel Quel No 855 of 26/04/2019).
Nouzha Guessous, Professor of Medical Biology, researcher and consultant in human rights and bioethics, she was part of the Royal Commission in charge of the reform of the Moudawana.
Mohamed El Ayadi, “L’Islam au quotidien ”, Ed. Prologues-Maroc 2008.
Zamane, No 88/March 2018. Journey to the heart of Ancient Morocco.
Ibn Rochd or Averroes, philosopher, theologian, jurist, astronomer, doctor and Muslim author of more than 80 books, born April 14th, 1126 in Cordoba in Andalusia and died on December 10th , 1198 in Marrakech.
René Barjavel, writer (La nuit des temps 1968).
Je viens de recevoir votre blog d’un ami. Je dis bravo pour cette initiative vraiment très intéressante.
Vous avez bien fait d’énumérer tous les maux de la société marocaine qui empêchent un épanouissement réel des citoyens marocains, toute confession confondue pour une vraie coabitation.
Je retiens principalement l’islamisme rampant dans notre société qui sécrète continuellement des attitudes vraiment malsaines, des pratiques d’un autre âge bien révolu, des nouvelles interdictions : l’idéologie du hallal, par exemple, contre le harem fait hélas figure de séparation étanche musulman et les autres religions.
À mon avis, toute réflexion sur des questions sociales, politiques et de développement doit être abordée loin de toute approche à la religion.
S. Bayou