Between Feminism and Islam: Human Rights and Sharia Law in Morocco Zakia Salime
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Title Pages (p.i) Between Feminism and Islam: Human Rights and Sharia Law in Morocco Zakia Salime University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis • London (p.iv) Chapter 5 was previously published as “The ‘War on Terrorism’: Appropriation and Subversion by Moroccan Women,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 33, no. 1 (Autumn 2007): 1–24. No rights reserved. Any part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401–2520 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Salime, Zakia. Between feminism and Islam : human rights and Sharia law in Morocco / Zakia Salime. p. cm.—(Social movements, protest, and contention; 36) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8166-5133-7 (hc : alk. paper)— ISBN 978-0-8166-5134-4 (pb : alk. paper) 1. Feminism—Morocco. 2. Muslim women—Political activity—Morocco. 3. Women in Islam—Morocco. 4. Human rights—Morocco. I. Title. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. Dedication To the people who are remaking the Middle East and to my mother, father, and Yasmine (p.ix) Acknowledgments This book owes a great deal to the support and commitment of many women. I am grateful to Nadia Yassin, Mona Khalifi, Leila Rhiwi, Khadija Mufid, Bouchra Abdou, Ghizlane el Bahraoui, Naima Benyaich, Oufae Benabdelkader, Najia Zirari, Najat Razi, Rabea Naciri, Rachida Tahiri, Halima Banaoui, Soumaya Benkhaldoun, Saadia Wadah, Khadija Rougani, Fatema Bouslama, Khadija Zaki, Fatouma Benabdenbi, Sabah Shraibi, Samira El-Adnani, Fatema Mghanaoui, Souad Al-Amari, and many others, who tolerated my intrusive questioning, hosted me in their homes, and introduced me to others. I am most grateful to my mentors and friends Manisha Desai and Michael Goldman for providing intellectual leadership and professional support during the research and writing of this book. My most sincere gratitude goes to Fatema Mernissi, Rachel Schurman, Paul Zeleza, Assata Zerai, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Winnifred Rebecca Poster, and Rebecca Saunders for providing various kinds of support to this research. I am thankful to Suad Joseph for reading the earlier drafts of this book, and to Sean Brotherton and Xuefei Ren for their significant feedback as I was crafting the first chapters. Ronald Aminzade and Shana Cohen’s productive and positive critiques put the manuscript on the path for publication. My colleagues and friends Arlene Stein and Judith Gerson were a major source of support as I was going through the final stages of this book. My graduate students at Michigan State University and at Rutgers University inspired this book in too many ways, as did my research assistants Lori Barat and Megan Kennedy. I thank the editorial team of the University of Minnesota Press, notably Jason Weidemann, for supervising its publication. (p.x) The research for this book was supported by numerous fellowships and awards from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, notably the 2004–2005 Rita and Arnold Goodman Fellowship, the 2000 Kathleen Cloud International Research Fund, a 2004 Dissertation Completion Fellowship, and a 2002 Dissertation Travel Grant. Complementary research was provided by a 2007 Intramural Research Grant Proposal from Michigan State University. I am grateful to the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program at UIUC for fully supporting the research and the writing of this book. Many papers emerged from this project and were presented at conferences thanks to the support of the Social Science Research Center, the Women’s Studies and African Studies programs at the UIUC, and the African Studies program at Michigan State University. The intellectual journey of writing this book has been profoundly marked by the struggle for gender equality in Morocco. To all the women and men who committed themselves to this goal, I dedicate this book. My personal involvement in this movement increased my awareness of how much of my own upbringing put me on this path. I had seen my mother, Fatema, open books she could not read and scan all the pages as she simulated reading. My father, Abderrahman, a self-educated craftsman and nationalist resistant, believed that education is the most important asset for a woman. For both, I keep the deepest gratitude, love, and respect. Finally, my sisters, Hasna, Hassania, Saida, Leila, and Fatema Zohra, deserve the deepest expression of gratitude for always being there. (p.xi) Introduction Struggles over Political Power: Entangled Feminist and Islamist Movements “The feminist movement is the locomotive; if it breaks down, it will take with it all democratic forces in this country.” With these words, Samira explained why she had traveled all the way north from the southern city of Marrakech to join the feminist rally in Rabat in March 2000. The trains were packed, she added. The socialist mayor of Fez, another major city, offered six buses to shuttle in participants. Upon the buses, men and women were writing slogans: “Yes for the New Morocco, No to Reactionaries.” A man in his sixties was on one of these buses. His daughter, trapped in a bad marriage, had been trying unsuccessfully to obtain a divorce. “Her husband has the last word,” he said angrily. Once in Rabat, participants rushed to their meeting points with friends and relatives. People were coming from everywhere. They gathered first in the neighborhood of the major labor unions before starting to march under the slogan “We share the earth, let’s share its resources,” attracting more of the people gathered on both sides of the street. Others applauded from balconies. In this celebratory atmosphere, feminist groups and their supporters marched in Rabat to request the implementation of a governmental project to reform the sharia-based family law, mudawwana . This is the code regulating men’s and women’s relationship within the family, giving men the upper hand in marriage, divorce, and child custody, among other matters, and justifying these inequalities through highly patriarchal interpretations of the Islamic sharia, or legal code (see Moulay R’chid 1991). Since the early 1980s, demands for reforming this code have become the benchmark of the feminist movement, represented by hundreds of women’s rights organizations and (p.xii) research advocacy centers. The dream of feminist reform only materialized in 1999, when the government proposed the National Plan of Action for Integrating Women into Development (NPA), promising to remove the conditions of gender inequalities from family law. The NPA was the outcome of yearlong teamwork between feminist groups and the newly elected socialist government. It drew heavily upon the United Nations’ conventions on women’s rights, notably the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), all the while ignoring the Islamic sharia as a source of inspiration. Not surprisingly, the project met with virulent opposition by Islamists and conservatives, polarizing Moroccan society and the women’s movement alike, with “secular” feminists supporting the reform and “pro- sharia” Islamists opposing it, driving all of these forces to street demonstrations on March 12, 2000. In Rabat, women and men of all ages and social backgrounds marched together. Veiled and unveiled, in blue jeans and T-shirts, men and women rallied to support the governmental reform. Within the crowds were also representatives of international funding programs and international feminist groups, as well as several parliamentary deputies and members of the government. The number of participants was heavily disputed, with estimates ranging from four hundred thousand, a New York Times estimate, to half a million, as the organizers and their supporting press claimed.1 The event was organized by a network of sixty women’s rights organizations and women’s sections of political parties and labor unions, all present at the march. The rally was only one aspect of the feminist mobilization. For a few days, the capital city of Rabat lived under the rhythm of women’s voices through meetings, conferences, and artistic events. The purpose of these events was to reflect the “discrepancies between women’s subordination in the codification of family law, and their numerous contributions to the country,” stated Fatima Maghnaoui, from the Union de l’Action Feminine (UAF; Union of Women’s Action), a leading feminist organization. Her group was also the focal point in North Africa for the World Women’s March of 2000, a transnational feminist mobilization, launched one year earlier by the Québec Women’s Federation. The World Women’s March was an expression of transnational solidarities among women to eradicate poverty and end violence in women’s lives worldwide. This event gained more meaning for a domestic audience in the face of sustained opposition to the NPA by the Islamists. The latter were also marching. Forty miles away from Rabat, in metropolitan Casablanca, Islamists and conservatives took to the streets in a powerful display of public dissent. Their (p.xiii) rally was spectacular. It was composed of overwhelming numbers of veiled women, most wearing the Moroccan djellaba—a long, loose women’s dress—in what seemed to be a statement of national identity. Qur’an in one hand, women alternated religious citations from the Qur’an and hadīth (prophet’s sayings) with political slogans: “Men and women are equal before God,” and “No to the international conventions on women’s rights.” They came from all over Morocco to take part in what the Islamist press called “the march of the twentieth century,” claiming that one million people marched that day in Casablanca.