The muezzins' calls echo well before daybreak, summoning the Muslim faithful to daily prayers and reminding foreign tourists in the Moroccan capital how far they are from home.
But the rising decibel level is deepening fault lines between a government drive to modernize and a wave of rigorous political Islam.
Morocco, a country of 33 million people, gets more than 7 million tourists a year and there are worries that some may be put off by the five heavily amplified calls a day, each lasting five minutes, to “hasten to the prayer, hasten to the prayer.”
Muslim purists counter that authorities are compromising religion to please Westerners and the country’s liberal elite.
The frictions are happening in a country that is considered moderate on matters of religion and is a US ally at a time when there are fears that al-Qaeda is establishing itself in North Africa.
Morocco has lately been shaken by two different cases in which the government, or wealthy Westerners, have been accused of plotting to force down the volume on the muezzins who make the call to prayer.
Nouzha Skalli, the minister for family and social affairs, is accused of seeking legislation to lower the volume on muezzins in tourist zones. Newspapers have asked whether Skalli, a feminist and former communist, is trying to curb Islam and impose secularism on Morocco’s overwhelmingly Muslim society. Some hard-line imams have cursed her during public sermons.
“It made huge waves, even a tsunami,” Skalli said in an interview.
She wouldn’t say what exactly she had proposed, since it happened at a closed-door Cabinet meeting, but denied suggesting a law to muzzle the muezzins and said her statements were taken out of context.
“It was a complete manipulation,” she said.
Skalli views her job of promoting women’s rights as part of a wider struggle between two models of society: one of “modernity, equality and openness” versus “closing-off and backwardness.” She suspects she was targeted “because I’m a woman and because I represent modernity.”
Earlier this year, Annie Laforet, a Frenchwoman, was blamed for the closure of a mosque next to the luxury guest house she runs in the old town, or medina, of picturesque Marrakech. The claim, which Laforet denied, caused outrage in the local press and Laforet says she received death threats on Islamist Web sites.
Local authorities backed her denial and then reopened the mosque, from which the prayer call now blares every morning about 4:30am and then again an hour later.
“It’s a bit loud, but it’s fine,” Laforet said. “Tourists know it’s part of living in the medina.”
Still, Mohammed Darif, a Moroccan political scientist and expert on Islamism, says hardliners increasingly are depicting the tourist influx as a threat to Muslim values.
The wealthy may support the government’s pro-Western and liberal values, he says, “but the Morocco of poverty, backward countryside and urban slums is increasingly averse to tourism and the internationalized elite.”
He says some Moroccans complain of walled-off resorts that make them feel unwelcome.
“It’s discrimination by wealth and tourism is highlighting the sore,” he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS