The Moroccan street: No to violence, no to Western disrespect

From taxi drivers to professors, Moroccans weigh in on the cartoon controversy.

By Mark MacNamara

Read more: Politics, News, Danish cartoons

Photo by AP/Jalil Bounhar

Moroccans in the capital city of Rabat protest caricatures of the prophet Mohammed last week.

Feb. 9, 2006 | IFRANE, Morocco -- The Mohammed cartoons are the talk of Ifrane, a town of 10,000 one hour's drive from Fez up into the Middle Atlas Mountains. They are the talk in the marché, where Berbers and Arabs, academics and shepherds, women veiled and not, come to shop and chat; in sidewalk cafes, where TVs play soccer matches and burning embassies; in small apartments in back streets, where women stand at the stove and men mull over the many rumors; and in mosques, where Friday prayers also serve as a community gathering.

"You can insult me, my mother, my father, but not the Prophet," my friend Abdelghanni tells me, going on to explain the heart of the matter. He's 45, an Arabic teacher in an English-language high school. "If you draw a picture of the Prophet, you will make a mistake. It will be false. We already have his description from the Koran: his eyes, his nose, his face, his hair, and so we don't draw him because we don't need to and because we don't want" -- he searches for the word -- "to pollute our image."

If nothing else, the Mohammed cartoons, first published last September in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, have highlighted a great mystery about the Muslim world: how the mere depiction of Mohammed -- much less cartoons portraying him as a terrorist -- could be such an invasion of privacy, such a violation of one's contact and contract with God. Perhaps one revelation to come out of all this may be that by drawing Mohammed down to such an earthly plane, you're fooling with the hope mechanism of millions of believers, just at a time when modernity has never seemed more oppressive and, in many places, the pain of feeling backward has never been stronger.

In Morocco, which is nearly 100 percent Muslim, the reaction to the cartoons has been muted, which is the nature of the country, and which, some would say, reflects its distance from Israel and Palestine. Still, with this incident you can hear all the old cacophonies, all the old questions: Why isn't such a once glorious civilization more advanced, and can the state ever be separated from faith in an Islamic society? And will the fear ever go away?

In the past few days, I've talked to a variety of Moroccans whose views stretch from conservative to liberal. They are tradesmen, academics, officials, students and journalists. The consensus, contrary to the apocalypse on television, is that the cartoons are highly disrespectful, but violence is neither warranted nor part of Islam. The consensus has become a unifying force.

But on the question of what significance this event has, and who should apologize, and how much, and whether other measures should be taken, such as drawing the United Nations into the matter, the answers are more diverse. Many Moroccans lay the uproar at the feet of the European press, but I didn't speak to anyone who advocated burning buildings or flags, or even honoring a boycott. Regardless, all the Muslims I met say they feel locked in a cold war between the East and West with no key in sight.

Mohammed, a young taxi driver I've gotten to know in the last year and a half, tells me what he thinks about the cartoons. He's studied law; his father is a shepherd. Like a lot of other people, Mohammed can't find a better-paying job. "It shows great disrespect," he replies and shakes his head. "But better not to make too much out of it. And anyway, history is not going to change."

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