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

Ifrane lies on the edge of a forest and at the foot of an ancient volcano. The town is atypical of Morocco, not least because of its red-tile chalet-style architecture, a legacy of the colonial period, when in the 1930s the French fashioned tree-lined streets, lakes and elaborate parks as a reminder of home. The town is also atypical because it rides along on a tourist economy, winter and summer, and because it is home to Al Akhawayn University of Ifrane, a small, select, American-style school of 1,200 students.

Last Friday, the imam at the university gave his Friday khutbah, or sermon, and addressed the issue of the cartoons. "I was afraid he might put more gas on the fire and trigger protests," says Bouziane Zaid, an associate professor of communications. "But he didn't do that at all. He gave a message of love and peace and said simply that the best way to defend the Prophet is to obey him, follow his example, and be kind to others."

Zaid adds that the imam also mentioned something Zaid and many people he knows have come to believe -- that these cartoons are all part of a war against Islam, which has greatly intensified since 9/11.

In Morocco, the Friday sermons are orchestrated. This is in keeping with the patriarchal nature of the country. Each week, every imam receives the same talking points from the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and these points form the basis of the Friday khutbah. This is not only a way to influence public opinion on worldly matters but also a way to tune the country theologically to what the highest-ranking religious leaders think is most significant.

The official line in Morocco regarding the Mohammed cartoons was delivered last weekend by Le Conseil Supérieur des Oulemas, the supreme council of imams, which is presided over by King Mohammed VI himself. A council statement condemned the cartoons and exhorted "les sages et les décideurs" to protect liberty and moral values from the menaces of irresponsibility, hatred, rancor, perfidy and bad taste. That reference to the "wise ones and decision makers" to maintain official standards is no doubt a diktat to the media. In Morocco, there is no divide between the government and the press.

In 2003, a journalist was given a three-year prison sentence for insulting the king with satirical cartoons and articles. Reporters Without Borders, an international watchdog group, states that TelQuel, one of Morocco's only publications that does in-depth reporting, faces continual harassment from Moroccan courts.

Ali Bouzerda, a spokesman for the government station TVM, puts the cartoon controversy this way. He says he is speaking only for himself. "The government is saying we cannot accept this, and we want to send a signal to the Western media that freedom of the press is OK, and we understand that the Danish government can't dictate to newspapers, but people in authority need to consider the effects of irresponsibility and hatred.

"At the heart of this discussion is the feeling that America is trying to divide the world into two parts, Christian and Islamic, and now mythologies are being spread, so that everything that is part of Islam is bad, and every Muslim is a terrorist. This is the West's caricature of the Middle East."

I speak to several men from Ifrane and the surrounding area, all professionals. One is an architect; another, a contractor; and a third, a former muqaddim, that odd civic player first developed by the French as an informer, who serves as an intermediary between the local government and the people. His job is to know everyone in a town or district, resolve small problems, and report suspicious activities to the governor, who may then make a report to the Ministry of the Interior in the capital.

The men ask not to be identified. That's typical of people in all professions, including academia. There is a fear of being noticed and identified with a viewpoint, and perhaps questioned by police, a legacy of les années de plomb, when, between 1956 and 1999, some 50,000 people were imprisoned, detained, murdered or raped, or simply disappeared. Even with a truth commission, old habits of fear linger.

The men all agree that it is critical for Muslims to react to the insulting cartoons so that in the future the West might think more in terms of responsibilities than rights. They wouldn't go so far as the Lebanese cleric who suggested that had the fatwa against author Salman Rushdie been carried out, this would all never have happened. But, they say, "a warning shot is required."

They say the only way to resolve the situation is for the Scandanavian countries, where the cartoons first appeared, to apologize. As for the separation between government and the press, one of the men replies, "It is like you have a family with four children, and one of them is bad and one day he does some damage to a neighbor. The only way to resolve that is for the father and the three good children to go and apologize. You see, the father is like the government, and the press is like the errant boy."

One man explains that in the Sunnah, the second most authoritative source after the Koran, the hadith says that if the Prophet is profaned, the perpetrator must apologize or be killed. "It's like this," he says. "It can't be changed."

Next page: "The West accuses Arabs of being terrorists, and then Arabs act like it"