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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘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
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS