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Liberals and
Islamists clash over Morocco "gay wedding"
13 Mar 2008
-Ksar El Kebir, Morocco - When rumors of a "gay wedding" spread through
the northern Moroccan town of Ksar el Kebir, the only evidence produced
was a video on YouTube of a man dancing suggestively in women's clothes.
Three months
later, four people are in prison accused of homosexual acts, Islamists
are decrying a decline in public morals and liberals are warning that
the north African kingdom risks sleep-walking into extremism.
A reputation as a
tolerant, nascent democracy has earned Morocco privileged ties with the
European Union and helped draw millions of tourists to its cities,
mountains and beaches.
But rights
campaigners say the events in Ksar el Kebir are the latest sign that
personal freedoms are in danger as the secular government seeks to
placate powerful Islamists.
"Morocco has
become a society where debate is much freer than before but many people
are not happy with that freedom," said Issandr el Amrani, north Africa
specialist at International Crisis Group. "There is a real risk of
people with conservative agendas influencing politics."
The Islamist
Justice and Development Party (PJD) has become a major political force
by drawing on popular anger at poverty and corruption and calling for
more morality in public life.
Despite lingering
suspicions that the PJD wants to turn Morocco into a purist Islamist
state, the secular establishment sees the party as part of a moderate
religious bulwark against increasingly active and well-organized radical
Islamist groups.
But some say this
attitude has resulted in more restrictions on personal freedoms to
comply with Islamist beliefs. Organizers of an open-air pop concert held
last May to encourage young people to vote in legislative elections were
surprised by what was written about their event in the conservative
newspaper Attajdid.
"It said people
had stripped naked, climbed on the minaret of a mosque and stopped
Muslims praying it was simply untrue," said Reda Allali, singer in rock
band Hoba Hoba Spirit.
"When someone
holds a concert, these populists always trot out their favorite themes:
Zionists, Satanists, drugs, homosexuality and George Bush," said Allali.
In universities,
tensions have grown between left-wing students and Morocco's largest
Islamist opposition movement Justice and Charity, which now dominates
the main student union.
Justice and
Charity, which is banned from mainstream politics because of its open
hostility to the monarchy, has set up informal morality tribunals in
some universities, said Driss Mansouri, philosophy professor at Sidi
Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez.
"If they decide a
couple of unmarried students are in a close relationship, they punish
them. Some students have even been beaten it's a rural mentality," said
Mansouri.
INSULT TO HONOUR
Human Rights Watch
has called for the release of the four men jailed in Ksar el Kebir. The
men say the "gay wedding" only ever existed in the minds of suspicious
neighbors.
The rumors began
after wine merchant and former circus artist Fouad Frettet held a party
for friends and neighbors. Local people said Moroccan Sufi mysticism
featured prominently. A black bull was paraded through the streets and
sacrificed to appease a demon thought to be lurking under a local
bath-house.
The bull was
cooked and eaten while Gnawa musicians who are known for their poverty
and their pleasure-seeking lifestyle provided the entertainment.
When word of the
party spread, partly through the Internet video, thousands of angry men
marched on Ksar's central mosque.
"The police feared
the crowd. If they'd intervened it would have been terrible," said
rights campaigner Abdellah el Baad. The mob attacked the car of a
jeweler accused of funding the party, ransacked Frettet's wine store and
pelted his house with stones and bottles as his family hid within, Baad
said.
Frettet emerged
from hiding a few days later and appealed to the police for protection.
He was arrested and tried along with two jobless men, two laborers, a
barber and a waiter.
He said he had
been a homosexual in his youth but pointed out that he was now married
with children. He was jailed for 10 months for homosexual acts and the
illegal sale of alcohol. Five others were jailed for between four and
six months, sentences that were shortened on appeal.
NO WEDDING
Frettet's
unemployed brother Redouane told Reuters that no wedding had taken
place.
"Allowing this mob
to attack our family was an act of terrorism," he said, dragging
nervously on a cigarette outside the family home, its walls still
bearing the marks of the attack. "Fouad was injured and our mother's
house was destroyed now he's in prison and he's in a bad state."
Political leaders
denied they exploited the situation to burnish their conservative
credentials.
"The crowd reacted
on its own. It didn't need any encouragement," said Ksar el Kebir
council leader Said Khairoun from the Islamist PJD party.
Commentators are
divided over whether what happened in Ksar el Kebir was proof of the
rising power of Islamists. For analyst Mohamed Darif, the issue was
homosexuality, which has always been tolerated in Moroccan society if no
one finds out about it.
"We are dealing
with a conservative society," Darif said. "(Governing party) Istiqlal is
not a religious party but you won't find any Istiqlal leader who'll
defend homosexuality."
Others interpreted
the incident more broadly, seeing it as one more example of a society
becoming more restrictive. "Must we wait until violence breaks out in
full daylight to sound the alarm?" asked current affairs magazine
TelQuel in January. |
