Women’s rights by the grace of the king

[ By Martina Sabra ] In autumn 2003, King Mohammed VI surprised Morocco by announcing a radical reform of family law. This move scored points against the Islamist groups that have long challenged his position. Any hopes, however, that the modernising monarch might give up some of the prodigious power he wields and allow parliament a greater say in running the country, are still premature.


Initial reactions on October 10, 2003 were euphoric. “Bravo, Your Majesty! Bravo, Royal Commission! Bravo, feminists!” enthused Moroccan journalist Hinde Taarji, whose sociocritical magazine Kalima had been banned in 1989 by the then King Hassan II for an article it had carried on prostitution. Bushra Abdu, general secretary of the Democratic League for Women’s Rights (LDDF), was also delighted: “This reform is a big step forward. After fighting and waiting for so many years, we had almost given up hope. Now, at last, something is being done.”

Feminists and human rights activists already regard October 10, 2003 as a date destined to go down in history – as the Friday, the Muslim day of rest, on which King Mohammed VI announced a radical reform of Moroccan family law. The monarch – who is also head of the government, supreme commander of the armed forces, commander of the faithful, the country's most senior legal authority and, according to Article 23 of the Moroccan constitution, holy and unimpeachable to boot – opened his speech in parliament with the customary words “My dear people”. What came next, however, left many open-mouthed. The reform, crafted by the king and the “Royal Commission for Modification of the Mudawwana” (the code of personal status that constitutes Morocco’s family law), went further than most secular feminists had anticipated. Nonetheless, it was formulated in a way acceptable to the conservatives and Islamists who had, so far, been vehemently opposed to equal rights for men and women. “We can go along with this reform because it is rooted in Islam,” said a spokesman for the “Party of Justice and Development” (PJD). “We accept the new law because the focus is the family, not women.”


Archaic rules

Pre-reform family law in Morocco dated from 1957 and was based on an archaic interpretation of Islamic authorities according to the Malekite school of law which is dominant in Morocco. It gave women the right to vote and to stand for election and also conferred a right to free schooling, from which women profited in large numbers. But however much a woman achieved in life – whether she became a government minister, an entrepreneur or an Olympic gold athlete – the mudawwana classed her as a legal minor from the cradle to the grave. “Women could only marry or travel abroad with the written consent of their father or brother,” explains Leila Rhiwi, a communication scientist and politically non-aligned human rights activist who has been coordinating the nationwide feminist alliance “Spring of Equality” since 2001. “The basic principle of marriage was obedience in exchange for maintenance. In other words, the husband earned the money and the wife did as she was told. If she didn’t, she could be repudiated at any time.”

Moroccan family law was not only out of line with international conventions to which Morocco had signed up; it also jarred with economic reality in the country. Women make up a third of Morocco’s working population; an estimated 20 percent of mothers act as household heads. And thanks to a quota system, at least 30 seats in (a rather toothless) parliament are now reserved for women.


Core elements of the reform

Even staunch Islamists and arch-conservatives conceded that reform was overdue. No one, however, anticipated such radical change. The most important aspects of the new legislation are:
1. Husband and wife have joint and equal responsibility for the household and family; the wife is no longer legally obliged to obey the husband.
2. Men and women can enter into matrimony with equal rights and of their own free will. Women no longer need a guardian but can appoint someone to represent them if they wish.
3. The possibilities for a man to have as many as four wives (polygamy) are severely curtailed.
4. A husband can no longer simply repudiate his wife and divorce is made easier for women. Uttering the renunciation formula is no longer enough; nor is a divorce settlement certified by a notary. The divorce petition of a husband or wife must always be authorised by a state-appointed family court.
5. The minimum age at which a woman can marry is raised to 18; exceptions are possible if approved by a judge.
6. Children born out of wedlock (during the "period of engagement") are recognised as joint offspring on marriage. Where a husband refuses to acknowledge paternity, he can be compelled to take a paternity test. In the past, that was not possible in Morocco. Therefore, many fathers failed to take responsibility for illegitimate children and the number of single mothers in the country soared.

This family-law reform by royal dispensation is the latest outcome of a long-running contest between secular and religious forces which has revealed deep social and cultural splits in Moroccan society. The religious establishment’s dislike of the West and the modern world is not new in Morocco; as a symbol of Islamic identity, family law was a touchy subject even in colonial times. The most timid attempt at reform brought the country’s conservative legal scholars charging into the fray.

When it was announced in 1998 that polygamy and repudiation of a wife were to be abolished as part of a World Bank-sponsored “National Plan for the Integration of Women in Development”, the Islamists turned the sensitive issue of family law into a permanent bone of contention. The biggest Islamist organisation, the extra-parliamentary Justice and Spirituality Movement headed by Sheikh Abdessalam Yassine, and the Party of Justice and Development (PJD) in parliament denounced the plan as a Western import. It was a US imperialist plot, they said, aimed at destroying Islamic culture. Similar roars of outrage were heard from the conservative Arab nationalists, especially from the rightists in the Istiqlal Party.

Political scientist Professor Mohamed Tozy reckons that debate was always motivated by power politics: “The Islamists are not interested in women's rights per se; they use the debate as a public platform to gain political ground. They want political power.” Because of the lack of dependable polls and social research, no one can say precisely how big the Islamist movement in Morocco really is. One thing is certain, though: if free elections were held in Morocco today, Islamists would form the most powerful group in parliament.


Consequences of terrorist attacks

Since September 11, 2001, however, the Islamists themselves have been under unprecedented pressure. This pressure became even more intense after the Casablanca bombings of May 16, 2003, which killed at least 44 people and sent shock-waves through what until then had been a peaceful country. Now, spokesmen and spokeswomen for Morocco's Islamist groups are firmly distancing themselves from their puritanical and violent co-religionists in Egypt or Saudi Arabia. With regard to women's rights, for example, Sheikh Yassine stresses that true Islam is a great deal more progressive than Morocco's old family law. He says, for example, that there is nothing in the Koran or prophetic tradition which prevents a woman from concluding a matrimonial agreement. “Family planning is also allowed”, says young doctor Fatima Kassid, one of Yassine’s inner circle in the Al-Adel wal Ihsan group, “because what's the good of Muslims breeding like rabbits? We want to win but not by weight of numbers. The pill and other forms of contraception are not only allowed for a while under Sharia law; they are actually encouraged in the interest of future generations.”

On the question of violence, Sheikh Yassine says that although Muslims face hostility on all sides, they must not resort to force; instead, they should put up peaceful resistance as the only way to persuade others of Islam’s superiority. However, thorny details of the laws that might prevail in an envisaged Islamic state – entailing punishments such as flogging for adultery or the amputation of a hand for theft – remain unclarified. Asked by the author for a clear statement on such issues, Nadia Yassine, the charismatic daughter of the Sufi sheikh, refused to say categorically whether she was against “corporeal punishment” or not.

The timing of the king’s speech in October 2003 is unlikely to have been coincidental. The Islamist opposition – almost uncontrollable prior to the Casablanca bombings – was now on the back foot; many who had been vaguely sympathetic to the radical Islamist cause were disaffected. At that point, Mohammed VI took the initiative and sent out a clear signal to Morocco's small but efficient middle class, which he needs on his side. Morocco, he told them, has to move with the times and women should help it do so. The focus, however, is not on the individual human rights of women but on protection for the family as the basic unit of society as well as the development and assurance of a cohesive Moroccan society.

The leftist feminist groups that dominate the women's rights debate in Morocco today have long been divided on the issue of Islamic family law: some favour reform, others want to see it abolished. Interviewed in private, a good number of activists admit that they think Sharia is an outmoded body of law and religion is not an acceptable basis for legislation. Bushra Abdu of the Democratic League for Women’s Rights would also like to see a strict separation of religion and state. But she is a pragmatist and realises that, with Islam playing a central role in many of her compatriots’ lives, there is no prospect at present of changing Morocco’s faith-based political system. “Our organisation is constituted on the basis of universal principles and declarations of human rights,” Bushra Abdu says, “but we must not let the Koran and Islamic tradition be hi-jacked by demagogues. We have to come to terms with it ourselves and promote interpretations in tune with the times.” And to get those liberal interpretations across to Morocco's many illiterate women and men, the LDDF has produced audio cassettes in Arabic and Berber and is distributing them free of charge nationwide.


The reality of poverty

In future, Morocco’s women could be among the most emancipated in the Arab world, alongside Tunisians. For the moment, though, precious few will have a chance to exercise their rights – owing to a lumbering legal system and to poverty. More than two thirds of women in Morocco cannot read or write; in some rural areas, 90 % of girls have never seen the inside of a school. Nearly half of all Moroccans have to live on the equivalent of one euro a day. In the slums fringing the country's cities, millions of people live in appalling conditions with no access to clean water or basic medical services. The Moroccan state, plundered by the elites and hopelessly indebted, has largely left its citizens to fend for themselves. Many feminists see the fight for emancipation as part of a campaign for social justice. “We of the LDDF spend several weeks a year in the provinces, where we set up tents and offer medical assistance, legal advice and literacy courses”, Bushra Abdu explains. “Many women and men then also come to our seminars on women's and human rights”.

Buoyed by the family-law reform promising largely equal rights for women, the secular women’s and human rights organisations feel they are in an upwind. But anyone hoping that the next thing on the agenda might be democratisation of the political system is likely to be disappointed. Morocco is currently one of the most liberal, heterogeneous and politically exciting countries in the Arab-Islamic world and it has a highly dynamic and creative civil society. But for all its formally democratic institutions, Morocco is still a feudal absolute monarchy, ruled by a king who is deemed divine and thus unimpeachable. The basis for democracy, the separation of powers in which executive, judiciary and legislature operate independently and monitor one another’s actions, is not compatible with that kind of constitution. Press freedom is suppressed: newspapers critical of the regime are banned, journalists are sent to jail for years for trivial offences. Half a dozen journalists – among them the noted satirist Ali Lmrabet – were released from prison at the beginning of January 2004 before having served their full sentence. This was not the result of legal process, though; they were pardoned by the king. The few civil rights granted by King Hassan II in the early 1990s after the period of political suppression known as the “years of lead” are being progressively eroded by the anti-terrorist laws passed in May 2003.

A great deal of water is going to flow into the Atlantic before the dream of Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi comes true and women (and men) in Morocco are respected as individuals. Even so, the reform of Moroccan family law is a bold move and historic signal. It shows that Islam and modernity are compatible. And after years of stagnation, October 10, 2003 has given many Moroccans a sense that things in their country are moving at last.