Zakia Salime - Between Feminism and Islam: Human Rights and Sharia Law in Morocco

(p.i) Between Feminism and Islam: Human Rights and Sharia Law in Morocco

Zakia Salime

University of Minnesota Press

Minneapolis London

(p.iv)

Chapter 5 was previously published as The War on Terrorism: Appropriation
and Subversion by Moroccan Women, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture andSociety 33, no. 1 (Autumn 2007): 124.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Salime, Zakia.
Between feminism and Islam : human rights and Sharia law in Morocco /
Zakia Salime.
p. cm.(Social movements, protest, and contention; 36)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8166-5133-7 (hc : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8166-5134-4 (pb : alk. paper)
1. FeminismMorocco. 2. Muslim womenPolitical activityMorocco.
3. Women in IslamMorocco. 4. Human rightsMorocco. I. Title.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.

To the people who are remaking the Middle East and to my mother, father, and Yasmine

This book owes a great deal to the support and commitment of many women. I am grateful to Nadia Yassin, Mona Khalifi, Leila Rhiwi, Khadija Mufid, Bouchra Abdou, Ghizlane el Bahraoui, Naima Benyaich, Oufae Benabdelkader, Najia Zirari, Najat Razi, Rabea Naciri, Rachida Tahiri, Halima Banaoui, Soumaya Benkhaldoun, Saadia Wadah, Khadija Rougani, Fatema Bouslama, Khadija Zaki, Fatouma Benabdenbi, Sabah Shraibi, Samira El-Adnani, Fatema Mghanaoui, Souad Al-Amari, and many others, who tolerated my intrusive questioning, hosted me in their homes, and introduced me to others.

I am most grateful to my mentors and friends Manisha Desai and Michael Goldman for providing intellectual leadership and professional support during the research and writing of this book. My most sincere gratitude goes to Fatema Mernissi, Rachel Schurman, Paul Zeleza, Assata Zerai, Jan Nederveen Pieterse, Winnifred Rebecca Poster, and Rebecca Saunders for providing various kinds of support to this research. I am thankful to Suad Joseph for reading the earlier drafts of this book, and to Sean Brotherton and Xuefei Ren for their significant feedback as I was crafting the first chapters. Ronald Aminzade and Shana Cohens productive and positive critiques put the manuscript on the path for publication. My colleagues and friends Arlene Stein and Judith Gerson were a major source of support as I was going through the final stages of this book. My graduate students at Michigan State University and at Rutgers University inspired this book in too many ways, as did my research assistants Lori Barat and Megan Kennedy. I thank the editorial team of the University of Minnesota Press, notably Jason Weidemann, for supervising its publication.

(p.x) The research for this book was supported by numerous fellowships and awards from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, notably the 20042005 Rita and Arnold Goodman Fellowship, the 2000 Kathleen Cloud International Research Fund, a 2004 Dissertation Completion Fellowship, and a 2002 Dissertation Travel Grant. Complementary research was provided by a 2007 Intramural Research Grant Proposal from Michigan State University. I am grateful to the Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program at UIUC for fully supporting the research and the writing of this book. Many papers emerged from this project and were presented at conferences thanks to the support of the Social Science Research Center, the Womens Studies and African Studies programs at the UIUC, and the African Studies program at Michigan State University.

The intellectual journey of writing this book has been profoundly marked by the struggle for gender equality in Morocco. To all the women and men who committed themselves to this goal, I dedicate this book. My personal involvement in this movement increased my awareness of how much of my own upbringing put me on this path. I had seen my mother, Fatema, open books she could not read and scan all the pages as she simulated reading. My father, Abderrahman, a self-educated craftsman and nationalist resistant, believed that education is the most important asset for a woman. For both, I keep the deepest gratitude, love, and respect. Finally, my sisters, Hasna, Hassania, Saida, Leila, and Fatema Zohra, deserve the deepest expression of gratitude for always being there.

Struggles over Political Power: Entangled Feminist and Islamist Movements

The feminist movement is the locomotive; if it breaks down, it will take with it all democratic forces in this country. With these words, Samira explained why she had traveled all the way north from the southern city of Marrakech to join the feminist rally in Rabat in March 2000. The trains were packed, she added. The socialist mayor of Fez, another major city, offered six buses to shuttle in participants. Upon the buses, men and women were writing slogans: Yes for the New Morocco, No to Reactionaries. A man in his sixties was on one of these buses. His daughter, trapped in a bad marriage, had been trying unsuccessfully to obtain a divorce. Her husband has the last word, he said angrily. Once in Rabat, participants rushed to their meeting points with friends and relatives. People were coming from everywhere. They gathered first in the neighborhood of the major labor unions before starting to march under the slogan We share the earth, lets share its resources, attracting more of the people gathered on both sides of the street. Others applauded from balconies.

In this celebratory atmosphere, feminist groups and their supporters marched in Rabat to request the implementation of a governmental project to reform the sharia-based family law, mudawwana . This is the code regulating mens and womens relationship within the family, giving men the upper hand in marriage, divorce, and child custody, among other matters, and justifying these inequalities through highly patriarchal interpretations of the Islamic sharia, or legal code (see Moulay Rchid 1991). Since the early 1980s, demands for reforming this code have become the benchmark of the feminist movement, represented by hundreds of womens rights organizations and (p.xii) research advocacy centers. The dream of feminist reform only materialized in 1999, when the government proposed the National Plan of Action for Integrating Women into Development (NPA), promising to remove the conditions of gender inequalities from family law. The NPA was the outcome of yearlong teamwork between feminist groups and the newly elected socialist government. It drew heavily upon the United Nations conventions on womens rights, notably the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), all the while ignoring the Islamic sharia as a source of inspiration. Not surprisingly, the project met with virulent opposition by Islamists and conservatives, polarizing Moroccan society and the womens movement alike, with secular feminists supporting the reform and pro-sharia Islamists opposing it, driving all of these forces to street demonstrations on March 12, 2000.