Laila Lalami

Earlier this year, and with great fanfare, the Moroccan government announced that it had just completed the training of the first class of ‘murchidates,’ women religious leaders, at Dar Al-Hadith Al-Hassania, a seminary normally reserved for males. The women of the class of 2006 will be assigned to mosques. Their tasks will be to answer religious questions, help with literacy programs, provide legal guidance on the recently-reformed family law, the Moudawwana, and so on. They will not, however, be able to lead prayer (this is why they are not called ‘imamat,’ but ‘murchidates’, i.e. ‘guides.’) As has been pointed out in a million and one press releases, the appearance of official, state-sanctioned murchidates is a first in the Arab world.

This is a good step forward. I support the training of these women, and hope, someday very soon, that they, too, will be allowed to lead prayers. (Let the hate mail begin.) There are, however, a number of questions that arise from this move, including: Why the government decided to do this, why do it now, how do the religious parties view this move, what the women hope to achieve, how their male classmates react, etc.

Some of these questions were addressed in a Wide Angle documentary that aired on PBS last night. The film, “Class of 2006,” was produced by Charlotte Mangin and directed by Gini Reticker, and it was shot during four brief weeks in May, in time for its July 2006 airdate. Visually, I found it slightly uninspired. For example, I didn’t recognize my hometown of Rabat, where Dar Al-Hadith is located. There were far too many shots of the stereotypical Morocco: turbaned men, crowded souks, tall minarets, old monuments, the medina, the tannery in Fez, the desert at sunset, even dromedaries (the first time I saw a dromedary was on the back of a Camel pack of cigarettes; the second was at the zoo. But somehow, every movie about Morocco features them.)

But beyond all the tourist clichés, there were some very interesting segments and some stunning contrasts between the women featured in this film. The main character was Samira Marzouk, a twenty-nine year old woman who had always been interested in religion and, when she was told by her father about the program, jumped on the opportunity to enroll. She had just gotten married the year before, and her husband looked on very proudly during the interviews and the graduation ceremony. Marzouk seemed full of energy and eager to start her tenure at the mosque she had been assigned to, but she was gently chastised by a Moroccan TV journalist for being ‘naive,’ for not understanding that the government was using her. I think, though, that Marzouk does realize the PR aspect of this, but somehow prefers to stay focused on what she can achieve through her own work of counseling at mosques.

Dr. Rajaa Naji El Mekkaoui, a tenured professor of law at Université Mohamed-V, was one of the most articulate and thoughtful of the people interviewed. Dr. El Mekkaoui is the first woman to deliver a religious lecture before the king as part of the Ramadan lecture series broadcast on TV. She is also one of the women who was brought in to train the imams and murchidates, and encountered some resistance from the male students. She had to convince them, through her own work and scholarship, that there is a basis for the training of their female classmates.

Fouzia Assouli, a feminist activist who has been involved with women’s rights for quite some time, was also a great interview subject. She currently serves as secretary general of the Ligue des Droits de la Femme, and has spearheaded literacy and legal rights training programs. Assouli has seen the work of organizations such as hers become more difficult as Wahhabi ideology gained ground in Morocco. Because she was one of the few women interviewed who had no direct connection with the program (either as a student or as a teacher), she provided a more dispassionate perspective on things. One point she made was that when she and her colleagues pushed for reforms they were often rebuffed and told they were trying to import imperialist deas.

Nadia Yassine, the spokesperson for the islamist group Justice and Charity, made precisely this point, unintentionally of course. For example, she derided the literacy programs that the government and NGOs have been conducting with older women, saying (I am paraphrasing here): “They teach them to read A, B, C. What is that? That’s just enough to know how to read ‘Coca-Cola’ and go buy it. This is an imperialist move.” She then went on to say that, in her view, women in their 40s and 50s and 60s should be sacrificed, and the focus should be on the younger generation. There can be no argument, of course, with the idea that Morocco needs a wide, grass-roots campaign for literacy. But deriding those programs that target older people was really quite troubling. I wonder if the women who are benefiting from such programs (some of whom were interviewed as well) share Yassine’s view that they should be “sacrificed.” I should also point out that one of Morocco’s greatest writers, Mohamed Choukri, was illiterate until the age of 20, and by the end of his life had written several novels and become the chair of the Arabic department at his college in Tangier. Such a man would have been “sacrificed” under Yassine’s plans.

I have more to say, but I really have to cut this short. I just wanted to give those people who had missed the documentary an idea about what it was like. I think it will be available for streaming on the program’s page very soon. You can also read an online conversation at the Washington Post with the producer and director of ‘Class of 2006′

The latest issue of the London Review of Books is now available. There’s a piece by Elias Khoury, translated by Peter Clark, about the invasion of Lebanon, an essay by Amit Chaudhuri on Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City, and a review by Adam Shatz of Michel Warschawski’s memoir, On The Border. (This last one is only available to subscribers, unfortunately.)

Last Friday, I linked to a piece by David Morley in the Washington Post, in which he compared coverage of the war in Arab, European, and American media. My friend Jonathan Edelstein, who describes himself as “pro-Israel, pro-Lebanon, anti-indiscriminate slaughter” sent me this note in response, which I’m posting with his permission:

The link about the difference in media coverage between the US, Europe and the Arab world was interesting, but I think the bottom-line difference involves attitudes rather than geography. The difference is between three propositions: (1) Israel is fighting justly in a just cause; (2) Israel has a just cause but is fighting unjustly; and (3) Israel is unjust in both its cause and its tactics.

The American media, with exceptions, tends to support proposition (1). I don’t think its support of this proposition has much to do with Israel, though; it’s more because American thinking tends to conflate the concepts of just cause and just tactics. The default American opinion is that if someone starts a fight, the other party has the right to finish it by any means necessary, which means that to many Americans, the only significant fact is that Hizbullah struck the first blow.

Most of the European media seems to favor proposition (2) – e.g., the recent Guardian editorial suggesting that Israel’s tactics are unacceptable but that its war aims vis-a-vis HA are reasonable. This is my opinion as well, which may be why I often find myself agreeing with the western European war coverage.

The Arab media – again with exceptions – centers around proposition (3), arguing that HA’s actions were justified by Sheba’a Farms or support for the Palestinians, or that Israel is an aggressor nation by definition. There has, however, been some criticism of HA’s irresponsibility even within this framework.

(more…)

Melissa Meltzer reviews Faïza Guène’s debut novel Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, finding it “remarkable.”

An Israeli rabbi has blamed the latest war in the Middle-East on gay people:

“Why does this war break out this week, all of sudden with little warning? Because this is the exact week the Jewish people are trying to decide whether the gay pride parade should take place in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv,” Pinchas Winston, a noted author, rabbi and lecturer based in Jerusalem told WND.

Dear God: Why do people hate in Your name?

(via.)

In The Guardian, Maya Jaggi writes about her experience judging the Caine Prize this year.

The July/August issue of the Boston Review is now available, with a great short story by Jennie Berner, an appreciation of R.K. Narayan’s Malgudi Days by Jhumpa Lahiri, and a review of Kathryn Davis’s The Thin Place by poet G.C. Waldrep. Check it out. (Oh, and a tip: Avoid the public-opinion feature. It will depress you.)

Over at the Guardian blog Natasha Walter examines the work of several recent novelists who have attempted to get into the mind of terrorists: Salman Rushdie with Shalimar the Clown, Martin Amis with “The Last Days of Muhammad Atta,” and John Updike with the very imaginatively titled Terrorist:

But John Updike, like Salman Rushdie and Martin Amis, is attempting to give you what is in a putative terrorist’s mind as he looks into the eyes of potential victims. I can’t even imagine how difficult that must be artistically, and I can see that it is also difficult politically. Whether a writer chooses to show a terrorist as motivated by a hatred of American foreign policy, or by nothing but religious fervour, or by purely worldly disappointments, or by nihilistic love of death, he or she has entered an ongoing political debate.

If that makes things hard for the writer, it also makes things hard, in a different way, for the reader. On the one hand we are used to this being political territory, but on the other we want something very different from a novel than what we get from the newspapers: we want imaginative understanding, not political positions; we want to get close to a fictional individual rather than stand in judgment over a real group; we want the challenge of speculation rather than the reassurance of certainty. We want art, not news, at a time when news seems to be drowning out art.

Walter says she was disappointed by all three works, because “research has replaced empathy.” I find myself largely in agreement with her, with one exception: I think that out of the three (Amis, Updike, Rushdie) the only one who has pulled it off is Rushdie–and coincidentally, he’s the only one who has actually had any brush with real terrorists.

With Lebanese civilian deaths now well over 300, Alan Dershowitz proposes a “continuum of civilianity.” :

Nor can women and children always be counted as civilians, as some organizations do. Terrorists increasingly use women and teenagers to play important roles in their attacks.

Some civilians, therefore, are less innocent than others. I told you we were trapped in a George Orwell novel, didn’t I?

Ben MacIntyre reviews Pankaj Mishra’s new book, Temptations of the West for the New York Times Book Review:

Mishra reports on a world in which the cultural definitions are constantly evolving, eliding and colliding. His travels are also interwoven with pungent commentary on modern politics in South Asia. Few politicians escape unburned; some are roasted. Indira Gandhi is held up as a triumph of mediocrity: “a not particularly sensitive or intelligent woman . . . exalted by accident of birth and a callow political culture into the chieftancy of a continent-size nation.”

While there is fury in Mishra’s account of his homeland and its neighbors, there is also a fierce love. He is particularly moved by the sight of ordinary Indians trudging off to vote for politicians who often do not deserve it.

It’s a very positive write-up, but I was surprised at the frequency of certain labels: “angry book,” “fury in Mishra’s account,” “book will enrage many Indian readers,” “not a gentle book,” and so on. Compare and contrast with this review by Charles Foran in the Globe and Mail, which uses words like “vivid,” “intrepid,” “daring,” and where the adjective “angry” is nowhere to be seen:

Were Temptations of the West simply a collection of travel essays that ponders how places like India and Nepal negotiate a globalized planet, it would still be a fine book. But the intensity of Mishra’s prose suggests that he wants the disruption, and the upheaval, to be felt viscerally. Daring reportage, and an obvious empathy for ordinary people, goes some way toward this ambition.

As important, though, is the use of his own narrative as evidence of the “bewildering complexity” faced by individuals swept along by those negotiations. If, as he claims, the movement for one traveller at least was from “ignorance and prejudice to a measure of self-awareness and knowledge,” then it might prove the same for certain readers. Great books, and great books only, can have that rare effect.

Intrigued, yet?