As a reminder: Tomorrow, I will be hosting Moroccan journalist Boubker Jamaï at the University of California, Riverside (HMNSS 1500, 11:00 am) for a talk on democratization. The talk is free and open to the public, so if you’re in the Southern California area, please come.
I have an opinion piece up at The Nation website about the imprisonment of Fouad Mourtada in Casablanca two weeks ago. Here is how it begins:
On the morning of February 5, plainclothes officers in Morocco picked up Fouad Mourtada in Casablanca, blindfolded him, and took him to the police station, where they reportedly tortured him until he lost consciousness. His crime: He had created a Facebook profile of Crown Prince Moulay Rachid, the King’s brother.Mourtada is 26. He did what millions of other people his age do every day–create profiles, real or fake, on social networking websites. There are fake profiles on Facebook for everyone from Brad Pitt to Mother Teresa, from King Abdullah to Osama bin Laden. There are 500 profiles for George W. Bush. Mourtada did not appear to think he was committing any crime. Indeed, despite being a computer engineer, with a degree from the prestigious École Mohammedia des Ingénieurs, he did not use a proxy server to protect his identity. Nor did he derive any profit, monetary or otherwise, from the Facebook profile. It may have been a youthful prank or a twenty-first-century homage, but either way it landed him in jail.
You can read the entire piece over at The Nation. The court is due to reconvene today, and I can only hope that cooler heads will prevail.
Updated to say that Fouad Mourtada has been sentenced to three years in prison.
Next Tuesday, I will be hosting Moroccan journalist Boubker Jamaï at the University of California, Riverside, for a talk on democratization. Here are the details:
Two weeks ago, a computer engineer by the name of Fouad Mourtada was arrested by Moroccan police in Casablanca for creating a fake Facebook profile of Prince Moulay Rachid, the king’s brother. Mourtada’s family found out about his arrest through the news, and had to wait a week to be allowed to see him. Mourtada says he was tortured when he was taken into custody. There are thousands of fake profiles for politicians, royals, and celebrities, but Mourtada has been charged with identity theft and risks up to five years in prison. Several Moroccan bloggers, including this one, are maintaining radio silence today. You can visit the Mourtada family website here.
A Moroccan man by the name of Fouad Mourtada has been arrested and put in jail because he created a fake Facebook profile for the king’s brother, crown prince Moulay Rachid. The official Moroccan news agency MAP did not even bother with the presumption of innocence:
Les services de sécurité marocains ont procédé à l’arrestation, mercredi à Casablanca, pour pratiques crapuleuses d’un individu qui a usurpé l’identité de Son Altesse Royale le Prince Moulay Rachid sur le site Internet www.facebook.com, a-t-on appris de source policière.
The accused is referred to as having “villainous practices.” The release has since been taken down from the site, but you can read its Google cache. It’s unclear how the police found the man, and whether Facebook released his IP address.
Just the other day, a New York Times reporter called to ask me about blogging in Morocco, and the relationship between new media and traditional media. The Moroccan government has so far–and wisely–left bloggers alone, but if someone can get put in jail for something as silly as a fake Facebook profile, then bloggers should be worried.
For your amusement: Facebook profiles for George W. Bush, Tony Blair, King Juan Carlos, and King Abdullah.
(Via Larbi.)
A recent World Bank reports finds that the Arab World is falling behind other regions in terms of education. And the worst performers? Read this:
The region had not seen the increasing literacy and school enrollment witnessed in Asia and Latin America, they said.Djibouti, Yemen, Iraq and Morocco were ranked the worst educational reformers.
Iraq had to contend with a U.S. military invasion. What, exactly, is Morocco’s excuse?
This past weekend, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies hosted a conference on the work of Clifford Geertz, the famed anthropologist who wrote extensively about Morocco (and Indonesia.) The conference was organized by Susan Slyomovics and Lahouari Addi, and featured conversations between anthropologists from around the world. Unfortunately, I was working on a new piece, so I wasn’t able to attend any of the panels, but I managed to get away on Saturday night to attend the musical performance that took place at the Fowler museum.
The Aza music ensemble played Tamazight-language songs that fused indigenous Moroccan beats with modern sounds. They used the oud and qraqeb, but also the guitar, tabla, clarinet, and banjo. I don’t speak a word of Tamazight, but the music touched me and their rhythms made me want to get up and dance. I took a photo of them with my phone, but as you can see I was a bit far from the stage. You can listen to some excerpts from their music here. Aza was co-founded by two Moroccan-Americans from Santa Cruz, Fattah Abbou and Mohamed Aoualou, and includes four talented artists from the area as well.
Afterwards, the municipal orchestra of Sefrou took to the stage, accompanied by two guest artists from the Los Angeles area. The featured vocalist was the amazing Abderrahim Souiri, who performed an array of Andalusian songs; he was joined on stage by the equally amazing Raphael Skouri, who I believe is the cantor of the Baba Sale synagogue. Souiri and Skouri alternated singing verses in Arabic and in Hebrew, and their voices complemented each other beautifully, culminating in a rousing rendition of the late Abdessadek Cheqara’s “Bent Bladi.” It was nice to have an evening in which so many different components of the Moroccan music scene were present. The lyrics were in Tamazight, Arabic, and Hebrew, and were sung by Arab and Berber, Muslim and Jewish, male and female musicians.
The New York Times has a travel piece on Marrakesh, which I fear will result in even more tourists crowding the city. When we were there last spring, I saw a moronic British tourist sticking his ass out of one of the windows of the Ben Youssef Medersa. The floors of the seminary’s student rooms were damaged by all the activity, and one of the guides kept touching the exquisite plaster work in the inner courtyard with his bare hands. (The photo above gives you a small idea of what you’ll see on any given day at the famous medersa.) The tile floors at the Bahia palace were completely falling apart, and people had no regard for the artifacts. The Menebhi palace was also starting to show signs of wear. Sad.
Jennifer Needleman and Joshua Asen’s documentary film I Love Hip Hop in Morocco, which screened this past weekend at the Arab Film Festival in Los Angeles, and at the Casablanca Film Festival in Morocco, is a rare treat: A film that shows the country in all its complexity. The picture follows several hip hop bands (H-Kayne, Fnaire, DJ Key, Bigg, Brown Fingazz, and Fati Show) as they attempt to set up a hip hop festival in three big cities: Meknes, Marrakesh, and Casablanca. They try to get funding and sponsorship, they rent space, they get permits, they print flyers, they rehearse, and as we follow them through this journey we get a rich portrait of these artists. We visit with DJ Key at home and hear about how he abandoned his work in an architecture firm to focus on hip hop. We hear about the choices they make in their lyrics. For example, the members of Fnaire refuse to use the word ‘fuck’ (”We don’t talk like that”) while solo rapper Brown Fingazz defends his use of the epithet ‘nigga’ to refer to himself and his friends in the medina. They share their struggles, particularly with freedom of speech and with logistical support. They talk about their private lives. The only woman rapper in the film is a young high school girl in Fez, whose parents are extremely supportive, but who has to win the crowd when she goes on stage during the festival. If you have a chance to see this film at the festival near you, don’t miss it.
Clip: “Issawa Style” by H-Kayne.
Following the legislative elections of September 2007 in Morocco (which, while generally transparent, had low levels of voter turnout) the new government has been announced. The new Prime Minister is Abbas El Fassi, of the Istiqlal Party.
Mr. Abbas El Fassi is perhaps best remembered by the young people of Morocco as the man who, in his capacity as Minister of Employment in 2002 was responsible for the Al Najat fiasco. At least one person has committed suicide in the aftermath of that scandal. Abbas El Fassi is also the man who, earlier this year, was quoted in Tel Quel magazine as saying that the efforts to promote Darija Arabic in Morocco are part of a conspiracy by the francophone elite to hurt the unity of the Arab peoples. (Rien que ça? one is tempted to say.)
Several ministers have no party affiliation (Chakib Benmoussa, Taieb Fassi Fihri, Ahmed Toufiq, et al.), and are technocrats chosen for their experience in the private sector, and in that sense the country will continue to be managed as it has in previous iterations.
This new government is quite remarkable, however, for its record number of women ministers: Ms. Amina Benkhadra (Energy & Mines); Ms. Yasmina Baddou (Health); Ms. Nawal El Moutawakil (Sports); Ms. Nouzha Skalli (Family); Ms. Touria Jabrane (Culture); Ms. Latifa Labida (liaison to National Education); and Ms. Latifa Akherbach (liaison to Foreign Affairs).
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