Influences morocco

Influences morocco

Moroccan Culture



In the year 2009 Moroccan culture is a unique blend of influences from various eras within Morocco's history, globalization, ethnic differences, and wide discrepancies in the living conditions of people within Morocco. The following is a basic reader put together to understand Moroccan culture, which to be said, changes decidedly based on region, language and socio-economic status with in Morocco.

Moroccan Culture 101

Culture Shock! Morocco by Orin Hargraves (available on Amazon). This book is a basic overview of Moroccan culture at a very practical level. It relates more to traditional Moroccan customs than modern youth culture.
A Deeper Look

Humor and Moroccan Culture by Matthew Helmke (available on Amazon). This book started as the author tried to learn Moroccan Arabic. When he didn't understand a joke during one of his language sessions, although he knew all the vocabulary, it sent him on a quest to understand Moroccan life and thought more. This book is the fruit of that journey.
We Share Walls: Language, Land, and Gender in Berber Morocco by Katherine E. Hoffman (available on Amazon). An examination of Berber men and women's use of language to shape their belonging in Moroccan society.
Moroccan Folktales by Jilali El Koudia (available on Amazon). A collection of narratives from various regions within in Morocco and includes an introduction to Arab folktales, and a bibliography of Moroccan folktale collections.
Lords of the Atlas: The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua by Gavin Maxwell. This narrative recounts the customs and rituals of daily life in pre-independence Morocco while recounting the story of El Hadj T'hani El Glaoui, the tribal warlord who helped the French rule Morocco.
Traditional Moroccan Cooking: Recipes from Fez by Guinaudeau, Laurent, and Harris. A collection of traditional recipes from Fez, Morocco.
Year of the Elephant: A Moroccan Journey Toward Independence by Leila Abouzeid. This was the first novel by a Moroccan woman translated into English and recounts the narrative of a woman who is divorced by her modernizing husband. It contrasts the struggles between modern and traditional values in Morocco.
In and Out of Morocco: Smuggling and Migration in a Frontier Boomtown by David Arthur McMurray. This book examines smuggling of goods into the country by Moroccans living abroad and how the influx of these Moroccans every summer effect the ideas and values of the community.
Morocco: Globalization and Its Consequences by Cohen and Jaidi. The book examines the development of Morocco within the Islamic world of North Africa. It examines Morocco based on the effects of globablization and how that contrasts with Algeria, Libya and Tunisia.
Morocco: The Islamist Awakening and Other Challenges by Marvine Howe. An account of the early days of independence in Morocco.
The Mellah of Marrakesh: Jewish and Muslim Space in Morocco's Red City by Emily Gottreich. This book examines the patterns of how Jews and Muslims as well as other expats interacted in Marrakesh.
Knowledge and Power in Morocco by Dale F. Eickelman. The book examines Islamic education and its role in Morocco from Independence to the Present.
Film

Definitive List of Moroccan Movies is available on the Friends of Morocco website. This list is more than a list of Hollywood movies shot in Morocco, they are movies about Moroccan life and culture.
Moroccan Music

A sample of Moroccan music is available at the Moroccanmusic.com. They also have information on the Fes Sacred Music Festival and the Gnawa Festival.
An extensive sample of Moroccan music is available on morocnet. This is a thorough sampling of various types of Moroccan music.
Paul Bowles compilation of Moroccan Music is available at the American Folklife Center
Articles on Moroccan Music are listed on the Friends of Morocco website
The Rough Guide to the Music of Morocco (available on Amazon). A compilation of traditional and modern Moroccan music.
Amazon has surprisingly large sample of Moroccan music.






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Morocco: Lift Restrictions on Amazigh (Berber) Names

Morocco should stop interfering with the right of its citizens to give Amazigh names to their children, Human Rights Watch said today.

Numerous Moroccans living in cities and villages around the kingdom and abroad who chose Amazigh first names for their newborns have been refused when they applied at local civil registrars to record those names. Human Rights Watch wrote a letter to the interior minister, Chekib Benmoussa on June 16, 2009 detailing five such cases and soliciting an explanation. There was no response.
"Morocco has taken steps to recognize Amazigh cultural rights," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "It now needs to extend that recognition to the right of parents to choose the name of their child." 
Morocco's Law on the Civil Registry stipulates that a first name must have "a Moroccan character." Local administrators apparently interpret that requirement to mean names that are Arabic-Islamic, even though the Amazigh people are native to Morocco. The law gives parents the right to appeal a refusal in court and to the High Commission of the Civil Registry. Over the years, the commission has ruled on dozens of Amazigh, European, and other non-Arabic-Islamic names, accepting some and rejecting others.
The five cases documented in the Human Rights Watch letter, involving both residents of Morocco and émigrés living abroad, resulted ultimately in victories for the parents. But they succeeded only after bureaucratic delays and lengthy appeals, sometimes enduring hostile or humiliating questions from Moroccan civil servants and the insecurity of having a newborn who, for months, had no legal identity.
"We are happy that these parents prevailed, but no couple should have to fight their government, at this special time in their life, to be able to name their baby," Whitson said.
On August 26, a first instance court in Tahla (province of Taza) court approved an Amazigh name in a sixth case, allowing Abdallah Bouchnaoui and Jamila Aarrach, to name their five-month-old daughter "Tiziri," which means "moon" in Tamazight, the Amazigh language. The victory came only after the couple, who live in the commune of Zerarda in the Middle Atlas, had endured months of uncertainty.
For a seventh couple, the uncertainty continues. On March 11, Rachid Mabrouky went to the civil registry in the Saâda district of Marrakesh to register his two-day-old daughter as "Gaïa." Mabrouky told Human Rights Watch that the official on duty refused to accept the name, contending that it was "not Moroccan." Mabrouky went to the civil registry at the city's prefecture, only to be told the same thing.
When he explained that the name "Gaïa" was Amazigh and therefore Moroccan, the agent on duty persisted in his refusal, exclaiming, "You Amazigh are all fanatics," Mabrouky said. Mabrouky and his wife, Lucile Zerroust, who is French, filed a case in administrative court, where the case is still pending. "Gaïa" is the name of an ancient Berber prince.
Parents of an infant who is not recorded by the civil registrar may face obstacles when applying for a passport for the child, reimbursement by state medical insurance, or other services. Parents who persist in demanding that the government record Amazigh names tend to be Amazighs who are politically active. They say that for every couple like themselves, there are others who avoid giving their children Amazigh names, fearing a humiliating refusal from local officials followed by administrative problems.
The Amazigh are the indigenous people of North Africa and are overwhelmingly Muslim. Today, the two largest Amazigh populations are in Morocco and Algeria, where some are actively engaged in seeking cultural, linguistic, and political rights. In 2001, King Mohammed VI of Morocco created a Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture and began a program to teach the Tamazight language in schools.
Several Moroccans who are Amazigh told Human Rights Watch that when civil registry agents are presented with uncommon first names, they consult lists prepared periodically by the High Commission of the Civil Registry. These lists include dozens of non-Arab-Islamic names, each one marked "accepted" or "refused." Human Rights Watch has copies of some of these lists. According to the law, the commission is composed of representatives of the interior and justice ministries and the kingdom's official historian.
International jurisprudence supports the freedom to choose one's name. The United Nations' Human Rights Committee ruled in the 1994 case of Coeriel et al v. Netherlands, "Article 17 [of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] provides, inter alia, that no one shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence. The Committee considers that the notion of privacy refers to the sphere of a person's life in which he or she can freely express his or her identity.... [This] includes the protection against arbitrary or unlawful interference with the right to choose and change one's own name."
"Unless a first name is patently offensive or objectionable or harmful to the interests of the child, authorities have no business curbing the right of parents to make this very personal choice - especially not when the curb amounts to a form of ethnic discrimination," said Whitson.
Human Rights Watch's letter to Minister of Interior Benmoussa, seeking information about the cases involving the naming of five Amazigh children - Ayyur Adam, Massine, Sifaw, Tara, and Tin-Ass - is online at: http://www.hrw.org/node/85427 (English); http://www.hrw.org/node/85429 (Arabic).



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Amazigh or Arab: keep tolerance!

Amazigh or Arab: keep tolerance!

One of the issues that attract a lot of debate in Morocco when brought to conversation is “Tamazight”. From the question of race, identity, culture, to alphabets in which the language should be written in, and the right of “Amazigh” people to hear and use their language in public administrations as well the use of “Tamazight” in Moroccan school.

“Tamazight” was, still and will always be one of the hot and complicated subjects for it is a vital element of Moroccan identity. And as any controversial subjects with many ramifications, everyone tackles it from an angle and defends his point of view but sometimes ignore the other’s even if it may contain certain truth.

The debate intensifies more between “Arabs” and “Amazighs” and in many cases raises conflict especially when fanatics from both sides come together. And everyone tries to intimidate the other and exclude his right of existence particularly when they enter in race discussions, and who is from where, and who has the right in Morocco?

For some “Arabs”, and insist on some because not all of them has this view, “Tamazight” is only a primitive language and culture that has no value in the 21st century, and there is no benefit to knowing about it or the culture of “Amazigh”. And those who defend ideology goes so far and see it as a threat for “Arabic”, the holly language of Quran, and that it might be also a threat for Islam. And of course, it’s only an ideological use of “Arabic” for some goals and gains and has nothing with reality. From when Arabic language is necessary to be a Muslim, if it was, most of Asian people wouldn’t have been Muslims, but they are. Defending “Tamazight”, language and culture, has never been against Islam. And for “Amazigh” people haters, and they are numerous, I just tell them where we can take the bulk of Moroccan society if you don’t like them?

For some “Amazigh” fanatics that see “Arabs” as enemies, I also ask them the question where can we take those you think are “enemies” away from you? They have the right to exist as you think you have, and if some of “Arabs” really have hurt “Amazighs” and “Tamazight” and some of them still and will always fight their right of existence fiercely, but not all of them do. And hatred you might harbor toward “Arabs” if not harm the cause you are defending, will never serve it.

To be objective, “Tamazight” has suffered for long, and it has sustained a lot of prevention, and now it’s not bad if it gets some care, and its constitutionalization in the late constitution is just the entrance, and a lot of work still needed.

I’m an “Amazigh” and I have a lot of “Arab” friends and never judge them by their origins. And when I want to defend “Tamazight”, I never defend race because in Morocco, few could be completely sure of their origins, and absolutely be certain if they are pure Amazigh or pure Arab, but I defend culture and language no matter what your roots are.  We have to accept each other with different langue and culture, and this tolerance is something we have to keep in mind when dealing with anyone different from us, whether he is “Arab”, “Amazigh” or whoever.




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