Agnostic What?

I've been touring Morocco this summer and I spent quite a pleasant time rediscovering my own country. I thought I would embark into an intellectual as well as physical journey, setting about to enquire into how much change has occurred since I've been away. I was interested in the subtlest forms of change, shifts in attitudes, the trends, amongst the youngsters of course and in details of everyday life's interactions. I'm not pretending to have neither the knowledge nor the ambition of a professional sociologist, but I had a keen desire in keeping up to date with the environment in which I grew up, and with the people I consider most close to me. That's a feeling I wouldn't have imagined experiencing: the sheer anxiety of loosing track with home.

Life standards have undeniably improved in Morocco compared to some not very long time ago. Great disparity in the distribution of wealth of course with ridiculously wealthy people, affording levels of luxury and opulence seldom seen in western countries. Centralized power based on the archaic (but not un-sophisticated) system of governance called the Makhzen... etc. etc. Thinks we (Moroccan bloggers and many friends of this blog) have extensively talked about and tried humbly to analyse. Not much really has changed from this view point unsurprisingly. But that's not what I was interested in probing into anyway.

The interesting thing I detected was a new and interesting way of imagining one's identity in a country like Morocco, torn between tradition and modernity, the west and the east, the north and the south, Arabhood and Berberhood, staying and leaving, accepting and revolting, obedience and dissent, Arabic and French.

Not once, not twice but numerous times I found myself agreeing with fellow countrymen who refused to be considered neither as traditionalists nor as ultra-liberals. And the question of how to put a name, a label on this 'middle group' of Arab/Berber/Muslim/secularists kept haunting me.

"I'm an Agnostic... Muslim" said one of my interlocutors. Agnostic what? How on earth one can on the one hand doubt the existence of a Superior Being and on the other, keep a title of belief? It's like saying that the Pope is planning for a wedding or that Mr Bush has got a brain. Not that I have a problem with people believing or not believing. That's none of my business. But I first thought, unless one adheres to the Orwellian principle of Doublethink, reconciling both things was simply unworkable. Unless... unless... Unless one doesn't consider Islam as a mere system of belief but rather as a cultural matrix. In other words, I can be a Muslim if I choose to keep up to Islam as a culture, a civilization, an identity, regardless of whether I believe in God or not, or whether I'm a practicing Muslim or not. Of course! That is brilliant!

But then I thought: that's quite a controversial topic in a region of the world where freedom of thought is not common place.

The impression I have today is that Muslims (in the agnostic sense of the term), like European Christians before them, have seen the horrors resulting from religion meddling into politics and into their lives and freedoms, and from religious fanaticism and subsequent violence, and have started a very slow, very patient semi-conscious process of obliterating this slippery way leading inexorably to fascism and totalitarianism. On the other hand, many have also well understood that unless one clings to his or her own culture and identity and avoids self-loathing, individuals and the whole social structure runs the risk of permanent apathy and unproductiveness.

The Good Arab Department

If you read papers like those of Oriana fallacci, Daniel Pipes, Alain Finkielkraut, Bat Ye'or and others about a so-called Arab/Muslim conspiracy to take over Europe, and some other complicated theories about a hypothetical European-Arab Axis (Eurabia) aimed at crushing... guess who... Israel (surprise! surprise!), you have the feeling that their arguments are so ludicrous that it is unlikely that their assumptions would ever caught fire.


The surprise comes when you talk with people whom you assume, are of higher education and distinctive intellect, reproducing and embracing the same moronic theories.

I was called a "Good Arab" and I barely retained my rage at the person who uttered the words and who probably acted more out of ignorance than out of any conscientious racism; albeit "positive". Adding insult to injury, the lady (a doctor) went on to explain that "most Arabs (she knew) were so attached to their cultures of origin that it makes them so inherently ineligible for integration into the western civilization," and she went on hinting at "a probable concerted attitude by the Muslims (she often switches inadvertently from Arab to Muslim) to re-establish their [incompatible] culture on European soil..."

...Gosh!

I was wordless. "now" I finally replied, "are you (meaning: you, white, Christian, catholic I guess) going to create a special set of characteristics to distinguish 'Good Arabs' like me from the other pesky folks?"

"Maybe you should park all of us in different departments" I added, "and also pin labels on our clothes so that we would be easily distinguishable... huh!"

"My word! what makes people like you any different from the Nazis?" At which point, to my greatest relief, we parted company.

I spent the last two or three weeks wandering around Morocco, enjoying my newly acquired status of a married man (which is the main reason that kept me away from blogging that long), but today I realize again how Europe despite all the advantages it unquestionably offered me, remains a mined field in spite of all the horrors of the past.

Strange Encounter

There she stood in the darkest corner of the room, looking dazed, probably altered by some earlier sipped doses of heavy alcohol but still looking terribly handsome. The room was saturated by a thick fog of cigarette smoke, some rock music was beaming out of the loudspeakers connected to a laptop reading some "illegally" downloaded mp3 files and everybody was speaking and laughing out-loud. Although I'm not an alcohol drinker, I rarely object to sharing my friend's (almost all of them drinkers) party times. Indeed I enjoy it most of the time. The scene I'm describing happened last Saturday in my colleague's place when he invited us all over to celebrate his... mm... how shall I say?... "career promotion." I know... it sounds pompous, but it was more of a pretext for partying. Anyway; at one point that night, I was approached by this young lady:

"Hi! my name is Cécile. I know you're a Moroccan. My parents were Moroccans too"

At which point I woke up from the state of lethargy I was slipping into. The whole evening I was listening to stupid argumentation about football, politics and some boozed-up stories of absolute nonsense, so I was pleased to engage into what seemed to be a promising conversation with a becoming interlocutor of the sort any sober being would be pleased to chat with.

"Yes indeed I am a Moroccan. Have you ever been in Morocco yourself?"

Her eyes were looking tired but she managed to gather strength and looked as if she was struggling to focus on every word she was going to pronounce. As if her life depended on it:

"No, I've never been in Morocco and my parents left the country when they were teenagers; they fled the country with the French in the late 50's and they never wanted to go back. The country will never be as it was in the past, my father always explains."

I thought: "F-L-E-D the country? what the hell is she talking about?"

"Are you sure you're talking about Morocco? I don't understand. If your parents were Moroccans, why would they have to leave with the French, why didn't they stay and enjoy independence?"

"My parents are Jews and they were afraid of the aftermath" she answered. "They feared the reaction of Muslims after the French protectors were gone. Now; don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Muslims but you can see how Jews are treated there nowadays... I think my parents took the right decision."

I always worry when anyone starts saying: "I do like Muslims, BUT..."; "I'm not a racist, BUT..." It's often a disclaimer for an issuing covered up racist diatribe. At that point, I felt that my blood was starting to boil and that I had to hold my fire and try to dig this intriguing matter up as dispassionately as I could.

"With respect, I really don't see what you're talking about. In my whole life I've never heard of or witnessed a Moroccan being attacked or discriminated against because he was a Jew. Yes you can find some scarce instances of mean racist behavior of the kind you'd find in every western society, but nothing really malign. In fact Jewish people -with all due respect to your parents- have fled the country not because they were threatened but because they were encouraged to do so, or deliberately pushed into a state of irrational fear of the Arabs (I mean Muslims) by the so many pernicious activities of Israel's Zionist agencies."

She turned red, but I didn't quite work out whether she was hurt, upset or just going to go berserk.

"I'm a secular Jew, I don't quite care about religious matters. In fact I'm agnostic. I'm suspicious of everything religious. You can't deny mounting antisemitic feelings amongst Muslims... and you cannot just put the blame on Israel... the only democracy in the region and a secular state."

There we go. My goodness! I glanced to my watch thinking: "I don't wanna get bogged down into this... Is this really worth loosing my time?" I was really annoyed by what I've just heard 'cause I really started to like the irresistibly attractive lady standing in front of me, looking offended.

"I'm not denying mounting antisemitic feelings not only amongst Muslims," I replied " but in every corner of the planet and I'm deeply saddened and concerned by that. It's very difficult to deny the obvious and I have no reason to denying that... But I think you've missed my point. Antisemitism is a despicable phenomenon; a symptom of a much profound disease. If you think like a Doctor you would surely want to treat the symptoms but you know that as long as the deep and pernicious source is left undiagnosed, you're running the risk of relapse. And you don't have to work it out that hard. The diagnosis has got a name: it's Zionism. Now, sure Zionism cannot be blamed for all the filthy antisemitic nut cases out there but it's surely a fundamental motive for many ignorant extremists and racists who find in Israel's actions and those of her supporters, the ideal pretext for further stigmatizing and defaming Jews for no reason other than they are Jews. But I think that you should stop deluding yourself with regard to Israel: First it is not a democracy... Did you get that? IT IS NOT A DEMOCRACY. No democracy in the world would divide its citizens into two or three classes: Ashkenazi being first-class citizens, Sephardi and Falasha being arguably the second, and last & indeed least, the unwanted pesky Arabs put in some sort of non-citizenship status. As for Israel being a secular state: I agree that the founding figures of Zionism, from Herzl onward, have been for the most part secular; in fact most of them were atheists, but you have to admit that Judaism was used by those same figures to gain political and moral support for their scheme. If you mistrust anything religious as you claim, I don't see how you can miss the ludicrously obvious religious undertone of the Israeli state which claims to represent all Jews on this planet?"

Now she's seriously blushing. May be I should work out a way out of this. I don't want to be ripped apart by this young lady. Cowardice? Yea! maybe. Who wouldn't lack courage in front of such a delicate creature? She finally replied:

"I don't like Israel, nor do I like Arabs... I mean Arab countries... I mean States. I know where you're coming from but I don't like politics anyway. I don't like politics..."

Well I didn't ask her to dislike Israel or even to love Arabs... All I was asking for, is a bit more of fairness. Now I can't help defining as racist anyone proclaiming his or her dislike or even liking of one group of human beings or another because this is the typical kind of irrational mindset that brought terrible tragedies in the very near past. I mean Arabs, Jews, Blacks or Asians are not clones or a bunch of perfectly homogeneous individuals; therefore there is no reasonable basis for liking or disliking each group as a whole. There is no black and white (no pun intended) kind of answer for that.

We decided to cut short the conversation, changing the subject and trying to enjoy the rest of the evening, not without a little pinch of disappointment in my heart. "Never trust appearances" my grandmother always told me... yes! but I still wonder if I should have asked for her number... to expand on the conversation of course not for what some twisted minds would think... of course!

(picture credit: "JMC")

Ramadan Ramblings

Today I had quite a philosophical chatter with one of my colleagues (not a Muslim). He wondered how were agnostics and atheists coping in this holy month of Ramadan within their overwhelmingly practicing Muslim countries. I replied that most of them have to hide their non-practice of Islam or non- abidingness with it's rules, unless they are really looking for trouble!

I think there is a big hypocrisy attached to this issue: while it's not considered a big deal for someone not to pray; while people who don't pay the Zakat (Muslim alms) are generally ignored, others who don't fast during Ramadan run the risk of being ostracized and stigmatized. I witnessed myself, during my years of study in Casablanca, many instances of that.

One example: I remember when I used to meet with a bunch of pals to study in one of our friend's flat in quartier mâarif in Casablanca. We were quite a heterogeneous group of friends, as far as politics and religion are concerned: there was the observant practicing Muslim, the agnostic and the total atheist; the liberal minded, the conservative and the die hard leftist. One thing is for sure: we were (contrary to what one might expect) very tolerant to each other's thoughts and differences. So, it very often happened that we gathered during the month of Ramadan, to study a bit, laugh a lot. Addicted smokers were "allowed" to smoke, as long as they keep the smoke of cigarette away from the observant believers and more importantly, away from the vestibule of the flat, very close to the front door where tobacco odor could infiltrate into the main building's lobby and attract attention (and anger) of the neighbours. Others who might want to eat were "permitted" to take their lunch. Of course the appetizing and tempting smells of food too, had to be kept behind the kitchen door. So it goes, in a spirit of mutual respect... until that day!

I remember this very well: we were "studying" (having fun would be a more appropriate description), making a hell of a noise, the smokers having totally ignored rule N#1 (remember? keep the cigarette smoke away from the front door). Suddenly, we heard voices of people yelling in the main hall of the building and then hysterical knockings at the door. The first idea (of course) was NOT to open the door and pretend that nobody's inside, which was a stupid thing to do because the bloody cigarette smoke's smell was infesting the whole place. So someone, thinking -I suppose- he would sort things out in the most calm and peaceful way, took the "suicidal" decision to open the door. That was it. We were (all of us) gratified by two hours (I kid you not) of tantrums and a barrage of insults, boos, anger and animosity, alternatively interrupted by some (fortunately) aborted attempts of physical attacks. The whole thing ended as it started: chaotic but quick. Followed, some long minutes of silence and contemplation. Then the first mutual accusations. Some chocked laughter. Again some mutual recriminations. Followed by the first courageous attempts to quit the building bearing in mind that some angry lads maybe waiting for that precise moment, so they could appease their wrath (an anger that is aggravated by hunger- remember people are fasting). Finally everybody could get out smoothly with no problem whatsoever, and even if our host that day had some troubles with his neighbours, things eventually settled down peacefully.

Overall, it's a story that ends up quite well. But I know of other instances where circumstances and consequences were far more serious. So I think that there is a serious issue here that needs to be addressed. As I previously wrote, Muslims are overwhelmingly tolerant; backward phenomenas like these, have more to do -as I see them- with ignorance and lack of public debate in the Muslim countries in general. Believers and non believers should learn to respect each other. Common sense isn't it?
... By the way... Happy New Ramadan for believers and non believers alike!

(picture by "Andrea Baldassari")

Satire Therapy

The Necessary Catharsis

The least that religious extremist murderers deserve, is to be mocked, ridiculed and laughed at.
These psychopaths have tarnished and destroyed the image and reputation of Muslims around the world and have given the opportunity to widespread bigotry and racism to flourish across the Western world.

"Jihad the Musical" is a comedy that opened last Wednesday in the Edinburgh summer Festival. That has apparently stirred up controversy, not least amongst Muslims but also among victims of religious extremism who set up a petition against the show.

Satire is part of a necessary and healthy process of coming to terms with things that preoccupy or terrorise peoples minds, especially things held as taboos and forbidden territories; things like religion or politics. For the victims, it's a necessary cathartic process, to overcome terrible fears.

One can say a lot about shows like "Jihad the Musical" or satirical cartoons like "Islamic Rage Boy," which makes fun of an angry bearded young Muslim, or about stand up comedians like Allah Made Me Funny troupe... For some it's "bad taste"; for others, it's provocative... But if you ask me: should it be banned all together? the answer is definitely NO!... if you don't like it, you don't watch it; plain and simple.

To be honest, I don't know if the authors of these kind of shows and cartoons intended to provoke debate or if it is simply a cynical marketing strategy... nor do I know if their intention is to make people less afraid or if it's a disguised attack on Islam... The fact is that I DON'T CARE. Indeed, I found those jokes terribly refreshing and hilariously funny.

Stretching the limits, going across the red lines, mocking the powerful, be it religious or political, is a terribly exciting fantasy. What's more, it's (again) a healthy process to break the permanent state of grief and suspicion that has been poisoning intercultural relationship in the recent years.

I can understand the concerns of the victims of terrorism and religious violence (many of whom are Muslims by the way), but people have to get over the fact that, that's what creativity is all about: exploring the limits. If all artists become strictly respectful of so-called conventions and "moral" limits, the world would become a really boring place.

Should there be any limits? of course. But a question remains: Who defines those borders? I would personally be suspicious of religious or political establishment, imposing them from above and I would rather go for a more spontaneous process that can only occur in democratic and free societies, where people themselves through the independence of judiciary, mark the limits.

I remember a satirical movie released just recently in Germany, directed by a German Jew, making fun of Hitler and his Nazi regime. Despite some critics, the German public enjoyed and appreciated the show.

The majority in the Arab-Muslim "street", (those who very rarely get the media attention, which is given to the more radical and vocal) are overwhelmingly tolerant and open, believe it or not. In fact, the most popular jokes now (more than ever) are related to God, sex and politics.

The media focus on the most extreme, gives this distorted image of Muslims, who, as any other people in the world, have more immediate and worldly concerns.

(picture by "vista")

The Need For a Muslim "Copernicus"

A (Mini-)Manifesto

No! we (Muslims) are not the center of the world; far from that.

No! we(Muslims) are not the holders of "Absolute Truth".

And nothing... absolutely nothing justifies the horrors committed in the name of Islam.

Islam should be first and foremost a vehicle for assimilation and tolerance. It's a cultural matrix for identity.

The levels of intolerance and violence committed in the name of Islam have reached awful heights. Moreover, this is fuelling racist and irrational attacks on Muslims.

Islam, as any other religion, carries a potential of violence and extremism. There's an urgent need for a profound reform of the religious institutions and a modern reading of Islam itself. We (Muslims) can not afford anymore watching our intellectuals and the elite of our societies fleeing their home countries because of a suffocating freedom's environment and the devastating state of Human Rights, caused either by authoritarian despots or by fundamentalist crazies.

We (Muslims) must have the courage and integrity to engage in the painful process of introspection, to identify our religion's failures (at least in the way it is used and abused) at helping most of Muslims embrace modernity and secularism in the most smooth and healthy way possible.We should have the honesty to recognise the dangers of conflating religion and politics.

We should allow free thinking and freedom of conscience. People should never be forced to believe in a Superior Being for the only reason that they were born Muslims. A critical reading should always be permitted of the so-called "sacred texts", and the public should have his say in all matters of public life.

Women are and should be considered absolute equals of men (arguably, the Moroccan "Family Code" should be held as a model.)

All forms of corporal punishment or death penalty should be abolished. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be a base and a commitment in that matter.

Whilst it is true that many Muslims have their lands occupied, that civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq are killed on a daily basis in the name of the Western civilization (or in the name of Islam), that others are oppressed in their own countries by despots supported, financed and often armed by the West, we (Muslims) should have the intelligence to distinguish on the one hand the Western civilization and its overwhelming benefits on the peoples of the world, and on the other hand, the ill-advised foreign policies of some of the Western leaders often motivated by a neo-imperialistic mindset.

( look at the conversation taking place on BBC's World Have Your Say's blog)

(picture by meedapt.org)