Essaouira boasts now more festivals than any other Moroccan city. Yesterday was the last day of the "Festival des Andalousies Atlantiques". Plenty of Andalusian music, and a powerful flamenco show that stunned the audience. The women were fierce and superb. A man danced like a God.

I can't think of a dance metaphor that illustrates better than flamenco the pride of being a woman, that of being a man, and how both clash in a fury of black and red.

There are no compromises. No slowdowns, no intermezzos, no moments of tenderness. Romance is excluded. It is the opposite of Hollywood in portrayal of man-woman relationship. Although the same shoes are used, it is miles away from tap-dancing. These shoes stomp. Flamenco shows us a conflictive encounter in a steady crescendo. The heat of passion which leads to drama. Death by exhaustion. The dancers sweat and are arrogant. They know they are beautiful.

Strange coincidence: the very same day of the flamenco show, the king had held a historical speech, introducing the reform of the Mudawana, the Moroccan legislation for the matrimonial regime, based on the shariâ from the Quran. It was a very courageous move, because it grants equality to women in marriage, divorce and heritage issues, and it is the reform that civil society and women rights associations were struggling and waiting for.

Second important point, the proposed reform is going to parliament to be amended. It is the first time a legislation proposal of this amplitude is following this route. It is a political gesture to enhance credibility of the democratic institutions.

Morocco is a young, sexy and dynamic country, but also extremely complex, since its fabric is interwoven with age-old tradition. Layers add themselves upon layers, and coexist. Visually (the fellah walks in the streets along the hip), but more significantly, in the mental structures.

Patriarchal behaviour is deeply rooted. The vulnerability of women fuels dramas upon dramas. Today, women in the rural areas have two options. Fleeing to the city where they end up as prostitutes, or slaves in wealthy families. The other option is staying in their village waiting for a man to offer them marriage.

Children suffer enormously as well. Not because of poverty. Because of socialization. They are forced in the mould of a role dictated by conservative values, leaving no room for individual aspirations. There is a high suicide rate among the young. 70% of these youth who regret being born are female.

Westerners used to the principle of equality of sexes are quick to criticize patriarchal societies. But what is often overlooked, is that the issue at stake is the renouncement of privileges. Can the rich countries of the world renounce their wealth? Share it with the rest of the world? And lesser than that, can the rich countries refrain from post-colonialist behaviour in external politics? Obviously not. How do you justify oppression? You don't. You try not to talk about it. The same thing apply here. Men rarely admit their patriarchal tendencies. And they talk reluctantly about the King's speech. It is a conspiracy of power and systematic abuse, which seems to be a constant in human history.

Out of my conversations with young people -- smart, modern, educated -- I realized that they were upset with the reform of the Mudawana. My older friends, experienced and married, were in favour. If people younger than the King himself are more conservative than the latter, then the future holds bad news. The reform is important, but equally important is the mentality. If the latter doesn't change, women won't live better, no matter how many reforms pass through parliament.

The boys were upset for a number reasons. First, they really have a degraded vision of women, inverting the causes with the effects. If they see women prostituting themselves, they say women are bad. Oblivious to the fact that these women have no options, and oblivious to the fact that it is boys like them who create the demand for pay sex. It really is absurd.

Second, because the King, who is the Commander of the Believers, has negated the Quran, which is God's word. How? For instance, he reduced the number of women that a man has the right to marry from four to two. Even if polygamy is not widely practiced, the boys I talked with saw in the King's speech some crossing of line that is not permitted. The Quran explicitly allows four women. It is not subject to interpretation. It's there, written. Four. 2 + 2.

Taking distances with the dogma is necessary in all religions. In Judaism, for example, rabbis have stated that the law of retaliation in its "eye for eye" formulation, dating from the Hebrew classical period, was inacceptable, converting it to a system of fiscal penalties where the offender has to pay its victim reparation. Until last century, Jews have reinterpreted the sacred text, and those reinterpretations, if found wise and beneficial by the community, reach the status of Law (Talmud and Halacha). Yehoshua Leibowitz, one of the most prominent figures of twentieth century Judaism, was constantly scolding the central rabbinic authorities of Jerusalem for their lack of reformative courage. Only in a dynamic perspective can religion evolve and continue to play its role as a social project.

I read a paper by a scholar who wrote:

"General opinion among Muslim historians of Law and Western scholars has been that the right to use an independent judgment on the sources of dogma was cut off in Sunni Islam sometime in the tenth century, or perhaps one or two hundred years later. This is covered in the term, "the closing of the door of Ijtihad".

Then:

"The reopening of Ijtihad has clearly been a standard point on the agenda of anyone wishing for a reform of Islamic thought in our age, although some of the more consequent modernizers have rejected Ijtihad as being to restrictive for a complete renewal of Islamic thinking required for the modern period."

But there is a strong disagreement among the Moroccan people regarding that question. So-called "Islamist" political parties call for Ijtihad because they too wish to reform Islam. They just don't want the Makhzen, the authorities, to do it. They reject the official, Maliki school of Islam in the kingdom. They claim it is an emanation of the Makhzen, and that it is corrupt.

In his speech, the King indeed invokes Ijtihad to justify some of the amendments to the new Mudawana. He was very careful and used all the religious arsenal available to him.

Thus, the resistance among men against the reform of the Mudawana is not only a consequence of the anxiety to see women "take over", but also a consequence of their anxiety as Moslems. One youth voiced his concern very clearly: the world wants to stop us from being Moslems. He suggested that the King's speech was imposed from outside, read the West. If the King permits himself to modify Islam, reasons that young man, then who knows where he will stop (especially if he has sold his soul to the West, read Satan). How unfair to the real heroes of the struggle for the reform on the Mudawana. NGOs like "le Collectif du Printemps de l'Egalité" and the advent of an active civil society.

How paradoxical: the monarchy, an authoritarian institution in essence, imposing views which are in advance on social reality. What remains to be seen is how the application of the new reform will occur in day to day life. And what degree of resistance it will face.

15 October 2003