Moudawana reforms in Morocco - Research Paper Example

? Moudawana Reforms in Morocco Introduction Women play a major role in the family dynamics in Morocco as they help form the structure of the society.Initially, Moroccan women had fewer privileges to enjoy in the family. They were treated as inferiors and the men around them made all family decisions. While women were restricted from divorcing their husbands, men were allowed to break up with their wives without their consent. Women could not marry without the approval of their guardians, and when married, they were to obey their husbands. On the other hand, men could marry as many wives as they wanted without any approval from their wives. In other words, women were treated as objects. When the Moudawana reform movement was adopted in 1958, these unjust laws continued to prevail as women had no control over their marriage life. Some even argued that getting married was the end of a woman’s life because if she was unfortunate and faced hardships, she did not have an easy way out. All this started to change, when the Women's Action Union was formed and decided to sweep out these injustices against women. This union catalyzed the reform to play its full part in the fight. This was the start of the Moudawana Reforms in Morocco. Prior to the formation of this union, the reform movement governed the family laws but gave few privileges to women. The governed areas by the law included child custody, inheritance, divorce and marriage. Men enjoyed many privileges and saw traditional laws as an opportunity to suppress women. The same laws made life unbearable for women and bound the reforms. This paper will focus on the contributions made by women and especially the Islam activists in Moudawana reforms. The efforts made by different organizations led by women activists would also be highlighted. Moudawanna as a national Issue The Moudawana law suppressed women as it gave them limited opportunities to enjoy their rights. The main goal of the activists as argued earlier was to ensure that women were treated with fairness in the society. This was a fight against authoritarianism as defined by Childress. It is defined as the type of ruling used by rulers to oppress their women. In this case, women were the oppressed group. Regarding women as the main element making up the family and eventually the society, they had to have privileges in life. Men could make any decision in their marriage without the consent of their wives. On the side of women, even the least decisions, for example deciding who to get married to and when, needed a guardian’s intervention. Women were getting married at the tender age of 15 while instead they should have been in schools studying. This shows that women were deprived of their human rights (Bran 276). As argued by Bayat, resource mobilization theory, collective behavior approach, and crowd theory were necessary. No single woman could push for the reforms on her own efforts. This called for an ‘imagined solidarity’ in which women had to come together and create set actions that had to be followed (890). Imagined solidarity was a situation in which different people or groups visualized to have similar interests even though they fought using different strategies but headed to the same goal. Similarly, Childress argues that social, community-based, coalitional, and organizational movements played a major role in the entire reforms. This was because with the political parties in place, activists saw community-based movement as the best (1). The argument to support this was that people were heard the most when they are together. The main goal of the activists in the reform was to persuade the government to treat women more equally, just as they treated men. Their main goal could not be reached by the activists’ words only, and they needed support from as many Moroccans as possible so that it would be easier to prove to the government that the Moroccans indeed demanded for change. Engaging many Moroccans into the idea of reforms was done through the 1 million-signature petition campaign, government lobbying, educational seminars, and a series of demonstrations. Many people were convinced that the reforms were beneficial to society and forwarded their signatures. This method can be attributed to imagined solidarity; since the Muslims had to be convinced to come together and show their support in order for the government to act (Bran 23). The women were initially brought together by their determination to fight the injustices they experienced in their marriage lives and other related decisions. This led to coalition building as the activists found out that many of them had similar interests and together would be able to mobilize the required changes more effectively. The changes made on the family law in 1993 by King Hassan II were a great achievement to the social movement organizations. Consequently, women’s rights were increased. They no longer needed guardian’s approval before getting married and daughters were not to be compelled to marriage by their fathers. Even though these were just but few changes, the women activists were motivated to fight even more to meet all the requirements (Wiktorowicz 1). Using the one million-signature lobby, the women activists were encouraged to work in unison to ensure that all their demands were met. Even though, they were not satisfied with the first amendments, since they saw them as a break off from the traditional ties that made their life unbearable, with the death of King Hassan II in 1999, they hoped for more. Following community based collective behavior, they were determined to fight for their rights irrespective of the challenges they faced, like lack of adequate resources. They further hoped that his successor, King Mohammed VI, who was more open-minded, would make more changes. Indeed, this was the case, since in 2004; he enacted a law enforcing all the demands of the unions (Childress 13). However, this did not end the unions’ agenda. After the laws suppressing women in marriage life were eliminated or altered, there was still the case of illiterate women in the remote areas of the country who did not have access to those laws or lacked understanding of them. This was another issue keeping the women together in their unions as they continued to make sure that these women would eventually understand their rights. There were women in the remote areas who could not file court proceedings once they were deprived of their rights (Berman 31). The unions therefore, had to stay together to help these women gain access to legal actions and fight for their rights. Through ‘imagined solidarity’, all women were to be brought together irrespective of their incongruent social actors into a collective-oriented manner and thus achieve social change (Bayat 901). According to Latifa Jbabdi, the UAF founder, women are the main cause of alarm and the union should make sure that their nightmares are solved. The union helped women to obtain legal assistance whenever necessary. Latifa further argues that the union was out to prove to people that its victory was not only for women but also for the society, family and future generations. She believes that future societies should not experience the difficulties their fore-parents encountered. As Wiktorowicz puts it, socio-economic factors were the main cause of Islamic activism (2). UAF could not be ruled anyhow better by any other woman but Latifa. She has had passion for feminism and reforms as evidenced by her involvement in student movement campaign at an early age of 14 and her continuous demands for democratic reforms in the country. Latifa was registered with an illegal Marxist group, in March 23, which eventually led her to being jailed in 1977. She was released in 1980 after trial. After she was released, she worked with 8 Mars as an editor and this gave her the resources she needed to get started (Wiktorowicz 23). Moudawana had been calling for reforms since its inception in 1958. It was only after the formation of UAF spearheaded by Latifa, and with the one Million signatures lobbies that Moudawana became a national issue. Following all the supported cries, the previous King decided to act on the women demands. Through bringing together complex network oriented societies as noted by Singer man, the king heard the cries. All women came together through social networks mobilizing even those in marginalized areas to understand their rights and fight in this situation (23). In addition, through cultural symbol’s framing, perceived opportunities and grievances become resource mobilization catalyst resulting to movement activism (19). It is notable that UAF, since its formation had faced serious oppositions from religious groups especially Islamic scholars, Ulama, and religious law arbiters. In fact, many believed that UAF was against the traditional values held by Islam. The opposition was so intense that the Ministry of Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs advised the Imams to preach against its proposed reforms. This was a big blow to the union, as it had to work even harder to convince people to support it (TheVJMovement). To counteract the opposition, Latifa being a committed secularist, studied the Hadith and the Koran in order to incorporate religious justifications into their argument. She realized that most Moroccans were reluctant to secularism and thus had to play the music by their tune to win. She was now armed with Islamic teachings and this helped her confront those who argued that the union contradicted Islam. She presented examples of the Koran verses that supported equality for women (Salime 134). As a result of “imagined solidarities”, all people were convinced to work together towards a mutual “imagined goal”. Many people headed up in a coalition even though some people held conflicting ideologies and this was as a result of ‘imagined solidarity’. In this case, people came together not because they share interests but because they have “imagined commonalities” (Bayat 901). The entry of Islamist women into the movement According to Salime, the entry of the Islamic women into the movement changed the whole face of the reforms. The main opposition came from Muslim women who believed that the union was against their traditional beliefs. These women were used to being ruled over and saw men as superior to them in society. The women were contended with their way of living. They did not see any need for themselves to make any decisions on their own and argued that they needed men in their lives. In due of all of this, there was a great suppression on the part of the women encouraging the activists of the reforms, to form the union (Media Monitor). In fact, the Muslim activists who could save them were seen by Shehabuddin to be ignoring the problems faced by Muslim women as they fought to save the veil (20). Muslim activists see women as people who should not be given any role in the society for this hinders development (11). The Muslim women who opposed the reforms saw this way of life as the norm and never thought of opposing it. When Fatima founded the UAF, there was poor leadership in the country. The king could only act to the reform if it gained great support from the other citizens. Instead of women approving the arguments presented by UAF, the Muslim women were opposing arguing that it did not respect the Koran’s teachings. This was a great challenge for the union (TheVJMovement). Fighting the Muslim opponents was distressing for them because it diverted the available resources for some to be used to win them over. Fatima for instance, had to spend a lot of her time familiarizing herself with the Hadith and the Koran even though she was a complete secularist. This time could have been used pleading the government to make amendments on the Moudawana law. However, it was a well-known fact that only with support from the Muslim women that the union would able to achieve its goals with eases (Abiad 77). Just as noted by Badran, secularists could only use Islamic modern arguments to convince Muslims to support them (3). This way, they had access to all women in the public sphere. As a result of the great opposition they faced in the name of Islam, the union was determined to push it through and encourage Muslim women to join them. It is seen that the entrance of Muslim activists into the union was the biggest step the union made at that time. Following their support, Fatima was convinced that her efforts would bear fruits since the predetermined number of signatures was to be realized with ease. This further meant that the union activists would engage in fighting for the reforms implementation rather than fighting each other on religious grounds (Berman 37). The random matrix theory in this case applied. Islam activists joined the union and mobilized resources to achieve the union’s goals. Resource mobilization in this case involved cultural, human, socio-organizational, moral as well as material resources leading to coalition building. This fight could not be won by the efforts of secularists alone because there was need for majority rule to make the whole call for reform look like a national concern that acquired immediate action. Their plea could only recognize once many people were supportive (Wiktorowicz 291; Shehabuddin 30; Badran 65). According to Selime Zakia, the score by CEDAW campaign was a great motivation for Islamism since the marginalized women acknowledged their rights. As a result, they started fighting to be recognized in political power. Islamist-oriented women participated more in the union as they participated in discussions about the status of women in the country. Every activist woman including the Islamic activists who joined the union realized that they had been suffering in the hands of their fathers, husbands and brothers. This was a proof that change was inevitable (Abiad 12). After the union’s founders realized that the integration of the Islamic women in their union was beneficial, dialogue with tradition-oriented counterparts was initiated. These were people who were traditionally rooted and opposed any union that tried to change the traditions. Dialogue with these traditionists was necessitated through use of Arabic rather than French, promotion of in-depth religious scripture knowledge, and parsing the treatment of women by Islam teachings. This led to the cutting edge of the Moroccan Women’s Movement as it engaged feminism, democratization, modernization, as well as Islamization (Salime 139). The movement was supported and headed by secular women, since the others thought that it was against Islamic religious teachings. The entrance of Islamic women meant that the era of socio-political change was at its peak. They argued that women had to have a say not only in the house but also in the government. Following this belief, women were voted in to hold parliamentary seats (TheVJMovement). Despite the union between seculars and Islamic activists, there was a rising concern that Muslim women would only be used by their organizations to push on other competing conservative agendas that would unravel the achievement the union had made that far. This was suspected in 2000, when reformation of Moudawana, termed as secularization of the family law, was held at Casablanca. Many Islamic women in attendance were opposing the enacting of the signed bill into a law. This was a proof that Muslim activists were not ready for change. It seemed like they wanted to oppose what they together with the secularists had worked for. It was not clear which side they were in and who they were working for (Salime 69). Several organizations worked together to make sure that their efforts were recognized. After the king postponed the signing of the bill in 2000, different unions came together and focused on achieving more. They started to fight against all forms of violence against women. This was necessitated after the Ministry on Women Affairs in the country came up with a strategy to combat violence. This was the start of a major alliance as different unions came up with strategies of fighting some sort of violence against women to ensure that they were treated with fairness. This can be explained by the issue of imagined solidarity in which people came together as a result of mutual envisioned goal of achieving change, both regime and social (Bayat 901). The Liberal Women Rights Movement continued working on different issues concerning women in the context of removal of CEDAW reservations, access to abortion and healthcare, public employment laws, citizenship and personal status. These were the main areas in Morocco where women were left out. This movement together with the Ministry was working on a national level. Other movements were on ground at grassroots level. Association el Amane pour le Developpement de la Femme and ADFM, Association Democratique des Femmes du Maroc, for instance, worked to make sure that all women’s rights were guaranteed by the state and were implemented. These two movements ensured that by setting shelters and centers, the rights of Moroccan women who were at risk were being implemented (TheVJMovement). The king joined the fight by women movements, after the bombing Casablanca in 2004. After some Muslims realized that the women movements were almost achieving victory, they decided to bomb Casablanca. They believed themselves to be on the side of Islam instead of feminism. In order to necessitate change, which was inevitable, the king signed the bill. This was again imagined solidarities in which the king ended up in the same direction as the activists and they achieved the same goal. Women rights were improved compared to the earlier bills and women almost enjoyed the same rights as men. The joining of the King was very beneficial for the group because initially he had refrained from signing due to the opposition he faced from the Muslim leaders. However, after this accident, there was no other alternative for the King but to sign if he wanted to restore stability and put the terror to an end (Salime 121). In other words, the bombing at Casablanca in an effort to block further reforms was the end of their 20-year fight. As a result of this, the secular activists who had been fighting for over 20 years recorded their victory. Since then, he came up with other reforms and amendments in the constitution to recognize both Berber and women rights. Article 19 describes how men and women are equal in the realm of environmental, political, economic, and social right as well as equal civil rights (Abiad 138). King Hassan’s decision marked the victory of the women movements. Spokesperson, Nadia Yassine, for the Justice and Charity/Spirituality Islamic Movement was once quoted saying that the reform supported the interests of international feminist movement and foreigners instead of representing the interests of the common Moroccan women. This was because the majority of the citizens opposing the reforms were Muslims and at first only a few citizens, mostly the secularists were in support of the reforms (Abiad 143). When Islamic activists entered the fight against women inequality, it was thought that they were truly in support of the movement. However, some had hidden intentions and this was realized at the meeting in Casablanca in 2000. They only joined the movements to study their opponents in order to criticize them better. Nevertheless, most Islamic activists who joined the movement did in fact support it in full because it is through their support that the one million signatures were collected easily and fast (Salime 33). Regardless of their motives, by joining they were beneficial to the unions. Conclusion The Moudawana reforms were brought about to change the family law, in this case Islamic family law. The Islamic element of the law meant that change would be possible if Islamic activists were involved. In other words, secularists would not be able to fight this on their own. One needs to be a Muslim in order to feel the oppressive nature of these family laws, since fighting against the Muslim family laws by a non-Muslim would be seen as a general fight against Islamic religion (Salime 137). Secularist movements had to recruit Islamist Muslim women. The efforts of Islamic activists were inevitable in this case. Additionally, the efforts of several unions and movements deserves recognition, since without them, changing the mindset of the common people would have been difficult. Only through alliances was the fight able to push through. In other words, it was only after many movements joining the fight against the reform of Moudawana, that some light on the tunnel was seen. Following the support of many people through their signatures, the efforts of the activists were recognized by the then King. The reforms were enacted by the King after some Islamists opposing them decided to take terroristic measures and bombed Casablanca. The success of the Moudawana reforms in Morocco could be attributed highly to the union of different movements as well as the entry of Islamist women in the movements. Different unions worked under different grounds to come up with the same goal of empowering women. The Islamist women helped to convince other women to participate and support the movement. Furthermore, in order to involve the illiterate women living in the suburbs, arguments were written in both French and Arabic. When the second king came into power, the activists were optimistic that their efforts would be recognized at some point. The king was known to be more open-minded and was seen as supportive of developmental projects. He has been determined to have women in the country enjoy equal rights. He had even proposed and enacted laws in the constitution empowering women rights not only in the family but also in the political and economic field. The greatest problem at hand to date is that even though the laws protecting women has given them some rights similar to those held by men, some women are still encountering difficulties in their lives. These are mostly the illiterate women who are living in the marginalized areas in the country who lack understanding of the laws that could protect them. These women therefore, need to be taught about these laws and be helped to seek legal representation. This implies that the unions have not fully completed their tasks and work is still to be done. Works cited Abiad, Nisrine. Sharia, Muslim States, and International Human Rights Treaty Obligations. London: British Institute of International and Comparative Law, 2008. Print. Bayat, Asef. Making Islam Democratic: Social Movements and the Post-Islamist Turn. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007. Print. Badran, Margot. Feminism in Islam: secular and religious convergences. Michigan: Oneworld, 2009. Print. Bran, Laurie A. Women, the State, and Political Liberalization: Middle Eastern and North African Experiences. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Print. Charrad, Mounira. States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Print. Childress, Diana. 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