The sentencing of Fouad Mourtada shows a growing lack of understanding between westernised Moroccans and those who are still poor and ignorant.
Morocco between tradition and modernity
It’s an expression we hear a lot in Morocco.
At first glance, it highlights the love Moroccans feel for their culture and heritage, and their desire to make the most of the opportunities offered by the modern world: tradition, with its mosques and kasbahs, and modernity, with the Mohammed VI Tower in Salé.
Actually, it also describes a complex reality, where traditional legal systems coexist with modern ones, as in the case of aduls and notaries. And it also applies to every Moroccan, who will be able to forget at home, in his private life, all the modernity he applies in his professional life.
Sufism, nights of prayer and exorcism for tradition, presentation of the movement on the web for modernity - these are the Issawiyya!
The Berber tradition is still alive and well in Morocco because it is being modernised. It is using technical means (particularly information technology) to spread, and is also adapting its motifs and models to a more modern vision.
"Tradition, tradition..." to this Yiddish operetta refrain, Morocco adds "Modernity, modernity", and tries to move forward with one foot in the past and one in the future
