For those who haven’t been following the story, Amina Filali is a young Moroccan minor who committed suicide. She was raped and then, under the combined pressure of the judge and the two families, “strongly urged” to marry her rapist. She then chose to commit suicide. The whole of Morocco was moved by the case, and the buzz on social networks, on Facebook and Twitter, with the hashtag #ripamina, and the government and associations are questioning many things.
But behind all this emotion, isn’t there, as usual, the good old Moroccan schizophrenia that leads people to be indignant about what they themselves are doing?
Rape is not a major crime in Morocco, and the girl is the first to blame
Or at least not for the rapist. He faces, at most, five years in prison. The girl, on the other hand, loses everything, first and foremost her honour, that of her family, and even that of her sisters, if she has any.
Because here, the girl is responsible for what happens to her. Not all the time, of course. Let’s just say that a girl who had stayed at home, whose house had been invaded by brigands, whose door had been forced open and who had been raped, would not have been responsible. But anyone who “made advances”, “wasn’t dressed properly”, “went where she wasn’t safe”, “thought yes but said no just out of modesty”, that person is responsible for her rape.
So it’s not rape.
So she’s lost her honour. She can no longer marry. And her shame rebounds on her family, her sisters are undoubtedly as depraved as she is, at risk, in trouble, to be avoided.
So they work it out.
They find her a husband, anyone, who will agree to hide the taint, to take on the eventual paternity, of course for a hefty price.
This person is rarely the rapist. It’s more likely to be a poor man hoping to find a source of income. More often than not, these couples divorce a few years later, but that’s no big deal, the worst has been avoided.
It’s rarely the rapist. And it’s true that in the case of Amina Filali, they crossed the line, in every sense of the word, by forcing an abomination on her that she refused.
What Islam says, and what Moroccan law says
Without going into detail:
- sexual relations are only possible and legal within the framework of marriage
- marriage cannot be forced upon a girl, even if she is a minor; she must consent to it. To preserve her modesty, her consent may be silent (in other words, she must explicitly refuse the marriage)
- in the case of statutory rape, no prosecution is possible if a marriage takes place (which is also the case for sexual relations between adults, and one of the favourite weapons used by young Moroccan girls to get hold of gaouris)
So we’re clearly “outside the law”. But not out of practice.
Marry your daughter as soon as possible to preserve her honour
I live in Ouarzazate, in the south of Morocco.
In other words, not in an ‘advanced’ region, far from the big cities.
I’ve personally attended the nuptial bedsheet ceremony several times, something that city-dwellers in Casablanca or Marrakech no longer know. I’ve seen girls get married at seventeen with the blessing of the judge, the family, and a lot of happiness on their part, because in their eyes it was time to become a woman, instead of hanging around at home.
Did you know that when you go to Imilchil, you are actually participating in this same style of tradition? That girls Ait Hadiddou were married into the family at a very young age (at the time of the protectorate, around thirteen or fourteen) to a cousin, and that once this arranged marriage had been consummated in honour, they were then free to divorce and find a man they liked?
Personally, I’ve seen at least two girls married off in a hurry because they’d made a mistake. I haven’t ‘seen’ cases like Amina Filali’s, but I’m sure there are cases around me, especially as in most cases the rapes are committed by relatives.
There are two worlds in Morocco: the ‘westernised’ one and the other. I said this at the time of the Mourtada affair, and this kind of thing doesn’t change in a few years.
Mourning Amina Filali, or changing your own vision
I tweeted this earlier:
To which I was told I was talking rubbish ^^
@lumieredelune C'est pas non plus parce qu'on ne twitte pas #RIPAmina qu'on accepterai d'epouser une fille violée.. #Conneries
— Sinaceur Yazid (@SinaceurYazid) March 20, 2012
But there’s a huge difference between fighting the problem and being able to deal with it when it affects you. All the difference that means that, despite the laws, there is still enormous pressure on Amina and her peers.
When a girl files a complaint for rape, she puts herself and her ‘shame’ (the famous Hashuma, omnipresent in everything here) in the spotlight. She knows that she will carry this shame around with her, that it will follow her everywhere. Fighting the problem by demonstrating and tweeting, or in your own private life, are two very different things.
How many of those demonstrating would not be tempted to advise their girlfriend not to press charges if she was raped, “for her own good”? How many would be able to cope with the comments, the upheaval in their lives, how many would force their parents to marry her anyway?
In a country where the Chinese sell thousands of hymen repair kits in Derb Ghalef, in a country where people marry “amongst themselves”, with marriage rates between first cousins exceeding 30%, in a country where illegitimate couples are always at the mercy of a denunciation, in a country where even in the ‘upper strata’ of society, tradition is still king, people may drink, but they don’t trifle with honour (just look at Marok), it’s good and honourable to be progressive, to denounce an abuse, and to fight against it.
But I think that, in keeping with the usual Moroccan schizophrenia, at least a large minority of those mourning Amina El Filali would not marry a raped girl. Or a mother… (it’s the same here).
Moroccan law is one of the most advanced in the Muslim world when it comes to the status of women. The punishment for rape will no doubt be increased, and that’s a good thing. But what small proportion of rapes are actually reported?
In France, it’s thought to be one rape in ten. But here? One in twenty? One in fifty? One in a hundred? And it’s not the law that changes that. It’s the boy who takes a girl mother by the hand and marries her. And to do that, he has to be able to fall in love with her in his head.
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