In Morocco, in a land of Islam, trying to understand each other better

How can you live in Morocco without trying to understand one of the essential aspects of Moroccan culture and daily life: religion and the relationship with religion?

Two essentially different conceptions of the world, words that are not understood in the same way

It’s extremely difficult to talk about these subjects, because even the word “Islam” doesn’t mean the same thing to a Muslim as it does to a “secular Westerner” (the number of inverted commas in this text shows how hard I’m trying to be clear).

There is a difference between Islam, as a religion, or Muslim (a follower of this religion) and Islamic, which means “connected with the Muslim religion, or with people or countries who follow it”.

For a Gaouri (foreigner), the adjective ‘Muslim‘ qualifies what relates to religion, Islam, the adjective ‘Islamic‘ what relates to civilisation and culture. Of course, the two are

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intimately linked. But they are different, and in this sense, we can speak of Moroccan or Persian Islam. Arab Christians living in Muslim countries are steeped in Islamic culture.  

Conversely, for an Arabic-speaking Muslim, Islam is a religion in its perfection (since he believes, by definition, that it is the last revelation, the one that is perfect and that will have no successor). This perfection means that ‘Islam’ cannot be criticised or even analysed by a non-believer, who will always be accused of ignorance and suspected of wanting to ‘harm Islam’ when he talks about the imperfections of its practice. And very few make the distinction between Islam and Islamic. Islam as we understand it is just one way of achieving the Muslim ideal. 

Islam is a culture, with its own local particularities.

This perfect Islam is a kind of entity that has no reality, because everywhere Islam is embodied in practices, cultures, interpretations and personal reflections.

This perfect Islam would be the same for the four schools of interpretation, for the Sufis, the Salafs and the Islamists. However, the schools of interpretation differ on important points, in particular because of what is ‘locally accepted’ (one day I’ll tell you about the tortoise). Muslims who betray this Islam remain Muslims (it is a great sin for a Muslim to exclude another from the community by accusing him of not being a Muslim. At best, one can say that he is mistaken… that this is not ‘that’ Islam, an argument often heard about extremists).

However, it is important to analyse Islam as it is lived on a daily basis in Morocco, because it is found everywhere, in words and practices, in a much more universal way than the Christian religion in a secularised West.

Although our culture and our secularism also stem from our Christian heritage. But that’s another story.

This Islam has consequences that appeal to us, others that shock us or that we do not understand. And to be able to explain it to people who are unfamiliar with it, we need to be able to build a bridge between these two worlds, which requires a good knowledge of the foundations of our two worlds.

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