The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Saturday our Fez tour guide told us how 9-11 and other acts of terrorism are condemned by Islam and, in the average Moroccan’s mind, that those who do such things are not Muslims. Indeed, Morocco’s brand of Islam is a gentler, kinder and more peaceful way than the violent version I grew up seeing in Pakistan and Afghanistan. It has certainly been a relief to me to see Islam lived out in such a different way here in Morocco.

So that’s the good. Now for the bad and ugly.

The very next day - Sunday - we were buying shoes in a nearby city when I heard a commotion and someone screaming. When I walked around the corner of the store, I was horrified to see a boy – not more than 17 years old, beating a girl about the same age. She was lying on the ground and he was attacking her with all his force while onlookers seemed to do nothing. I screamed “Safi!” which means “Enough!” The boy stopped and walked away from the girl past me.

That’s when I saw the knife. He turned back around, raised it up, and ran towards the girl again. An elderly man put up his crutch and blocked the boy’s way as several others calmed him down. He turned and walked past me again, knife still clutched in his hand, but done.

Replaying the incident in my head over and over again does nothing to soften the horror over seeing something so close that I know goes on every single day behind closed doors. The Koran says it is acceptable to beat your wife if she is behaving badly (which could mean a lot of things). This seems to translate to men being able to beat female members of the family for shaming the family honor. We and others think this was probably a brother beating his sister.

As I was telling our friend Asmaa about it, she interrupted me before I was finished and very matter-of-factly said, “She probably was seen with a boy (thus shaming the family). So her father beat her. Then that was probably her brother you saw. Later she probably got beaten by her father again. And I bet her uncle beat her too.” I asked her if people watching would have thought the boy was in the wrong or the girl. She said without hesitation that the girl would have been condemned. Then she said sarcastically, “It’s no problem for the son to be out with a girl. But the daughter? Never!” Listening to her, I wondered for the first time if this is why she always speaks with such disdain of her brothers and was reminded again why she says she’ll never marry a local Berber man because “…they all beat their wives.” I really hope that is an exaggeration.

Our friend, Jenny, saw three men hitting their wives all in one week. Distressed, she asked her highly educated language teacher what she thinks when she sees such a thing. The conversation went something like this:
Teacher: “I would think that the woman did something bad.”
Jenny: “What if she didn’t?”
Teacher: Look of incomprehension
Jenny: “What if my husband beat me?”
Teacher: “He would never do that. You are a good woman.”
Jenny: “What if he were a bad man?”
Teacher: Look of incomprehension

And so goes the two sides of life here – seeing the gentler side of Islam but being reminded at times of difficulties like this. Thankfully, we know many families who do not behave in this way, who condemn this behavior and who have loving family relationships. All this makes me want to know what the official laws regarding abuse are.