Rabat: Kinder But Cooler
As Fez was my first exposure to any form of Moroccan city, it was certainly a lot to take in. A culture and way of living very different from any I had experienced while in the States, Fez was an intimidating place, especially in the first week. It’s population was largely a poor one, one that felt looked down upon by most Americans and thus returned the gesture. As such, it took a while for me to feel welcome in the place I called home yet felt so unwelcome. However, such a situation was not one I planned on remaining in. So, I made a very conscious effort to interact with as many people as I could, forming positive relationships by demonstrating how much I value their city and way of life. This effort culminated one night while outside Batha in front of the taxi station. What my friends and I witnessed appeared to be a congregation of every kid in the neighborhood under eight years old, playing in the piazza. Within a half and hour, we joined in the games they were playing, and eventually became the fascination and source of delight of every kid there. It was in that moment that the harsh city that had publicly seemed so unwelcoming appeared to officially welcome us into the community, with both children and their parents feeling completely safe and open to us. In the days that followed, I had the beautiful experience of feeling completely at home in a place that had been a strange, impoverished, and subliminally hostile environment only three weeks before. Just as I would run into acquaintances and friends around town, so too did I run into these kids and their parents in and around the alleys and streets of the Madina. Such an experience was absolutely worth the time and effort necessary to get to that point, and is not an experience I feel I will have in Rabat.
A much more conducive city in terms of the lifestyle Westerners are used to, Rabat is without doubt a more feasible option in terms of assimilation. With it’s much more developed new city, tram system and greater fluency in Western culture, Rabat would without doubt have been an easier start to my time in Morocco. However, an easier experience is neither something I wish I had or I think I should have. For while Rabat is without doubt a more accessible city, it does not have the same feeling of community, extremes in all aspects of life, and beautiful chaos I felt while in Fez. That being said, I have only spent a single week here, and I am sure that this city will open just as Fez did. My only fear is that it will be both easier and less rewarding, for while it is nice to not have to fight to feel at home, it is also not nearly as satisfying an accomplishment.
John Argentino
Taxi Troubles and Their Troubling Trends
Yesterday, the craziest thing happened to me: my taxi had no idea where to take me and my housemate when we told him the Darija for “American Language Center,” in addition to a number of notable landmarks (like the Rabat train station). We went on an unwanted tour of the city center, travelling past many commercial roads and landmarks, including the Hassan Tower. You might think that a taxi driver would notice, considering the frequency of travel in this area, if there was an important center for thousands of students, even if he couldn’t remember the exact name of the center. At the same time, however, one can perhaps be forgiven for not realizing that we were travelling in the exact opposite direction we need to–after all, it took me two minutes of staring at Google Maps to correct our directions and finally arrive at the proper location.
I bring up this point not for the sake of complaining about the “horrible, stupid taxi drivers” here: on the contrary, they’ve always been helpful, stopping to help us when we’re panicking at being late to class; they’re also honorable, like our particularly unfortunate driver yesterday who graciously accepted only half the metered fare (made higher on account of his own mistake). It instead belied a truth about Rabat that separates it from the much more populous Fez: there is no “there” there. Not even the taxi drivers, in a sense paid to know their city and understand its directions, get lost without any trace. Contrast the experience in a Rabat taxi with that from Fez. The drive from the medina to ALIF in Fez was simple, but so were the drives to all other places we visited, whether Bathah, R’Cif, or even the house of a local friend that was vaguely in the vicinity of the Fez train station. Places seemed real and valuable to the drivers, which mirrored a general sense I got in Fez that has been missing in Rabat. In Fez, everyone made it their business to understand the dynamics of other neighborhoods; girls from the Ville Nouvelle seemed to brave the conservative old city infrequently enough, but nonetheless sympathized for the problems of that conceptually distant neighborhood, and it was their pride in its landmarks and the good people there that ensured they returned. Fassis recognized their cities’ problems–no one reads, Ville Nouvelle residents’ arrogance, medina denizens’ sometimes disrespectful, sometimes “suffocatingly old-fashioned” ways–but most people understood the situation, they talked about it, they recognized it, and at least dreamed of ways they could deal with it. In the meantime, they tangibly lived with it. It was their job to know. It was their pleasure to know.
Wherever I go in Rabat, I get the nagging feeling that I’m stuck in a limbo between a faceless New York City and a hundred small, generic, “developing country”-neighborhoods. Instead of pick-up basketball in the park, there are games of wall-ball and football taking place next to the all-too-common poor families, begging in the midst of one of many upscale concrete jungle-gyms. Stores advertise bikinis even as their customers shun women from wearing them during the holy month of Ramadan. What’s more, these contradictions go on for miles. The city has little sense of self, and its residents don’t seem to mind. The majority of the pleasant people I’ve met in this city are too caught up in the minutia of their daily lives to live in their city. I know of few people outside the medina who know much about their old city, and in general there seems an attitude of obliviousness. The cab rides were only the beginning of these ruminations about how two cities, so geographically nearby and similar, on face value, in terms of class structure, could be so different. It isn’t size, because if that were the case, one might expect the larger Fez to be the city of facelessness. Alternatively, one might think that the capital of Morocco would be more interesting, seeing as it has more money and enterprising people, but that doesn’t appear to be the case either. Instead, I fear it has everything to do with the political dynamic of the two cities, an inversion of the latter supposition–the weight of a non-participatory government may have crushed its host city’s residents’ spontaneity and desire for civic participation. I’m sure this is the theory of a whole paper somewhere, but all I know is the experienced version of the problem–and it would be tragic for all the cultural, communal potential in a modernizing, trailblazing city like Rabat to be lost.
When Charity Organizations Attack
By Josh Curtis
The DAW Program arrived in Rabat today, and after my family broke Iftar, we went out for a walk around the neighborhood. As we walked through the busy streets, filled with people, stores, and cars, and after walking through parks, the host father did the unthinkable: he walked over to a beggar by the side of the park and gave him alms. It wasn’t much, but it was also such an instinctual act of justice and compassion that I immediately felt some shame for not doing the same, though I had little change in my pocket to begin with. I was angry; I hadn’t even personally acknowledged the man’s presence and need beyond internal sympathy. Why did it feel so uncomfortable for me to walk over and give just a few dirhams, less than a dollar? Chump change could make the poor man’s day.
I have had similar crises all throughout the program so far, including in Fez. In the Fez medina, I never personally saw anyone in the Ville Nouvelle give alms, while the beggars of my neighborhood in the medina always seemed well-supplied. I convinced myself of the need to donate a few dirhams to those I saw most frequently by the end of our time in Fez, feeling satisfied that I hadn’t “wasted” any resources on “fake beggars.” This very sensation, however, is concerning to me. I have always seen myself as a good citizen who follows up on ideals of helping the needy with action, sometimes in soup kitchens and sometimes donating money to charities. The fact that my primary concern in waiting to give a few dollars worth of charity usually turned out to be “not wasting it” is a cruel inversion of our citizenship studies so far.
In the United States, and especially in New York, a wicked pattern has developed in which citizens are encouraged to ignore the deprived and destitute because “somebody else will take care of them.” That “somebody else” is usually a charity, or perhaps the government. This organization, the theory goes, can make better use of charitable resources than I can, making sure they aren’t spent on drugs or something similarly counterproductive. America is saturated with such organizations and programs. Morocco is bereft of them, but the citizens are more aware of the poor here, and do more despite earning less. America’s wealth of charities is in some ways a curse: rather than build a connection to the poor who live around us, we resolve that someone else can do it better before happily ignoring these other efforts as well. In the US, we frequently think our activism, votes, and charities make our citizenry stronger, and yet it seems we are encouraged to ignore the very needs we claim to fight for. Thus, the beggars seem to beg the question: who is really a good citizen? In my experience, we participants of the much-celebrated American democracy are the most aloof of all. Except maybe for those young Fassi Moroccans trying to emulate us, but that seems no flattery to me.
Guiding the Blind
When thinking about the ways in which a model citizen’s character manifests itself, especially during my time in Morocco, I instantly think back to the time I was traversing the span of the Madina, trying to make it back home as the Sun was getting closer to setting. Along my journey from the heart of the Madina to the edge in which I lived, I soon was separated from the group I was with and travelling alone, unsure of how to elicit help in a city that I had seen on multiple occasions to contain those ready to take advantage of the foreigners’ learning curve. As such, I attempted to avoid asking someone to escort me, but rather point me in the right direction. Despite asking this question to a multitude of people on my way back to Batha, I only received two responses: the first was an expressed effort to escort me for an absurdly steep price, hoping the novelty of Morocco’s relatively weak currency would compel me to believe that the price was fair. Such an effort, one that is not nearly proportional to the favor being asked, was not a solely negative experience for me. It also pointed out the simple nobility shown by simply pointing someone in the right direction, giving a few instructions and wishing them on their way. Such a small act is not an enormous demonstration of good citizenship, but it is all that is necessary. Citizenship is not about one person going completely out of their way to walk a helpless wanderer through the city, but rather send them on to the next person who will continue the same simple act of pointing. Such an act held no significance to me before I came to Fez, and saw that such an act that I have taken for granted for is not omnipresent, and instead can be dismissed in favor for acts that serve an individual’s desires to a greater extent. And yes, while such an act and it’s significance may very well be underwhelming, it does teach that engaged citizenship can be very simply and elegantly embodied in the saying “it takes a village.” However, this quote is misleading, for while it does take a village, that does not mean it takes everything from every member of the village. If the village as a whole is conscious and generous enough, then the guiding of a “blind man” to his home requires nothing less than simple courtesy and a small degree of generosity from each person, knowing that the little effort they put in, though seemingly meaningless, will get a man home when combined with the equally small efforts of those in his or her community.
-John Argentino
Blind Faith
By Amani Ahmed
The streets and even the sidewalks of the city of Fez are undeniably busy and crowded. If you don’t pay attention, it’s all too easy to bump into people or lampposts or trees or anything as you make your way toward your destination. I must admit that I, too, have had a clumsy experience or two. It’s not too dissimilar from the bustling nature of New York City or Philadelphia, two cities near to my own hometown. However, I witnessed a moment which describes the unique nature of Fez so perfectly. In my own experience, people in northeastern cities in the United States are generally completely focused on themselves and their own tasks at hand and expect that everyone else will do the same. There is an expectation that everyone else should take care of themselves and provide for themselves. The people of Fez seem to have a much more communal attitude. One day last week, while waiting for a taxi, I watched as a blind man made his way down the sidewalk of a main city square, with all the confidence in the world, because he knew he could trust his fellow citizens to help him on his way. As he walked, somebody would assist or direct his path and then leave when the coast was clear. After a couple steps, a new person would suddenly be at the man’s side to help him toward his destination. The whole ordeal was not rehearsed but it was completely fluid and I can honestly say I have witnessed few moments of engaged citizenship as beautiful as that. This man was able to have all the trust in the world in the people around him, people who are strangers to him, because he knew that his city would not let him down. Without hesitation, average people stepped up to be good neighbors and I think that defines engaged citizenship.
Engaged citizenship involves contributing positively to your community. Each person that decided to help that blind man that day decided to be forces of goodness. They helped to foster a society characterized by supportive and generous behavior. They became active members of their community in a way which enhances everybody else’s experience, because it allows for a greater trust to permeate the community. Knowing you belong to such a society would only make you want to return the positive attitudes and actions. It’s the perfect cycle of community and it creates good and active citizens.
I did not see that man make it to wherever he was going, but I know with all my heart that he made it there safely. I’ve never seen engaged citizenship practiced so perfectly before but I’m glad I finally have. I learned what blind faith looks like that day, and my own faith in humanity grew a little bit more. I was reminded what community should look like, and I feel encouraged to contribute more positively to my own communities. Engaged citizenship exists, and if everyone saw that man like I did, I am convinced that they would be reminded too.
Citizenship Interview
Today, I had the opportunity to speak with a man called Ismail about citizenship. Ismail is a young Moroccan math teacher and is from the city of Fez. I interviewed him about his perspective and thoughts on active citizenship in Morocco through an informal conversation. For Ismail, being a Moroccan citizen most involves being connected to the culture and the faith that informs the country’s principles and values, Islam. He spoke about how Islam positively influences Moroccans and shapes the country’s narrative. When I asked more about other cultural aspects that are important, he explained how food is so central to the essence of being Moroccan. In his opinion and his experiences, people in many other countries do not eat as well as Moroccans do, and the practice of sharing traditional meals enriches the Moroccan culture. When people take the time to share a wonderful meal and tea, they are uniting friends and family, stepping away from busy schedules to enjoy the day.
Next, I asked Ismail about what a “good” or “bad” citizen would look like. He explained that he feels it is most important for a good Moroccan citizen to read. He feels that in the United States, people study for the sake of learning, because they have genuine curiosity and are passionate about their fields of interest. He explained how he has had access to American textbooks and they are more cohesive and conducive to understanding the subject matter. He feels that people in Morocco study to earn a degree and mostly memorize information instead of internalizing and genuinely understanding it, as he feels Americans do. In Morocco, he feels that many people, especially young people, do not have a desire to read books and develop their intellectual interests. He quoted a study he read once that claimed that in the United States, the average person reads 35 books a year. In the Arab world, one book is read for every forty people. This illiteracy is tragic and shameful for the Arab world, in his opinion. Ismail articulated how Arabs are often portrayed as oppressive, as terrorists, etc. in media throughout the world (particularly in Western nations), and he feels like the Arab world’s illiteracy contributes to an inability to properly defend and represent the true Arab world. When I asked him how illiteracy should be conquered, he explained that it is everyone’s responsibility, and programs should be created by good citizens and the government.
![20160602_153835[1]](https://sites.duke.edu/dukeinthearabworld2016/files/2016/06/20160602_1538351-e1464911402558-225x300.jpg)
Regarding the government, Ismail is not so concerned with the responsibilities of the government or the relationship between the people and their political representatives. He said it is most important for each individual to be good. “Good” means knowledgeable, curious, empathetic, active, in Ismail’s opinion. People need to be good at their very core, in their hearts and in their minds. He continued to say that if people were all good, the government would be good by default. I was really struck when he said that the government is only as good as its people – its representatives and leaders are not the worst in Morocco, but they are certainly not the best. They are average, and they serve a community which they reflect. Individuals need to focus on themselves, and their own purification in order to create a society which deserves and requires certain privileges. For Ismail, Moroccans need to find goodness in their souls, always seeking knowledge and wisdom, especially in a way which may allow people to learn and contribute back to their communities
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Master and Disciple: Fancy Rhetoric, Simple Autocracy
Abdellah Hammoudi’s Master and Disciple is a sweeping analysis of Moroccan cultural structures that provides support for a paradigm of Moroccan authoritarians as the singular, supreme master in a political system filled with ostensible disciples. He asserts that in such a system, individuals subjugate their own wills, desires, and rationality to those of the Moroccan king in order to gain increasing proximity to him so that one day, they might be close enough to play a role in shaping his decisions. The king arbitrates between their interests, and his decisions are final; at the same time, he is expected to shower benefits on the disciples as a guarantee and recognition of their loyalty. Hammoudi’s theoretical description of such a paradigm is uncontroversial; however, his assertions that Morocco’s political system is defined by the model and, more importantly, that the model explains Morocco’s condition, are more debatable.
Hammoudi does a phenomenal job conveying the history of the Moroccan king and his political context, starting with a precolonial era that seems very feudalistic. The “state” is defined by the king and his network of loyal servants, kept in line by two-fold mutual obligations: temporal, with pecuniary and power-related benefits bestowed upon tribal chiefs, advisors, and wealthy urban elites that have been loyal, as well as increasing control and prestige associated with those who have dutifully and unflinchingly followed the sultan’s whims. The king is legitimized periodically by Islamic scholars’ declarations that he, as a descendant of the Prophet, is the elect of God and thus his arbitration is executed with supreme knowledge of God’s ways. Without him, the sultanate fails to exist. Meanwhile, servants, on their path to power, must endure often unfair punishments and bear harsh taxation, property confiscation, and the periodic stripping of their prestige because the sultan wills it. This experience mirrors the experience of disciples on the path to mastery in the Sufi orders so prevalent in Moroccan Islam.
The French colonizers upset the order by establishing a system of harsh oppression, not legitimized by any sort of religious supremacy, Sufi or otherwise. Their governance structure focused on extraction of resources using local collaborators, but the ultimate enforcement mechanism was a powerful state bureaucracy, not a set of feudal-type obligations. As groups like the nationalist party Istiqlal of individuals rose up to support the sultan, still considered the commander of the faithful, in his struggle against the protectorate, the sultan regained immense prestige but of a more centralized variety.
In the post-independence Morocco, the king has successfully disrupted parties and religious brotherhoods alike, ostensibly by pressuring groups like Istiqlal in the 1950s to split apart into multiple parties based on their different economic agendas. If they were able to pursue power independently, they might have united against the king, but the opportunity was precluded by the movement’s deferral to their “commander” and “master.”
While the paradigm of master-and-disciple is interesting, it also seems an underwhelming explanation for Moroccan authoritarianism. The dynamic contains broad explanatory power for the authoritarian situation in Morocco, masterfully comparing the path of the courtier to power described above to the struggles of the Sufi disciple. In Sufism, the master frequently demands his disciple forsake his old life, exemplified the Darqawi brotherhood’s extreme case in which al-Hijb Ali gave up the lucrative life of a traditional scholar to roam the country in tattered clothing, begging for food, for years, even in the midst of his parents’ home. The power dynamic not only matches the feudalistic system of pre-colonial days, but also for the modern Moroccan nation-state. The same scheme of relationships inhabits a new government structure: parliamentary factions fight each other for the king’s favor rather than against the king himself so that they might implement their policy agendas; in fact the king infrequently intends to allow any party to gain enough power to truly exercise it, a similar balancing act to that of pre-colonial sultans despite a different political landscape. Compared to other Arab and Islamic countries that have successfully evaded mainstream democratic urges, such as Saudi Arabia, Morocco’s evasion seems both more systemically-rooted and stable; it does not rely on shows of force and buying off the people to the same extent because of the master-and-disciple dynamic.
However, the paradigm of a master and disciple ultimately seems more like a rhetorical flourish that could in reality describe any highly personalized authoritarian regime (hence why these are named “sultanistic” regimes by political scientists). When this is accounted for, the whole book’s thesis seems more an extended historical dissection to support a broad theory of how “sultanistic” regimes succeed than it does explain Morocco’s specific scenario. While this may seem a success, seeing that Hammoudi’s objective was to find a pattern that could be extrapolated, it is a failure because in its rhetorical breadth the book fails to prove its truth in the specific case of Morocco. Hammoudi fails to show that Sufism’s paradigm is pervasive, nor how its power dynamics nearly certainly cause authoritarianism. Indeed, much of the book focuses on nationalistic and religious groups, often anti-Sufi, upholding the king’s status despite incongruities with his status as ruling according to revealed law or holy principles. The king himself repressed the Sufi orders for causing rebellion. Meanwhile, there is no comparative work to the other obvious historical case of divine right feudalism: Europe, which managed to avoid confinement to authoritarianism and progressed into bureaucratic nation-state democracy.
Fundamentally, the book provides interesting support for how the Moroccan system of authoritarianism is structured, but not as much for why it is stable or why any of the components involved are crucial factors to Arab autocracy in general. The explanation may, however, come from future analysis of the experience that most significantly separates the Moroccan transition to from divinely-guided feudalism to nation-statehood from the European transition: for Morocco, nation-statehood was an external idea with no cultural foundation and thus the nation-state bureaucracy could be molded by the Moroccan political culture’s master (the king) after the completion of the protectorate. Unfortunately, this specific aspect of the articulation between protectorate and sultanate is not explained in Master and Disciple, which leaves much to be desired in the book.
Master and Disciple Book Review
Master and Disciple: The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism is Abdellah Hammoudi’s endeavor to describe the development of Moroccan authoritarianism as it has evolved from a cultural standard of authority and submission. Such an ambitious subject involves a thorough overview of Morocco’s political and cultural history and as such, this book is not a quick and easy read. In just 150 pages, Hammoudi provides a comprehensive understanding of all relevant background information and asserts his claim that the master and disciple power dynamic in a religious context laid the foundation for Moroccan authoritarianism under which citizens are meant to treat the governing bodies with near absolute submission.
Morocco has long been a majority Muslim population leaning toward Sufism. Sufism is a form of practicing Islam which encourages its members to undergo spiritual journeys under the guidance of a religious leader, or Sheikh. To participate in this process of Islamic mysticism, the seeker of faith is meant to place unconditional trust and obedience in his or her master. This relationship of authority and submission became the foundation of Moroccan culture which easily translated into a political dynamic. In a monarchical system, the King becomes not just a political leader, but the commander of the faithful. To stand against or criticize the King is to betray Islam, leading to unquestionable loyalty to the monarch. Thus, it becomes easy to understand why Morocco has an authoritarian political institution. Further, Moroccan culture was one of institutionalized social statuses which created a hierarchy in everyday interaction but Hammoudi also makes the assertion that today, there is more room for social mobility.
It is important to note, as Hammoudi does, that Moroccans enjoy more freedoms and rights than many of their Arab neighbors with authoritarian regimes. Today, many of these societies are experiencing conflict which may cause some to wonder why some places with the same fundamental authoritarian dynamic are more unsteady than others. Hammoudi describes the master and disciple relationship as “ambivalent,” claiming that without stable institutions and formal regulations, the dynamic can shift from total submission and obedience to resentment and murder (153). He goes on to say that this tension between master and disciple, father-son, chief-subordinate is central to Arab societies, which makes sense contextualized in an Islamic mystical understanding. Therefore, in transitional stages of society, this shift in attitude is understandable.
Yesterday, our guest lecturer, Professor Sadik Raddad from Sidi Muhammad Bin Abdullah University described Morocco as “a secular nation with a religious rhetoric” as opposed to many Western countries in which there is a secular public sphere and religious private spheres. Hammoudi’s book cannot be subject to much criticism considering its detailed and comprehensive nature, but this is one limitation to his work. As Professor Raddad asserts, Hammoudi never explains why other nations, like Britain, which had once been an authoritarian monarchy with the King as the head of the Church, progressed to functioning democratic systems and Arab societies have not. Such a discussion would have provided more credibility and support for Hammoudi’s narrative.
Something I struggled with understanding after reading the book was why men are still in a domineering role in Moroccan society. My readings and understandings of Sufism had often placed women positions of strength and power. Dr. Sa’diyya Shaikh’s work had always influenced my understanding that not only does Islam in general allow women to have a platform of power, Sufism also advocated for female empowerment. Further, Morocco is a nation of Almazigh (or Berber) people and after a lecture on women in Morocco as well as a discussion with the director of the American Language Center, it is my understanding that Almazigh women are tough and the opposite of submissive. Hammoudi explains that the political structure of Morocco privileges men in decision making capacities based on the model of authority that has institutionally led Morocco. Hammoudi’s reasoning makes sense, but I feel that with Morocco’s Sufi and Almazigh background, there is so much fuel for women to unite and make societal change.
I cannot say this was an enjoyable read for me, as it was dense and required a lot of my time and energy to comprehend. However, despite its few limitations, I will say Hammoudi’s work is incredibly well written (even though I did read an English translation from its original French), well researched, and well-rounded. Hammoudi asserts his claim clearly that the Sufi dynamic of master and disciple has lead to the development of an authoritarian Morocco. His work also provides context for an understanding of today’s political climate throughout the region, and while this was not an easy or casual read, I really appreciate all the knowledge I’ve gained from it anyway. Throughout upcoming experiences with local students or interviews with other locals, I feel like I now have a stronger foundation on which to have those discussions.
Master and Disciple Book Review
In “Master and Disciple,” Abdellah Hammoudi focuses on his native Morocco to explore the ideological and cultural foundations of the persistent authoritarianism. He builds on the work of Foucault to show that at the heart of Moroccan culture lies a paradigm of authority that juxtaposes absolute authority against absolute submission. In his book, he argues that the schema of authority seen in the master-disciple dialectic is therefore the same as the one which shapes all precedence elations, including the superior-subordinate relationship that forms the backbone of modern bureaucratic and political order in Morocco. Its work is visible at the global level of hagiographic history and generally speaking in cultural history. In his analysis of the master and the disciple, inasmuch as they are figures of ambiguity, he finds that they appear to be in contact with the invisible (this is the meaning of the walaya) and combine within themselves the two principle (feminine and masculine) of reproduction. It is precisely their continuous presence, in the form of uninterrupted emergence of charisma, which maintains Moroccan society. Its influence is so pervasive and so firmly embedded that it ultimately legitimizes the authoritarian structure of power. Hammoudi contends that as long as the Master-Disciple dialectic remains the dominant paradigm of power relations, male authoritarianism will prevail as the dominant political form.
One of the reasons I enjoyed the book is because it helped explain the roots of Moroccan authoritarianism differently than most of the other scholarly work I have read. There are many scholars who came up with theories of why it has been so hard for democracy to take root in the Middle East. Many of these studies claim that factors like poverty, lack of education, inequality, or a lack of established civil society. All of these factors do in fact contribute to making it easier for authoritarianism to thrive. But these factors have been present in many other countries that have been able to become democratic now. The Moroccan youth have always been silenced by the patriarchal and tribal concept of respect of seniority. In presence of the seniors, the youth are taught to keep silent and listen to the elders who have more experience. So, actually the youth never get a chance to express their opinions or become part of a political elite. Indeed, the whole political and social arena is off limits to them, while the elites dominate the scene. In Morocco and the Arab world, the youth are stifled and repressed and any rebellion on their part is considered as a rejection of tradition. By using the relationship between the master and disciple, Hammoudi explains this situation in Morocco using culturally relevant conditions that are relevant within Morocco’s context.
However, I finished the book with still many questions in my mind. Hammoudi mentions that “neither inversion rituals nor the process of mystical initiation are specific to Moroccan society.” He says: “Thus the essential characteristics of Moroccan authoritarianism show it to be, despite significant differences, no more than a variant of the modern Arab authoritarianism.” I couldn’t help but think if that was the case, then why is it that Arab protestors in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have toppled their governments, while a number of other countries have yet to experience upheavals of such magnitude. Among those countries is Morocco, a country with a long history of political protests against tyrannical rule, both colonial and domestic. Central to the monarchical regime’s strength is its longevity – the Alaoui dynasty gained control of most of Morocco in 1664 – and its claim of descent from the Prophet Muhammad. King Mohammed is aided by a powerful propaganda machine – his image adorns streets and shops across the country. Hammoudi’s book, although it may have explained the conditions that contribute to Moroccan authoritarianism, it does not explain what contributes to the robustness of the Moroccan regime that has prevented it from experiencing upheavals like similar countries such as Egypt. He compares the similarity between Morocco and Egypt when he states: “Moreover, some remarks on two other Arab societies, the Algerian and the Egyptian, will help us realize that the master-disciple relationship may still be very much at work there too. Of all Arab societies countries Algeria and Egypt are perhaps the most radically affected by change since the nineteenth century, yet the paradigms of domination and submission do not differ there from the ones I have described in Moroccan society.” If Morocco is similar to Egypt in terms of the presences of the master-disciple relationship, why has it not been hit by the wave that is sweeping through the region? Egypt has experienced a revolution in 2011 when the Mubarak regime was toppled, and in 2013 when Morsi was removed. Is Morocco an exception to this rule? If so, I had hoped that he would explain the conditions that make it different from other Arab countries affected by the protests.
Another critique I have for the book is that, despite the fact that Hammoudi has tried his best to avoid orientalist approaches to explaining the conditions in Morocco, I still couldn’t help but notice the essentialist and over-simplifying approach he had towards Moroccan authoritarianism. In explaining the robustness of the Moroccan regime only through the relationship of the master and disciple, Hammoudi ignores other social, historical, economic, and cultural factors that complicate the reality of Morocco and has stripped down this phenomenon to one underlying and unchanging ‘essence’ which is Sufism. I would have hoped that he would further explore these other factors that explain the unique robustness of Moroccan authoritarianism as opposed to other Arab regimes.
In conclusion, it was interesting to read about the cultural aspects that affect the way politics are performed because scholars tend to ignore that aspect during their research and publications. However, this book is most definitely not for the casual reader or for the general public. It uses difficult vocabulary and complicated concepts that would be difficult for the casual reader, and it seems that it is more directed to scholars and professional anthropologists. This particular style of writing makes the work inaccessible and more obscure to the average person. Scholars should take more care to make their work more accessible to the general public. But despite the fact that his book could be improved, I definitely appreciate the fact that he taken a risk in publishing this book. It is risky to write about authoritarianism in non-democratic societies, and it is definitely very dangerous for Arab scholars living in the Arab world to do so.
Master and Disciple
Before delving into the meat of Abdellah Hammoudi’s Master and Disciple, it is imperative that we first examine the characteristics the book and its author have. Hammoudi’s Master and Disciple is an examination into the development of the authoritarian political system and the cultural sircumstance surrounding and causing it. As such the story is written from a third person narrator perspective, likely in a conscious effort to embolden the legitimacy of the books ethos, or credibility, while taking away from -the book’s pathos, or emotional impact, which would in this case would be counter-productive to the author’s objective: to provide an objective historical analysis of a time during most of which he was not alive. This can be expected from such a scholar as Hammoudi, whose purpose is not to convince but rather to inform.
As this is a dense account of a very complex and intricate aspect of Moroccan political history, it was imperative that Hammoudi take great lengths to make sure all aspects of Morocco’s political system, often foreign to western readers, were clearly explained. As a result, that is exactly what Hammoudi did. Throughout the book, all concepts were introduced with not only a definition, but also a less literal but more comphrehensive translation of many Arabic terms that have no equivalent in English, or French in which the book was originally written. One example of such an explanation can be found on page 61, in which he describes the social classes that exist, one of which was the the descendants of saints (mrabtin). Such a social construct is more complex than apparent at first glance, and so Hammoudi eplains, ” The last category was complex; in practice its members could be classified either on top of the ladder, right below the chorfa, or lower than the masses of ordinary men and women, depending on the the authority of the charisma they inherited .” Hammoudi then goes on to articulate how dependent this status was on others. Such an ambiguous form of social status is difficult to understand for an outsider, so it was imperative that Hammoudi take the time to articulate the nuances of such a social construct. This was something Hammoudi did without fail throughout the book, almost to a fault.
When it came to articulating his argument, Hammoudi performed without fail. There was not a single assertion that was simply stated; in fact, the amount of detail provided to support a particular statement was often overdone, and might have even distracted from the more significant meaning. Furthermore, there is a huge topic which Hammoudi leaves unaddressed. While Hammoudi does address in great detail the cultural factors that are to blame for the sustenance of an authoritarian government despite its interruption by French colonization, he fails to explain why Western nations were able to move away from authoritarian governments claiming divine right towards more democratic forms of government while Morocco was not. What was the fundamental difference between the two cultures that permitted France and the rest of Europe to change their form of rule, and might be hindering the nations of the Arab world. It’s all well and good that Hammoudi points to the nature of Moroccan culture and supports its identity as a perpetuating agent of authoritarian rule, but such a claim requires an alternative, an alternative that Hammoudi fails to provide. While it would be nice to support this take with a passage from the text, it is difficult to support the absence of a passage from the text with a passage from the text. Now, despite these drawbacks, it would not be possible to assert that what Hammoudi did in this text is not significant; while it is only a piece of the puzzle, it is now a piece that can be understand with far greater confidence than could previously.
While it is difficult to challenge the credibility of the author’s information as a result of there being such a vast amount of it, it is much more feasible to support the credibility of the author due to the extensive use and citing of outside sources in his writing, as well as the fact that Professor Hammoudi is a highly regarded scholar of the mechanisms of Moroccan politics. It’s very selection by our professor further lends to its credibility, as does its relevance in discussions I have had with other Moroccan scholars of equally high regard.
The book tells the story of how Morocco’s authoritarian style of government came to exist and has been sustained throughout a very dynamic and tumultuous history whose most significant “wrench in the gears” was a long period of French colonization and regime change. However, the story is told both from the perspective of the higher workings of the political and upper class of Morocco, as well as how those workings were manifestations of much more fundamental cultural characteristics that lended to Morocco’s current political atmosphere. One such fundamental characteristic is articulated in the book’s title, and that characteristic is the relationship between “Master and Disciple” in the form of Islam that has now been adopted by Morocco, Sufism. Despite being a religion in which the faults of humanity are to be found and conquered within the self, Sufism also asserts that such a journey of self-purification requires the wisdom and guidance of a shaykh, or spiritual guide. This shaykh is an extremely enlightened and wise individual, and as such commands complete respect and obedience from he who seeks guidance. This relationship, one that is fundamental to Islam in Morocco, is one that permeates Moroccan society, and is also one that encourages the subjugation of individuals to those deemed more educated, and more enlightened. To go against such a relationship is to go against Islam, and so having a king who is the commander of the faithful leads to a system of government with cannot be questioned without questioning Islam—the very backbone of Morocco’s value system and culture—in the process. This is one the more significant emergent properties—known in the realm of biology as a property of a system that arises from a unifying characteristic that exists in the system’s many components—of Morocco’s political system that Hammoudi comments on, but is only one of many. Another more tangible and auxiliary emergent property of Morocco’s government is the relationship between the king and the nobility, one whose dynamic is connected to the Moroccan custom of gift-giving and is also not totally dissimilar to that of France during the reign of Louis XIV. Strange that these two countries had/have such similar government dynamics and the one that overcame their government came to colonize and overcome the other. Now while this is only one of the many connections Hammoudi draws, most follow this theme of emergent properties. As a result, it is my belief that Hammoudi successfully accomplishes the goal he set out with, which was to illustrate how entrenched the dynamics of Morocco’s political system are in its culture, and that is why it was able to be sustained despite the significant interruption made by French colonization.
Despite the few drawbacks to Hammoudi’s intensely focused style of writing, he fully accomplishes what he set out to, which was to show how embedded the roots of Moroccan authoritarianism are in the fundamental relationships that permeate Moroccan culture. And if it was not possible for decades of French colonialization to disrupt the tendency of Moroccan government to default to authoritarianism, what could?
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