September’s earthquake

In September, Morocco experienced its worst earthquake in more than a century, with almost 3,000 known to have been killed and more than 5,000 injured. Suddenly Morocco      became the centre of world news.

Whilst many Moroccan Christians live in the North, well away from the earthquake, there are Christians across Morocco. In disaster situations like this the widespread social prejudices and discrimination against Christians often means that they miss out on both immediate emergency relief and longer-term reconstruction which is offered by both the government and local NGO staff. That is why the work of Christian organisations is so vital for their survival in such situations.

An example that defies the trend towards greater Islamisation

Morocco is in fact one of the very few countries in the Islamic world whose government has actually made some positive progress on freedom of religion in the last few decades. In many respects it is an exception to the general rule, at a time when most Muslim majority countries have been undergoing an increasing Islamisation. The latter has led to a loss of freedom of religion for Christians and others as legal systems are increasingly aligned with shari’a, which has sometimes been followed by radical Islamist groups using violence in attempts to enforce even greater shari’a enforcement.

That’s why Morocco is an important example of how change can positively be brought about in such countries – and also what can threaten it.

Christians in Morocco

Morocco was in fact a major centre of Christianity in the early church, with an account of the 256 AD Council of Carthage speaking of “a great number of overseers” – which probably means bishops - coming from the Roman province of Mauritania Tingitana, which was roughly where Northern Morocco is today.

Morocco has certainly still got some way to go in terms of freedom of religion for Christians today, who still face widespread surveillance and arrest. However, it is worth remembering quite how far modern Morocco has come.

In the twelfth century a number of contemporary accounts, including that of the famous Jewish scholar Maimonides, describe a massive persecution involving sword, death, captivity and conversion inflicted on Morocco’s Christian and Jewish population by its then Islamic rulers. By the eighteenth century Morocco had become a major centre of the Islamic slave trade, which included literally hundreds of hundreds of thousands, some estimates suggest a million, white European Christian slaves, captured from ships or in slave raiding expeditions as far north as south west England. In     fact,     in December 1721 a special service of thanksgiving was held at London’s St Paul’s Cathedral for 293 British slaves who had been released as a result of negotiations by the British government.

Small steps towards freedom of religion

The Moroccan Christian Church today, which most estimates suggest is at least several thousand strong, still exists precariously in a conservative Islamic country. It is a country where the Maliki school of shari’a of classical Islam predominates. This requires the execution of any Muslim, whether male or female who is deemed to have left Islam. Yet over the last four decades, whilst, as in any country, there have been setbacks, there have also been small but significant advances in tolerance of Christians:

-    In 1985 King Hassan II (father of the present King Mohammed VI) invited 80,000 young Muslims to a stadium in Casablanca to listen to      Pope John Paul II speak about religious tolerance.

-      In 2017 Morocco’s Council of Ulema issued a document The Way of Scholars which argued that shari’a only required the execution of apostates for what were in effect political reasons i.e. treason. This reversed a previous ruling that those who converted to another religion, such as Christianity, should be executed.

These small steps have come about not because of democracy, in fact that has simply empowered the Islamists who swept to power in 2012 for almost a decade after the reforms brought about by the Arab Spring. Rather, they have come about for almost the exact opposite reason – because the king still has very real political power, far more than in a full constitutional democracy. Although the new constitution requires the king to appoint the Prime Minister from the party which wins most seats in parliament, he still has wide ranging powers including to appoint or dismiss cabinet members and to rule by decree. So, in practice what freedom does exist for Moroccan Christians is essentially freedom by royal pleasure.

One of the clearest examples of this was the new constitution introduced in response to the Arab Spring. A small clause slipped into it (clause 41), which was not in the previous constitution states that the king is both commander of the faithful (Amir al Mouminine) i.e. head of the Islamic community in Morocco AND “the Guarantor of the free exercise of beliefs”. It then goes on to state that he also presides over the Supreme Council of Ulema, i.e. Islamic scholars, which alone can issue fatwas (Islamic legal rulings) – effectively meaning that the king determines the official type of Islam which exists in Morocco. Given that the elections which followed the issue of the new constitution, ushered in an Islamist party this was an extraordinarily prescient and incredibly politically astute move. It is also the context in which the Council of Ulema issued its 2017 statement on the apostasy law.

As with a number of Middle Eastern rulers both King Mohammad and his father King Hassan received not only a Moroccan Islamic education, but were also educated in the West. King Mohammad VI in fact, gained a PhD in law from the University of Nice, Sophia Antipolis. This has created a conscious attempt to mix the best of the Arab world with what is perceived to be the best of the West – while above all else maintaining their family’s hold on power. That is why the nation has a tight surveillance and security apparatus. Whilst      there is a willingness to give Moroccan Christians a degree of freedom, the king and his advisers will also be acutely aware of their political need to keep on board the country’s conservative Islamic population. So, Christians are closely monitored and anything that could threaten that will lead to a clampdown, as does any perceived need to appease conservative Islamic opinion.

That doesn’t mean the king is opposed to freedom of religion for Christians, but what matters above all is the maintenance of political power for the family, while patience and waiting for the opportune time have a value in Arab culture that most Westerners find hard to comprehend.