Because of their position on freedoms: Accusations of extremism against of Brotherhood of Morocco

Doaa Imam

Individual freedom has often been a breeding ground for controversy, between the conservative current and the team affiliated with the modernists in Morocco, where the Islamists were again divided over the law of individual freedoms, following the demand of Amina Maalainain, the deputy of the Justice and Development Party, affiliated with the Brotherhood to review their position on laws that affect freedoms.

Two trends emerge in Morocco, one of which calls for zero tolerance for practices that offend religion and constitute a blow to the identity and traditions of society, while the other party defends the decriminalization of consensual sexual practices, eating during the day in Ramadan, and public drunkenness, and integrates them within the framework of individual freedom.

Following the Brotherhood’s position on individual freedoms, Idriss Lachker, the first writer of the Socialist Union, described the AKP as “reactionary and extremist”, blaming it for the setbacks that Morocco has experienced in the field of freedoms and women’s political representation.

During a symposium of the Socialist Union Party on supporting the political representation of women, Lashkar called on the Moroccan liberals to unite in order to confront what he described as the fundamentalist tide.

He also blamed the Justice and Development Party for human rights retreats, stressing that all dreams after the 2011 constitution collapsed in the previous stage due to the domination of reactionary tide at the level of public affairs, stressing the need to unite the liberals to resist opportunism and hypocrisy.

“Many laws are in need of radical change,” she wrote in a blog post on her Facebook page, saying that the protection of collective freedoms necessarily passes through the protection of individual freedoms, despite the sensitivity of this concept to Islamists who once heard a debate about it. So they are quick to rank among those who are more clinging to the reference or who have become the victim of secularism and modernity without feeling it.

Suleiman al-Omrani, Deputy Secretary-General of the Justice and Development Party, said that the parliamentary demand to review positions on freedoms was not raised in the party, pointing out that not everything is written is under discussion within, in an indication of the internal division witnessed by the party.

The case of journalist Hajar Rissouni, a relative of Ahmed Rissouni, who was recently appointed president of the Qatar International Federation of Muslim Scholars, one of the arms of the Muslim Brotherhood, detained for abortion and having sexual relations outside marriage, has caused great embarrassment to the Islamic trend in Morocco, represented by the Justice and Development Party. Its president, Saadeddine El-Othmani, who leads the government, after a debate broke out inside him, about the lack of clarity of his perceptions and duplication of his positions on the file of individual freedoms in Morocco.

The Public Prosecution has accused the journalist of voluntary abortion, a criminal offense under Moroccan law, in a case that has sparked widespread public debate in Morocco and has revived an internal debate on the status of individual freedoms for Moroccans.