Moroccan Feminist Discourses

Both a scholarly and personal critique of current feminist Moroccan discourses, this book is a call for a larger-than-Islam framework that accommodates the Berber dimension. Sadiqi argues that current feminist discourse, both secular and Islamic ones, are not only divergent but limit the rich heritage, knowledge, and art of Berber women.

This book is a tribute to the memory of Sadiqi's father Mouhamd ou Lahcen (around 1919-2005), a rural, illiterate, self-made Berber man who served in the French army before joining the Moroccan army after independence in 1956. In addition to the Sadiqi family s recollections, the author interviewed twenty-five Moroccan women of her generation whose fathers were in the military and who are now feminist leaders in various fields. In so doing she seeks to both honour the memory of her father and his generation of military rural Berber men, and draw attention to the forgotten role of these men in opening the door of education to the second generation of Moroccan feminists. Marginalised in both the colonial and Moroccan narratives, as well as in the Moroccan feminist discourses, the legacy of these men deserves recognition in the social history of modern Morocco.

This text is an original investigation in the complex relationship between women, gender, and language in a Muslim, multilingual, and multicultural setting. Moroccan women's use of monolingualism (oral literature) and multilingualism (code-switching) reflects their agency and gender-role subversion in a heavily patriarchal society.

Both a scholarly and personal critique of current feminist Moroccan discourses, this book is a call for a larger-than-Islam framework that accommodates the Berber dimension. Sadiqi argues that current feminist discourse, both secular and Islamic ones, are not only divergent but limit the rich heritage, knowledge, and art of Berber women.

Morocco is hailed by academics, international NGO workers, and the media as a trailblazer in women’s rights and legal reforms. The country is considered a model for other countries in the Middle East and North African region, but has Morocco made as much progress as experts and government officials claim? In Modernizing Patriarchy, Katja Žvan Elliott examines why women’s rights advances are lauded in Morocco in theory but are often not recognized in reality, despite the efforts of both Islamist and secular feminists. In Morocco, female literacy rates remain among the lowest in the region; many women are victims of gender-based violence despite legal reforms; and girls as young as twelve are still engaged to adult men, despite numerous reforms. Based on extensive ethnographic research and fieldwork in Oued al-Ouliya, Modernizing Patriarchy offers a window into the life of Moroccan Muslim women who, though often young and educated, find it difficult to lead a dignified life in a country where they are expected to have only one destiny: that of wife and mother. Žvan Elliott exposes their struggles with modernity and the legal reforms that are supposedly ameliorating their lives. In a balanced approach, she also presents male voices and their reasons for criticizing the prevailing women’s rights discourse. Compelling and insightful, Modernizing Patriarchy exposes the rarely talked about reality of Morocco’s approach toward reform.

Centering on women's movements before, during, and after the revolutions, Women's Movements in Post-"Arab Spring" North Africa highlights the broader sources of authority that affected the emergence of new feminist actors and agents and their impact on the sociopolitical landscapes of the region.

In Moroccan Female Religious Agents: Old Practices and New Perspectives, Ouguir presents a study of the way Moroccan women saints and Sufis constructed sainthood that transgressed the conventional norms and the way they are received by modern Moroccan venerators and feminist Islamists activists.