National security maven Ilan Berman writes in Forbes on Morocco's standout progress in this decade, promoting liberalization & tolerance while many Islamic countries get worse:
Under the Moudawana, the progressive family code reformed in 2004, Moroccan women have been endowed with rights not present--or even conceivable--in other parts of the Muslim world. These include equal status in the household, the power to initiate divorces and the right to inherit equally. The King's religious reforms, meanwhile, have helped shatter the traditional glass ceiling facing women in Islam. Since 2005 Morocco's Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs has been actively building a cadre of female preachers, known as morchadates. Now numbering approximately 150, these women clerics are helping pluralize the religious interpretation of everything from marital problems to scientific inquiry.
Another key metric in gauging stability in Islamic societies is the disposition of religious minorities. In places where political Islam has crowded out alternative views, other faiths have found themselves under siege. The plight of Zoroastrians and Baha'i in today's Shi'ite Iran and of Shi'a Muslims in contemporary Sunni Saudi Arabia are sorry reminders of this truism. Morocco, however, has embraced a different status quo. Under the Moroccan constitution, the King serves as the "commander of the faithful." In that capacity, he is charged with safeguarding all faiths, not just the religion of Islam. The practice of other monotheistic religions is therefore constitutionally protected (although proselytization is forbidden).
The results are striking. The country boasts a vibrant (though tiny) Jewish community, one that is fully integrated into the country's economy and social fabric. Churches abound, and the country's Christian population--currently numbering some 3 million people--is allowed to practice its faith largely in peace. (The Kingdom's recent, well-documented spat with Christian aid workers had a great deal more to do with allegations of illegal conversion than with any latent religious intolerance.) This pluralism, and the protected status of religious minorities, has made Morocco inhospitable soil for radicals seeking to drive a wedge between Islam and other faiths.
Berman is cautiously optimistic.
Bottom Line. It is nice to hear good news from a segment of the world yielding little to cheer about these days.
Letter from the Capitol, LFTC, 9/11, National Security, Terrorism, Homeland Security, Foreign Policy
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