Activities: Agenda and Overview

My stay in Morocco was divided between a series of intensive meetings with the researchers and a few more general public activities that entailed visiting universities outside Rabat, and delivering a couple of public lectures there. On the sidelines, a preliminary seminar on Aicha Abdel Rahman (Bint al Shati') was organized as part of a more extensive event scheduled for the Spring 2000 in Cairo. I will briefly touch on these general activities, for they help contextualize the value of our Moroccan initiative, and highlight some of the challenges that lie ahead. At the outset, it is important to keep three points in mind in order to appreciate the critical nature, or, the delicacy of our mission. The first pertains to the timing of my visit, the second to the nature of the 'woman question' in the Moroccan setting, and the third, to the politicized nature of that setting, and how it impinges on both the politics and scholarship of gender at this particular point in time. In some countries it is practically impossible to establish a clear boundary between the academics and logistics of research, and between the partisanship and rhetoric that afflict the public square. Morocco generally belongs to this category of countries, especially during the present moment, when everything there is in flux, and the regime is at its most vulnerable, as a new balance of power is being sought out between the young new King and the seasoned political forces in the country. Ironically, one of the central stakes in this struggle is being played round the politics of reform of the mudawwana, or the family law and women's status in society. I arrived in the country at the height of a crisis where the contest between strong secularizing currents and traditional, religious forces was in full swing, and the monarchy was caught in the middle, playing a perilous balancing game. What is at stake in this game is nothing less than the identity of the new Morocco on the eve of the 21^st century, and the site for this contestation is the national development plan which is put together by the current leftwing government. In fact this Plan is promoted under the banner of 'Women and Development'!  The actual sociopolitical scene there, conventionally polarized, is now more so than ever, and every issue is politically vulnerable, if not outright politicized.

Against this background, my mere presence there, compounded by its very timing, would seem to have constituted a political statement. However lightly I may have sought to tread, and however politically inconspicuous and indifferent I tried to be, floating a research agenda for a Chair of Women's Studies with an interest in mining the sources of Islamic history, religion and jurisprudence was bound to be politically interpreted. Nonetheless, the civilizational emphasis I place on our research perspective, and the fact that I identify our Islamic sensibilities with that civilizational impetus, seem to have attenuated what was otherwise a highly combustible recipe. I sensed this throughout, both in my public engagements, as well as in the closed workshop I conducted. I might add to this a rider. While measured by past / conventional Moroccan standards the publicity I got on this tour was somewhat muted, yet among the restricted circles in which I moved - (and they were all 'academic' within the university precincts) - my activities signaled a much appreciated 'moderating' or tempering impact.

My Public Lectures: Quneitra 11/22/99 and Casablanca 11/24/99

The above conclusions are based on some initial feedback on my excursions to another two campuses - outside the Muhammad V, Liberal Arts base where the workshop was originally being held. Although the specific topic addressed in each outing may have differed, the common theme throughout was on the need to rethink perspectives and approaches to the 'woman question' in terms of re-examining the sources for an Islamic epistemology. While the Ibn Tufail presentation dwelled on methodological issues retracing the steps to an indigenous scholarship, the Casablanca address was more issue-oriented reflecting on the implications of a century of 'Women's Liberation' in the Arab world on occasion of the centennial of a work with this title.

In both cases, Muslim circles in the audience seemed to welcome fresh perspectives on the Woman Question coming from 'within'. Secular currents, normally confrontationist, aloof, and poised at arms length from their Islam- oriented colleagues, seemed pleasantly relieved and surprised to see an unconventional openness and versatility coming from unexpected quarters. At the University of Ibn Tufail, Quneitra, where there is a budding interdepartmental initiative involving Islamic Studies and the liberal arts, my visit I was told gave a fillip to this nascent project, and the Islamic Studies department that hosted me got credit for inviting me to speak. This was the case too in Casablanca's Hassan II - Ben Mesik University, where I was greeted by the associate dean of the English Department together with other professors and administrators from the School of Liberal Arts, (where there is a department for Islamic Studies). There I interacted informally with an interdepartmental forum associated with a university based women's association, 'zarqa' al yamama', before a luncheon that was followed by a lecture in their amphitheater. Although the atmosphere there was very different from Ibn Tufail, more politicized with strong ideological currents running deep in the staff and student body, my presentation there, with its Islamic civilizational overtones, was reasonably well received. (Though I got the impression later that each party appropriated the gist of my message to their respective discourses!)