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“The feminist movement is the locomotive; if it breaks down, it will take with it all democratic forces in this country.” With these words, Samira explained why she had traveled all the way north from the southern city of Marrakech to join the feminist rally in Rabat in March 2000. The trains were packed, she added. The socialist mayor of Fez, another major city, offered six buses to shuttle in participants. Upon the buses, men and women were writing slogans: “Yes for the New Morocco, No to Reactionaries.” A man in his sixties was on one of these buses. His daughter, trapped in a bad marriage, had been trying unsuccessfully to obtain a divorce. “Her husband has the last word,” he said angrily. Once in Rabat, participants rushed to their meeting points with friends and relatives. People were coming from everywhere. They gathered first in the neighborhood of the major labor unions before starting to march under the slogan “We share the earth, let’s share its resources,” attracting more of the people gathered on both sides of the street. Others applauded from balconies. In this celebratory atmosphere, feminist groups and their supporters marched in Rabat to request the implementation of a governmental project to reform the sharia-based family law, mudawwana. This is the code regulating men’s and women’s relationship within the family, giving men the upper hand in marriage, divorce, and child custody, among other matters, and justifying these inequalities through highly patriarchal interpretations of the Islamic sharia, or legal code (see Moulay R’chid 1991). Since the early 1980s, demands for reforming this code have become the benchmark of the feminist movement, represented by hundreds of women’s rights organizations and xi Introduction Struggles over Political Power: Entangled Feminist and Islamist Movements research advocacy centers. The dream of feminist reform only materialized in 1999, when the government proposed the National Plan of Action for Integrating Women into Development (NPA), promising to remove the conditions of gender inequalities from family law. The NPA was the outcome of yearlong teamwork between feminist groups and the newly elected socialist government. It drew heavily upon the United Nations’ conventions on women’s rights, notably the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the Beijing Platform for Action (1995), all the while ignoring the Islamic sharia as a source of inspiration . Not surprisingly, the project met with virulent opposition by Islamists and conservatives, polarizing Moroccan society and the women’s movement alike, with “secular” feminists supporting the reform and “pro-sharia” Islamists opposing it, driving all of these forces to street demonstrations on March 12, 2000. In Rabat, women and men of all ages and social backgrounds marched together. Veiled and unveiled, in blue jeans and T-shirts, men and women rallied to support the governmental reform. Within the crowds were also representatives of international funding programs and international feminist groups, as well as several parliamentary deputies and members of the government . The number of participants was heavily disputed, with estimates ranging from four hundred thousand, a New York Times estimate, to half a million, as the organizers and their supporting press claimed.1 The event was organized by a network of sixty women’s rights organizations and women’s sections of political parties and labor unions, all present at the march. The rally was only one aspect of the feminist mobilization. For a few days, the capital city of Rabat lived under the rhythm of women’s voices through meetings, conferences, and artistic events. The purpose of these events was to reflect the “discrepancies between women’s subordination in the codification of family law, and their numerous contributions to the country ,” stated Fatima Maghnaoui, from the Union de l’Action Feminine (UAF; Union of Women’s Action), a leading feminist organization. Her group was also the focal point in North Africa for the World Women’s March of 2000, a transnational feminist mobilization, launched one year earlier by the Québec Women’s Federation. The World Women’s March was an expression of transnational solidarities among women to eradicate poverty and end violence in women’s lives worldwide. This event gained more meaning for a domestic audience in the face of sustained opposition to the NPA by the Islamists. The latter were also marching. Forty miles away from Rabat, in metropolitan Casablanca, Islamists and conservatives took to the streets in a powerful display of public dissent. Their xii introduction [13...

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