David Crawford
Draft December 27, 2001
This is an article I am currently writing for a collection on "Minorities in the Muslim World." Please do not cite this preliminary draft. I include here only the introduction and some conclusions.
Introduction
On October 17, 2001 King Mohammed VI of Morocco announced the creation of the “Royal Institute of the Amazigh [Berber] Culture” (l’Institut Royal de la culture amazighe, IRCAM), which had been promised in a speech in July. This royal edict, or dahir, seems to indicate a dramatic reversal of legal discrimination against Imazighen (Berbers) and an attempt to reclaim Amazigh culture as part of the history of Morocco. Since Moroccan nationalist discourse has tended to emphasize links to the high culture of Arab-Islamic civilization, and in particular the royal patriline leading back to the Prophet Mohammed, the IRCAM dahir indicates a change, or at least an amendment, to the officially imagined heritage of the nation. This new state-level embrace of the volk, the local Amazigh/Berber culture, provides an interesting vantage into the much-debated status of Berbers in Moroccan society, and particularly their potential for politicization as corporate group. The dahir also brings into official Moroccan discourse a large minority population that still speaks something other than the national language.
Significantly, IRCAM has been empowered to pursue more than vague directives concerning the promotion of Amazigh art and culture. The Institute is charged with the important, concrete step of implementing the use of Tamazight (Berber language) in the classroom. Clearly this educational project necessitates lexical standardization of heretofore-oral Tamazight, the creation of dictionaries, and agreement over what script to use to teach an oral language in a formal classroom. Until now even Derija (Moroccan colloquial Arabic) was kept out of government schools in favor of a more standardized “correct” Modern Standard Arabic. Allowing Derija officially into the classroom presents a set of problems, but Tamazight stands to be even more difficult because of pronounced regional differences in the spoken language, and the lack of an accepted way to write it. Standardizing the use and inscription of Tamazight are tasks that scholars and the Amazigh rights movement have been discussing for years (Sadiqi 1997, Boukous 1995, Chaker 1989, Crawford and Hoffman 2000), but the King now seems inclined to involve the state directly in the project. It is common for states to promote their national language. It is far more unusual for a state to champion a minority language, especially one that it had previously all but banned.
We do not yet know how IRCAM will be implemented or what effects it will have, and thus this paper outlines the issues involved rather than posits any firm conclusions. We begin with a review of four general points important for understanding the significance of the dahir. These include the deep historical roots of Berber politics in Morocco, regional diversity among Imazighen, the way notions of Berberness (or Amazighness) fit with other idioms of affiliation in Morocco, and the political economic conditions in which the dahir will be deployed. This background suggests four areas of contemporary Amazigh politics likely to be impacted by the changes promised in the dahir. First, I contend that Imazighen need not understand themselves as a unified group in order for their linguistic particularity to have political potential. Second, I note that political economic factors are likely to influence any nascent cultural or ethnic politics –a fairly obvious point, but one that sometimes goes unappreciated by scholars writing on Berber or Amazigh culture. Third, I note that whatever happens with the IRCAM dahir, the general rise in Amazigh political consciousness in Morocco is part of a much larger, global florescence of identity politics. Finally, I maintain that the dahir will have multiple uses for many different actors and that its significance will therefore be open to some manipulation. Changes promised by the dahir may on one level help some of Morocco’s poorest and least educated people to better participate in the changing economy. At the same time it may serve as a tool to manufacture political divisions useful to the central government for self-justification and political control.
Clearly Berber speakers have existed in North Africa since time
immemorial; they have reproduced their language, and arguably their culture,
across a long period of time against what would seem fairly daunting odds.
I have tried to suggest that the political significance of the linguistic
fact of Berber particularity has varied across time and space. The
IRCAM dahir is but one act in this long history and its relevance will
depend on how it aligns with various other cultural, social and political
forces. We do not know yet how the dahir will be implemented, what
sorts of changes it will really make in the educational system, or what
sorts of actors it will empower and/or inspire. We can, however,
make some preliminary observations as to how it is likely to effect the
enduring Berber/Amazigh question in Morocco.
First, it has been shown in Algeria that “the” Berber issue is far
more complicated than a simple ethnic cleavage (Roberts 1982, 1983, 1993,
Saleh 2001, Layachi this volume). Other ideological factors play
a role (the socialist or Islamist inclinations of particular Berbers, for
instance) as well as the differing material conditions of Berbers coming
of age in different generations and living in different regions of the
country. The same is true in Morocco, except that unlike Algeria
Morocco has no Kabylia, no single, dominant subgroup of Berbers that come
to be taken as a synecdoche. Still, I would argue that there need
not be a single, overarching and widely shared sense of Berber consciousness
for Berberness to prove politically salient in some ways. Amazigh
distinctiveness can merge with other social affiliations to play a role
in a variety of social groups and movements, from Islamists and socialists
to royalists and secular liberal democrats. In the complex social
and political geography of Morocco, convergences matter. Interest
groups are temporally fluid and strategically reconstituted. If we
look for a homogeneous Berber perspective, we are bound to be disappointed.
However, this does not mean that being Amazigh is not part of the perspective
of the many millions of Moroccans who speak Tamazight as their first or
only language. We cannot say a priori what influence being Berber
will have on a particular issue, group or action, but neither should we
assume that it will have no influence.
Second, we should not underestimate political economic factors.
Morocco’s poor have always suffered, but the combination of rising expectations
with disintegrating conditions can prove explosive. Scholars and
government officials have worried over the plight and political potential
of unemployed college graduates. In searching for an idiom of protest
such literate urbanites have articulated their grievances in many ways,
but rarely ethnically, as Berbers or Arabs. Now, however, the rural
poor are coming to share some of the expectations that have left urban
Moroccans disgruntled, and many thousands –perhaps millions-- of these
rural poor are Berber speakers. The promise of a new king, and the
expanding ambit of World Bank and other development projects, have injected
more hope into rural communities than can be met by the pace of change.
The slow spread of literacy and the more rapid proliferation of radios,
cassette decks and satellite television have meant that rural Berbers are
coming to understand the larger world more immediately. The juxtaposition
of hopeful (Arabic and French) words and images from “outside” with the
daily drudgery of poverty leads, at least in the mountains, to a consciousness
of being both poor and Berber. Whatever the statistical reality,
if rural Berbers come to see themselves as a group that is disproportionately
impoverished there will emerge real potential for a distinctly Berber politics.
The IRCAM dahir seems aimed at eliminating some of the main forms of linguistic
discrimination in Morocco –in the legal and educational systems.
However important this step is, if the expanding younger generation comes
to find it impossible to work, marry and raise families as their parents
did, they are likely to organize resistance. The government clearly
hopes this will take some form other than Islamic radicalism, but Islam’s
message of equality and justice resonates powerfully among disaffected
Berbers as well as Arabs.
Third, it is worth remembering that the general issues raised by IRCAM
are not restricted to Morocco or even North Africa more generally.
Scholars around the world have noted the political saliency of “culture”
of late, and particularly the use of culture in national projects.
Culture has become political material, whether it is indigenous people
in Brazil pressing their demands at the United Nations or the far right
in France lambasting “Arabs” for their non-French “culture” rather than
their non-French “race.” There is no guarantee that Berber culture
will become a significant idiom of political expression in Morocco, but
it would hardly be out of line with a worldwide explosion in identity politics
and projects.
Finally, the IRCAM dahir stands to have many uses for many different
actors. The establishment of IRCAM is bound to please Amazigh rights
activists, to start with, and it will serve as a visible symbol of an emerging
civil society. While this will please many international observers,
there would seem more to the story. What does the handling of Amazigh
demands in Morocco have to do with the upheaval in Algeria, particularly
the huge protests by Kabyle-based Amazigh political parties in May 2001?
What does it have to do with the emerging Islamist challenge within Morocco,
especially the March 2000 demonstrations in Casablanca that are estimated
to have drawn 200,000 people to the streets? Critics will note that
the IRCAM dahir seems to value Berber particularity in a way that is reminiscent
of the ill-fated, French-sponsored “Berber dahir” that inflamed Moroccan
nationalist passion in 1930. While the new dahir does not outline
separate Islamic laws for urban people (understood to be Arabs) and customary,
“tribal” laws for rural people (understood to be Berbers), it does pave
the way for different educational formats in different parts of the Kingdom.
The areas where Berber is to be the language of instruction are likely
to be in the countryside rather than the city, which could easily beget
a situation where rural/urban education becomes even more separate –-and
even less equal.
Many have noted that the Moroccan monarchy bases something of its practical relevance on its ability to rise above sectarian politics. Hammoudi writes, “the authoritarian government must have diversity in order to appear as the mediator” (1997:154), while Thomas notes that the present King’s father “proved himself to be remarkably skillful in playing different factions off against one another, thereby gathering decisive power into his own hands” (1999:26-27). Because the Moroccan monarchy requires sectarian politics to function, there will be those who view IRCAM as a tool to turn the political energies of activist Imazighen against Islamists, on university campuses and in the streets. This is conjectural, of course, and is complicated by the strong Muslim faith of many Imazighen and their over-representation in Morocco’s religious schools.
The promotion of Amazigh culture seems laudable to anyone who believes that cultural and linguistic expression is a basic human right; the dahir is sure to please most Western observers. What the Institute will mean in Morocco, how the edict will be implemented, and a full sense of why it is being promulgated is not yet clear. The promotion of Amazigh culture in the IRCAM dahir may be simultaneously the product of a genuine desire to improve the plight of Morocco’s linguistic minority and a means of extending royal control over a diverse nation.