>RABAT, Morocco (AP) — A Moroccan court sentenced a prominent feminist activist to two and a half years in prison and $5,000 in fines for blasphemy in a case that has alarmed human rights groups and drawn widespread attention.
>The presiding judge ruled late Wednesday night that Ibtissam Lachgar was guilty of violating part of Morocco’s criminal code that outlaws offending the monarchy or Islam because of messages on a T-shirt she wore in a selfie posted online, her attorney Naïma El Guellaf told The Associated Press. Lachgar was charged with blasphemy and with disseminating the image online.
>One of the attorneys told AP they plan to appeal the conviction.
>“Not only is this verdict unjust, but it also threatens the freedom of speech and opinion,″ Hamid Sikouk of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights told the AP.
>At Wednesday’s hearing, Lachgar, wearing a headscarf and appearing fatigued, told the judge she had no intention of offending Islam. She argued that the T-shirt she wore reflected a political message and bore a slogan long used against sexist ideologies and violence toward women.
>Her defense team argued that the online post did not constitute an offense to Islam.
>“God is not only for Muslims, but also for Christians and Jews. I don’t see any offense to Islam in that publication,” lawyer El Guellaf told the court. ‘’I am Muslim myself, and I don’t feel offended by it.’'
>Another attorney, Souad Brahma, head of the Moroccan Association of Human Rights, warned of a backslide in human rights in the kingdom and said her client was speaking about religions in general, not Islam.
>The defense said wearing the T-shirt falls under freedom of expression, a constitutional right in Morocco, and called the charges unconstitutional.
>The shirt featured writing referring to the sexual identity of a deity and calling Islam fascist and misogynistic.
>Long known for provocative activism, Lachgar, 50, is a psychologist and co-founder of the Alternative Movement for Individuals Freedoms, known by its French acronym MALI. She is an outspoken and vocal defender of rights for women and LGBTQ communities in Morocco.
>Her arrest polarized public opinion across Morocco. Some see it as a valid response to provocation and others view it as a violation of democracy and freedom of speech. Though the country is politically moderate compared to others in the Middle East and North Africa, same-sex relations are illegal and certain kinds of speech can bring criminal charges.
>Lachgar has called for decriminalizing sex outside of marriage, which remains illegal. She also made headlines more than a decade ago when she organized a demonstration outside Morocco’s parliament, where couples kissed to support two teenagers facing indecency charges after posting a photo of themselves kissing on Facebookhttps://apnews.com/article/morocco-blasphemy-trial-lgbtq-activist-9f4c81553bb06caad061aa07c5a4f369 >>2464389Cool. Now watch as western govs stamp and shout and cope and seethe and do nothing about it, while their own governments uphold patriarchy and get bossed around by Trump, lol.
Putting that aside this sucks and the punishment doesn't fit her so-called crime.
>>2464389 based
turks don't want to admit the truth.
>calling Islam fascist and misogynisticWhy do we allow such people to exist in our countries? Let’s consider a different perspective. If you are truly committed to spreading feminist values in a Muslim country, is it wise to call Islam fascist? Although atheists in Western countries do not believe in Christianity, many have a positive appreciation for it (e.g. Zizek). Yet, secularists in Muslim countries can only have an antagonistic relationship to Islam which mirrors the hostility of Western Islamophobes. Similarly, Western LGBT activists are fanatically anti-religious to the point it brought harm on their own community, but is there any reason for Arab ones to be this way? Instead of letting queer identity evolve on its own term in an Arab Islamic society, they just seem to be mimicking Western ones. Practically speaking, if you want to convince others of your views, it’s a pretty stupid thing to insult them. I think these kinds of stunts are meant to rally support in Western countries, especially France in this case, rather than do anything meaningful in Morocco.
>>2464393Probably true, but not for “color revolution” reasons. After 9/11, a huge amount of money was pumped into these NGOs. The idea was to bring about social change in Arab countries to pacify them. This backfired in predictable ways. So the US state dept. big campaign to push Sufism as “peaceful” alternative (kinda strange considering all the violent rebellions Sufis were involved with) only triggered hostility towards actual Sufis in Arab countries.
>>2464523Yeah you get it.
Most of current day attemps at secularism and social progressivism in muslim countries is completely unorganic even if i agree with the overall point. It's due it being pushed by diasporics as well as the most disconected bourgeois cosmopolitan who spent more time in London/Paris/New-York than in in their country.
End results is you get super edgy reddit atheists and radfems doing idiotic alienating stunts like what the OP posted instead of being Attaturk.
Progressives needs to understand that you convince people by making them understand your ways will bring more prosperity and ethics to society, not by doing some Aristocratic larp where youre the despot that force your "inferiors", here religious people, to be your slaves.
Of course using strenght to cull religious reactionaries is far from prohibited have been done many times by progressives, but you need a strong enough base and bureaucracy to enact this. The dumb woman in the OP don't have any of this.
>>2464526Its not just that they are inorganic but they raise uncomfortable questions for secularists and progressives.
Traditional Sharia recognized the right of men to unilaterally divorce their spouse and to take multiple wives. But you can’t find a single feminist in Muslim countries who argues that these rights should be extended to women i.e. that women should have the right to take multiple husbands (polyandry). Even though there is room to argue for that within a sharia framework. Why? Because Western liberals don’t practice polyandry or unilateral divorces. So whereas Western feminists pushed for men’s legal rights to be extended to women, feminists in Muslim countries seem more concerned with replicating a Western social model, which bizarrely involves taking rights away from others.
Similarly, traditional Sharia prohibited sexual contact between men, but not romantic relationships, which were widely encouraged by premodern religious moralists. So does it make sense to declare Islam to be a fascist obstacle? One could certainly form queer relationships while respecting the most conservative Islamic norms and one could also argue on sharia grounds that some of those sexual prohibitions can be lifted. Yet why have LGBT activists taken the route of essentially demanding the “fascist” religion be pushed out of the public sphere? Are they genuinely interested in rights or more obsessed with replicating the transgressive, militantly secular LGBT culture they see in the West? What good would that do anybody?
(USER WAS WARNED FOR THIS POST) >>2464538I am really more interested in why these activists reject sharia when it isn’t clear that sharia is the enemy they claim it is. What does that tell us about them?
Secular progressives claim to stand for universal human emancipation, yet their language (Islam is fascist) is often exclusionary. The UN defines polygamy as a “harmful cultural practice” that violates women’s dignity. Something most secular feminists agree with. Interestingly, the acts included on the “harmful cultural practices” list are virtually all African or Islamic, the American tradition of lynching black men is not a “cultural practice.” Anthropologists have studied polygamy and polyandry for decades and found no evidence that it’s inherently worse than monogamy or harmful to women. Similarly, most feminists come from communities that don’t practice polygamy but they feel the need to crusade against it. So are secular progressives really fighting for liberation or to install their own personal biases? And what good would that do?
>>2464542The Western LGBT movement in the 60s and 70s was firmly anti-religious. Religion was a convenient scapegoat and easier to sell to a mainstream establishment that wouldn’t tolerate anti-capitalism. Even if that vapid anti-religious sentiment has died down, there is this idea that religion went from being a totalitarian social institution to a benign personal belief.
Putting aside the truth of that narrative, what kind of effects does it have? A great deal of hostility to Muslims has been justified on the grounds that they fail to separate religion from politics, making them an existential threat to civil society. It’s what allows Muslim women in France to be kicked off beaches for wearing headscarves or Israel’s bombing of civilian targets.
>>2464582Ideas should be analyzed materially in terms of their effects and what kind of practices they enable people in power to get away with.The question isn’t what the correct relationship between religion and the public sphere out to be, but what these ideas serve to do within the liberal capitalist system.
The public/private distinction is supposed to preserve a zone of freedom from the state, but at the end of the day it’s the state’s job to police the separation of private and public spheres. So the fox guards the hen house. This serves statist ends. Socialists can be allowed to exist in a capitalist society, but only as long as their beliefs remain private do not interfere with the public. Effectively putting them in a position where they will never be allowed to change anything. Similarly, the bombings of Gaza or Iran and refusal to negotiate with them is justified by the Western claim that they bring irrational private beliefs into public politics and are so crazy they can’t be trusted and can only be dealt with by violence.
The transformation of Islam into a pseudo-race has its roots in the colonial period. In Algeria for example, Muslims were excluded from French citizenship, automatic for Jews and Christians. They could only become French citizens by renouncing Islam, but even those renouncers were referred to on paper as “Catholic Muslims.” Similarly, in Yugoslavia “Muslim” became an ethnic nation despite not differing from neighboring Serbs and Croats. What we have here is a pattern of exclusion that racialized Muslims in the same way Jews were transformed from enemies of Christianity into an enemy race.
The narrative that weak liberals protect Islam and prevent us from criticizing it is really saying “we’re not anti-Islam enough.” But what’s the context for this? America’s post 9/11 wars, Israeli genocide in Gaza etc. all missions sold to the public on the idea that Islam are intrinsically illiberal and threatening and criminal. “How do we better criticize Islam?” Is the wrong question to ask.
>>2464631>Ideas should be analyzed materially in terms of their effects and what kind of practices they enable people in power to get away withso we shouldnt be concerned with the correctness of ideas?
>What we have here is a pattern of exclusion that racialized Muslims in the same way Jews were transformed from enemies of Christianity into an enemy race. yes and the way to include oneself into society is by integrating oneself - but muslims dont want to be included in the western public because it inherently goes against their aims and beliefs, which is as much as they say.
>“we’re not anti-Islam enough.” more like, "islam is not special to us. get over it."
>the idea that Islam are intrinsically illiberalhow many muslim countries have LGBT rights, women's righte or free speech laws? qualifying these countries as "different" in regard to liberal universality proves the point that islam is particularist in its self-conception.
>>2464542To clarify somethings. I don’t the majority of ordinary queer Arabs who are Muslims (regardless of how they identify) are interested in offending or transgressing religion or see it as a negative force in their lives. So what did this performative stunt achieve? Lachgar is the type of liberal modernizer who sees Islam as fundamentally incompatible with being an authentic woman or authentically queer. The logical consequence of such a view is that Muslims cannot be queer unless they renounce their religion. They are excluded. Ironically, secular fundamentalists of this type insist Islam is a problem because it is uniquely illiberal and unmodern but they also exclude Muslims from the possibility of being liberal and modern. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
I generally feel provocative stunts like these are meant to drive a wedge between Muslims and queers/feminists for idpol reasons. It’s so people like Lachgar strum up Muslim anger, then swoop in and argue queers need protecting from evil Islam. Making the patient sick so you can supply your own cure.
>>2464641The point is that liberal universality is particular in its conception. It promotes a particular understanding of personhood, of property, of how others should behave, with its own virtues and vices which are held together by discipline and coercion. It excludes and punishes those it labels enemies.
>the way to include oneself into society is by integrating oneself - but muslims dont want to be included in the western public Imagine if we were to rephrase this by replacing Muslim with “black” or “trans” or “gay.” If Islam is not special, you have certainly succeed yourself in making it so.
These types of narratives reveal one of the ironies of liberal Western mindsets: the hollow claim to be all inclusive and tolerant.
As for ideas, their correctness can never be separated from their material effects. An engineer can design something on paper and make it seem sensible but cause a horrific accident if that machine were ever built.
>>2464659>The point is that liberal universality is particular in its conceptioni disagree. i think the crisis of universality is only in the immanent particularity of different groups as they seek to disengage from the public into private communities.
>It excludes and punishes those it labels enemies. who does it exclude?
>Imagine if we were to rephrase this by replacing Muslim with “black” or “trans” or “gay.”then what would happen???
>the hollow claim to be all inclusive and tolerant. where is the intolerance?
>As for ideas, their correctness can never be separated from their material effects. is islam true or false? (your eternity depends on this)
>>2464660The point isn’t that sharia should be instituted as state law, but why do a certain breed of progressives like Lachgar declare Islam to be tantamount to fascism which has to be totally set aside to realize women’s or queer liberation? Western LGBT and feminist activist don’t call Christianity fascist. If Lachgar wants to bring radical queer social norms to Morocco, is that really in the best interest of local queers who overwhelmingly choose to be Muslim and identify with their religion?
>>2464664>can you earnestly argue that it has not held exceptionally reactionary views in every sense of the word?This is extremely reductive and I don’t think it matches up with the sheer diversity of religious life or makes much historical sense.
>>2464663The problem of universality is not that there are these wonderful pseudo-Hegelian transcendent universal norms and some people reject them and withdraw into their subjective fantasies. What Westerners call universal values are simply their own particular cultural values that have become globalized by the engine of capital. This leaves other societies in the position of making their own history but not on their own conditions. Figuring out how to adapt their own cultural and religious norms to globalized Western ideas, whether to reject them, mix them, create new ones, combine them in innovative ways.
But it also creates exclusions where people who live according to norms Westerners don’t like (nomadism, polygamy) are branded as dangerous, criminal, and threatening.
(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST) >>2464681>This is extremely reductive and I don’t think it matches up with the sheer diversity of religious life or makes much historical sense.has it? or is that merely too "reductive" because it is true that for all things concern, abrahamic religion has been a disaster for the human race in general, it led directly to some of the worst stagnation and excesses of humanity, nearly every atrocity you can think of in the past 1500 years has been caused in some way by it, is this reductive? i suppose since i'm honestly looking at it, yes, but to say that somehow you can have women's rights and islam, gay rights and islam in even the most benign sense of the word is insane to me, it's hardly true of christianity either, the only reason it's survived is precisely because it was beaten so hard by atheists and other secularizing forces, otherwise it'd look relatively similar to this (and in many ways, it still does) and so arguing that this fact "flattens the diversity of religious life and makes little historical sense" is ridiculous, abrahamic religion itself flattens the diversity of religious life, provably so, there are exceptions of course, but in every instance of it, it has pushed out every religion through coercion, and has maintained this coercion through extreme measures
>>2464681>What Westerners call universal values are simply their own particular cultural values that have become globalized by the engine of capitalso you believe that women's rights, LGBT rights and free speech laws are a form of western imperialism or cultural hegemony like i see the african reactionaries say, and should therefore be rejected?
>But it also creates exclusions where people who live according to norms Westerners don’t like (nomadism, polygamy) are branded as dangerous, criminal, and threatening.if liberal values are western norms and people are supposed to respect norms, then anyone in the west is supposed to abide by liberal values, correct? you also havent said whether islam is true or not, which allah is judging you on.
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