Constructing a new national narrative: Morocco from multiculturalism to

Interculturalism1
Larbi Touaf
Introduction:
For a functioning and stable state, a minimal sense of solidarity and trust among its
citizenry is a necessity. This has been a mantra for political theory and political science
since time immemorial. But what holds the members and the groups that compose society
together has also been debated for centuries. Nationalism has been the dominant and
widespread answer. Understood as a national narrative, it offers to transcend difference
in the name of the nation. But as a supra-national ideology it is fundamentally transient
and instrumental, not an end in itself. Nationalism for freshly independent countries was
thus a tool used for nation building, and the expectations were that it would evolve into or
yield more democratic forms of governance. Yet in many cases it became equivalent to
authoritarianism and even totalitarianism. As an ideological discourse, it projects an
overarching identity that over time becomes oppressive and hegemonic because it
betrays its bias toward one particular component (ethnic, tribal, religious, political…etc.)
of the society, thus suppressing cultural diversity.

With the recent developments in our region (The Arab spring) the question of who we are
as a nation surfaced again as an essential issue in the debate over what kind of society
we want to live in and bequeath to our children. In our country, the state has addressed
the issue with diligence affirming in the newly revised constitution the multiple roots of our
national identity. The main questions I raise in this chapter and in relation to the current
situation have to do with the conceptualization of a plural identity that keeps that minimal
sense of cohesion between the components of society without hegemonic tendencies
from any particular group. In what terms can we project a vision of “US” or “WE” away
from the notion of a romanticized organic body politic. How can we reach a sense of
community not as the hypertrophied figure of a unity of unities built on the model of an

1
Chapter in Najib Mokhtari (ed.)2019. Dialogic Configurations in Post-Colonial Morocco
Rhetorical Conjectures in Arts, Culture and Politics. Rabat: UIR. P.61-71.
enlarged self, nor that of an individual identity inflated into a collective identity, but as one
that provides a space for valid differences and therefore a space to think and debate
forms and models of common existence or co-existence?

The democratic process started in Morocco in the late 1990s could have taken decades
to unfold were it not for the wave of intense socio-political developments known as the
“Arab Spring.” The effect of those protests on our country can be measured by two main
events: the 2011 Constitution and the political development it made possible. Apart from
the important political changes to the system of government, the preamble of the new
constitution outlines the contours of the national identity in the following terms:

The Kingdom of Morocco intends to preserve, in its fullness and diversity,

one and indivisible national identity. Its unity, forged by the convergence
of its Arab-Islamic elements, Amazigh and Saharo-Hassani, was nourished
and enriched by its African Andalusian Hebrew and Mediterranean tributaries.2

Composite identity:
Compared to the former text which identified Morocco as an Arab country with Islam as
its religion, the new text is more in tune with our socio-historical reality. Morocco is a multi-
ethnic multicultural country composed of diverse Amazigh denominations, Arabs, Black
Africans, and Sahrawi) and multi-linguistic (a variety of Amazigh dialects, Darija, Arabic,
and French) with the invisible presence of some religious minorities like Jews and
Christians. This diversity is not the same as the one we can find in migrant states in
Europe or North America, where diversity is often taken as synonymous with racial and
ethnic tensions. Moroccan diversity is historically deep and fundamentally inclusive
mainly because it is founded on Islamic ethical principles of equality and justice that are

2
Le Royaume du Maroc entend préserver, dans sa plénitude et sa diversité, son identité
nationale une et indivisible. Son unité, forgée par la convergence de ses composantes
arabo-islamique, amazighe et saharo-hassanie, s'est nourrie et enrichie de ses affluents
africain, andalou, hébraïque et méditerranéen. (The 2011Constitution is available on the
Ministry of Justice website at adala.justice.gov.ma)
deeply engrained in the minds of its people, but which the state continued to ignore for
decades. In embracing this reality, the constitution, which was written by a large and
representative commission composed of social actors, political figures, civil society
representatives, business people, women’s rights activists, and youth leaders, broke
away from the traditional conception of the nation-state based on a notion of unity
understood as sameness in race, language, and creed. In other words, it is the opposite
of the ideological construction of the nation that seeks to smooth over differences in the
name of national unity. With hindsight, the ideology of Arab nationalism that supported
the struggle for independence and the building of the modern nation was mistakenly
conceived of as an assimilation of the different groups by the most privileged and powerful
one. Thus, until July 2011, Morocco was an Arab state because the pan-Arab ideology
was supposed to be the guarantor of unity between not only Moroccans, but with the
peoples of more than twenty other countries. Yet, as a federating ideology at the time of
the fight for independence, Moroccan nationalism counted among its major leaders
eminent Amazigh as well as Arab figures. Its aim was to bring Moroccans together under
the same banner. The reconstruction of a distinctive national identity required a sense of
belonging and unity that Arab nationalism readily offered. But the other side of the
equation is that Arab nationalism also implied the assimilation of all groups into the
prevalent model represented by a largely urban middle class that identified itself as Arab.
The creation of a nationalist narrative that served as a supra-national ideology was
essential for garnering the support of all to construct a nation, yet from a historical and
pragmatic perspective it cannot be understood other than fundamentally transient and
instrumental not an end in itself. The overarching identity it projected was also conceived
of in terms of assimilation to the dominant element, but with the inequitable distribution of
wealth and justice, this overarching identity became an oppressive narrative that created
the conditions for its own demise.

The recent and in many ways continuing political upheavals in Arab countries like Libya,
Syria, Yemen and Iraq, for example, are witness to the fact that the question of identity is
back on the table once again, and this time it is real business. In reacting to political,
social, and economic paralysis, the youth-led revolutions in the Arab World were largely
an expression of the alienation that young people felt toward a narrative of the nation that
no longer has any meaning for them. Throughout the region, the shared feeling is that
collective identity needs to be politically re-engineered, and the debate is not so much
about “who we are,” as “is there really a ‘we’ that we can all identify with and feel part
of ?” Needless to say, the debate is only starting and clashes over individual freedom will
occur, especially when it comes to freedom of conscience and sexual identity. Despite
hegemonic attempts to stifle the debate, it is an undeniable fact that diversity is now a
major issue not only in Morocco but across the region. Differences in opinion, life-style,
and belief have to be acknowledged; no one can claim monopoly over truth neither in
religious nor in societal matters.

But before looking into possible ways of conceptualizing our mosaic identity, it is useful
to identify some landmarks to consider what has been done over the past decade to
highlight the sustained change dynamic that resulted in the writers of the supreme law of
the nation adopting an exceedingly progressive stance on the question of national
identity.

First, the King’s famous Ajdir speech on October 17, 2001, and the creation of the Royal
Institute of the Amazigh Culture (IRCAM) laid the foundations for a new linguistic and
cultural policy in the sense that it announced the end of a monolithic conception and a
recognition of the diversity of the foundations of the Moroccan cultural identity. This
(post)modern and innovative conception stressed the plurality and diversity of the
Moroccan nation whose tributaries are Amazigh, Arabic, sub-Saharan African and
Andalusian. It also states that this plurality is not detrimental to the unity of the nation.
With the proactive role the state played in rehabilitating the Amazigh heritage (the official
adoption of Tifinagh script, the teaching of the Tamazight language in public schools, and
its presence on state television), the official recognition of the linguistic and cultural
diversity of the nation has been on the political agenda for many years.

Second, the reform in 2004 of the code of personal status was a major step in the
reconfiguration of national identity. The new text establishes equality between spouses in
a shared responsibility over the family, unlike the old text that oppressed women under
the principle of "obedience in return for maintenance." The reformed law upsets the
established order of patriarchy and grants women full citizenship. Such a revolution in
Moroccan society has a great impact on the daily lives of millions of men and women. It
is a major transformation of social practices, attitudes, and behaviors, with even greater
consequences in terms of women’s demands for more; such as the right to transfer
citizenship to their children with non-Moroccan husbands, obtained with the 2007
Nationality Law reform, and the right to transfer citizenship to their foreign husbands also
obtained with the current reform of Article 10 of the same law.

Thirdly, the creation of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER) in January 2004,
and whose final report presented in 2005 made strong recommendations on how to end
oppression in all its forms and to bring about social justice. More significantly, the IER
report served as the basis for the 2011 Constitution.

These landmarks in the course of the first decade of this century have somehow fallen
into oblivion because of the lethargic process of transition that seemed to become an end
in itself. With the advent of the Arab Spring, things seemed to have picked up speed. Not
only did the state pledge to anchor political action in popular legitimacy, but it offered a
terrain where political praxis is geared toward renewing national consciousness in ways
that the political and intellectual elite have yet to conceptualize. What this reveals is that
decision makers and significant sections of the elite will have to stop nurturing a
conception of the nation as a totality that is based on an outdated/irrelevant principle of
sameness (in terms of ethnicity, language, and religion) that supposedly guarantees
stability and unity as dependent on cultural, linguistic, and religious homogeneity. In other
words, what is needed now is a new thinking or a rethinking of national identity that does
away with the undermined notions of homogeneity, to devise a sense of who we are as a
heterogeneous ensemble coexisting in peace and solidarity in the same space.

Therefore, in order to start conceptualizing the idea of a national identity, we need

to recognize that in Morocco the historical encounter of different, often rival cultures and
languages has produced a sedimentation of cultural and political practices that requires
a sort of archeology of the minds, a poetics of diversity3 to use another concept from
Edouard Glissant (1996), one that challenges the traditional postcolonial views of cultural

3
Edouard Glissant.1996. Introduction à une poétique du divers. Paris : Gallimard.
identity predicated on a dialectics of self and other. Thus, instead of an apocalyptic view
of the world that promotes a general feeling of catastrophe and near-destruction,
advocating cultural diversity upholds the relational nature of the “chaos-world” that
Glissant describes as a world of entities and ethnicities on an equal plane that collide and
intersect(1996).

In fact, the Moroccan cultural, political, and literary scene has been undergoing an
intermediate and transitory phase where new experiences of identity and difference seek
legitimacy. Writers, artists, journalists, and activists envision culture as a space where
difference prevails. The salient feature of this cultural transformation is a notion that
identity is constructed through the incorporation of difference not through its rejection.4 In
the literature (essays, newspaper and magazine articles, fiction, memoirs) and visual arts
(painting, video, cinema, hypertext/internet) accompanying this revival, the question of
identity is inextricably linked to the sense (or nonsense) of who we are and where we
belong (the Maghreb, the Mediterranean region, Africa, the Arab World, the Middle East,
the Islamic World).

It is necessary for the entire body of political and artistic and social actors, authors,
artists, filmmakers, and journalists to build on this rich and culturally diverse background,
in order to provide an image of ourselves that goes beyond the remnants of single root
identity to underscore the complex and historical character of individual and/or communal
identity. In fact, one of the fundamentals of the Humanities today is that identity cannot
be approached as fixed, determined, and absolute. Taking into account the overlapping
territories of language, culture, and geography between the north and the south of the
Mediterranean, Europe, and the Maghreb, and the undeniable facts of colonialism, cross-

4
This conception is actually closer to Edouard Glissant’s alternative view of identity based on Gilles Deleuze and Félix
Guattari’s celebrated notion of “rhizome thinking” (la pensée du rhizome) as opposed to “root thinking” (la pensée de
la racine) -Mille Plateaux [A Thousand Plateaus, 1987]. According to Deleuze and Guattari, the “single root” kills
everything around it, while the “rhizome root” connects with other roots. Glissant applies this metaphor to the issue of
identity and associates it to his postulate of “atavistic” and “composite” cultures. He argues that “single root” identity,
which has not always been deadly, is associated with the nature of what he calls “atavistic cultures,” while “rhizome
root” identity is associated with composite cultures. The opposition that often exists in these cultures between the
atavistic and the composite accounts for ethnic tensions, racism, and intolerance.
migration and historical and cultural interpenetration, it becomes clear that cultural identity
cannot be grounded in original notions of ethnicity, language, religion, history, or
geographic territory, nor can it be conceived of in exclusion but in relation to the Other to
use an idea from Caribbean author Glissant.

From Multiculturalism to “Interculturalism:” The Grounds for the New National

Narrative

The question of “interculturality” or “interculturalism” cannot be dissociated from that of

cultural or collective identity, and takes on importance only if it is conceived of as a
perennial and non-provisional situation. In the same way, we cannot envisage this issue
without linking it to the public space understood as a shared physical space but also as a
symbolic space where different ideas are expressed and where a public opinion is
elaborated. This obviously implies the existence of a state of law guaranteeing individual
and collective liberties, a prerequisite for any democratic exercise.

But, because the question of collective identity is often linked to culture, it is itself subject
to debate. It is often torn between conservative and liberal visions. The conservative
vision essentializes identity and thus makes it somehow fixed and non-changing so that
any individual behavior is seen as an automatism or a cultural reflex. The liberal vision,
however, insists on the fluid and therefore evolutionary character of identity, be it
collective or individual. According to this line of thinking, group or individual behaviors
(including populist and essentialist identity that is very common today) must be
understood within a broader political and socio-economic context. In other words, the
apparent extremisms that underpins identity claims in many parts of the world are
contingent upon the current ideological chaos and disorientation of a globalized
consumerist postmodernity.

To counter such narratives of fear and xenophobia, it is important to consider how in

Morocco we already have an example of how the process of multiculturalism developed
in our culture to give us a valuable instance of intercultural homogeneity which is the
result of historical brewing of different cultures (Arab, Amazigh, Jewish, Andalusian and
Sub/Saharan and even European). Our ability to accept and integrate difference is
historically proven, and it is no coincidence that our constitution proclaims it loud and clear
in its preamble which defines the spirit of the Moroccan nation. The 2011 Constitution
delivers us from the straitjacket of the mythical “single root identity” and the ideology of
sameness and its accompanying oppressive notion of cultural homogeneity that
expresses a deep fear of difference as a course that would lead to discord. Instead, the
constitution conforms to the complexity of our reality and gives us the image of who we
really are, a plural nation unified by civic principles, recognizing our diverse origins and
highlighting the cultural wealth that flows from it. This recognition is the crucible of our
modernity which is a never-ending construction site requiring an incessant and endless
effort.

It must be said that at independence we inherited or adopted the 19th century European
conception of a nation-state which is based on the myth of a once-and-for-all determined
identity conceived of as a reflection of an historical, cultural, linguistic, ethnic and religious
homogeneity. This idea, which found its justification in colonial anthropology in particular,
establishes a hierarchy between higher and universal cultures and other inferior, primitive
or indigenous ones. The former are presented as being in the most advanced phase of
humanity, whereas the latter are mere testimonies of what humanity was in its oldest
historical phases. This archetypal pattern of colonial thought that has been gradually
established through school and media continues to function in a subtle way and its
residues create xenophobia and confusion between integration and assimilation in some
European contexts where migration is a politicized issue. In fact, the difference between
integration and assimilation is that the advocates of the latter seek to force the result of
the former in total disregard to the time needed to achieve it. Undoubtedly, whereas
integration is achieved in different sectors of social life such as work, education, etc.,
assimilation supposes the existence of a system, i.e. an ideology, a homogeneous whole
which constitutes the national culture and that this is the cement which unifies the nation.
We know that culture is much more complex than that and that it is anything but a
monolithic block. Hence, the need for a revision of our ideological presuppositions.
Today the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the bedrock of shared values on
which all the countries of the world are in agreement, and it is the example of what we
mean by “interculturality.” Nevertheless, it has the force of law only among nations, and
not yet within societies that globalization and new technologies help make increasingly
diverse. It is in this perspective that the current Moroccan constitution, unlike those that
preceded it, includes a vision that places the country resolutely in modernity, the basic
principle of which is the rationalization of relations between, on the one hand, citizens
themselves, and on the other between the citizens and those who govern them. That is,
the institutionalization of a common ground between individuals and groups living on the
soil of this country. This common ground is none other than the supremacy of the law
positioned at equal distance with respect to all. Thus, the question of human rights
according to international standards, and especially the primacy of international
conventions over national laws, occupies a central place. Consequently, the monolithic
vision of the nation-state in the previous versions of the constitution, which insisted on the
essentially Arab character of the Moroccan state, is abandoned because it did not
conform to Moroccan history or reality today, and even less to that of a future the contours
of which are being drawn today. The new constitution values and strengthens Morocco’s
cultural and historical richness because intercultural sensitivity is at the heart of our living-
together and is the result of a long history of interactivity between the different
components of the people who inhabit Morocco.

In conclusion, we must keep in mind that “interculturality” is not an initial state of affairs,
but an advanced stage of cultural diversity, one in which a synthesis of all the inter-mixed
cultures takes place. This synthesis is a sort of positive “miscegenation” of culture which
is itself the result of peaceful or conflictual encounters of different cultures taking place in
the long term. We have an example in Moroccan culture that is the result of a mixture of
different components, and the mother tongue of many of us (Darija) is a source of
extraordinary linguistic richness.

Several countries around the world declare themselves to be multicultural societies such
as India, Mexico, Bolivia, South Africa, Nigeria, Canada. However, apart from the
Caribbean, none of them can be said to be intercultural. However, even if heterogeneity
is not always easily accepted, the principle of law reigns supreme, and that is why we
need to adopt a more legalistic approach to the management of cultural diversity and
insist on the human rights aspect of diversity, because in the international conventions
most countries have ratified there are mechanisms and tools that can help fight against
xenophobia and racism. To those who would like to impose religion as a force for
regulating social behavior, they must remember that the very fact that there were periods,
even if short, of peaceful coexistence particularly between Muslims and Jews in Morocco,
proves that the day-to-day living in society creates the laws of living together, not the
religious precepts that dictate the behavior of men and women for eternity. Currently, the
challenge, both at home and abroad is to make it clear that living together is a process of
pragmatic social arrangements entirely independent of faith or religious dogma. We need
to ensure that younger generations realize the very complex nature of identity and culture,
and that it is not limited to linguistic or religious affiliation. This requires a voluntarist
pedagogical approach in the school curriculum but also in the media with the aim of
deconstructing outdated ideas on contested notions such as identity, culture, and
citizenship.

Although it is the responsibility of the state to fight against discrimination, in particular by

law reform and education, it is above all the task of civil society to take charge of the
social dimension of intercultural dialogue. And this is where the role of intellectuals,
artists, and journalists is paramount. The intercultural must first be seen in cultural
productions, such as cinema, music, literature, theater, and TV programs, because they
permeate the public space and help with the creation and spreading of a common
imaginaire that soothes fears and dis-antagonizes differences, thus allowing the
differences to be comprehended and even identified with, thereby protecting citizens
against xenophobia.

References:

Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix. 1980. Mille Plateaux. Paris : Les Edition de Minuit.

Glissant, Edouard.1996. Introduction à une poétique du divers. Paris : Gallimard.

Ouellet, Pierre. 2002. Politique de la parole, singularité et communauté. Montréal:Trait D’Union,.