Morocco: Reflections of Eid

It's been quite awhile since we last looked into the Moroccan blogosphere…so it's about time! As the Eid al-Adha celebration has recently passed, bloggers are wishing each other well and sharing stories from the holiday.

The View From Fez reports that King Mohammed VI has pardoned 502 prisoners over the holiday. In detail:

His Majesty, King Mohammed VI, has pardoned 502 prisoners for the Islamic Festival of Sacrifice or Eid al-Adha, being celebrated this week. According to a Justice Ministry press release, total pardon was granted to 15 inmates over their remaining prison term or seclusion, reduction of imprisonment term or seclusion to 299, commutating of life imprisonment to time term to 3, total pardon over the prison term or its remaining time to 29.

A royal pardon was granted to 15 inmates over their remaining prison term, while a reduced prison term was granted to 299 inmates, said the Moroccan Justice Ministry in a statement.

Asmaa Mouhib wishes her readers a happy Eid:

Demain, c’est la fête de Aïd Al-Adha. Mes meilleurs vœux de bonheur et de santé à tous les musulmans du monde en cette occasion !

Tomorrow is the feast of Eid Al-Adha. My best wishes for happiness and health to all Muslims throughout the world on this occasion!

Agharass also shares good cheer with readers:

Salamo aalaykom, chères agharassiennes, chers agharassiens. Je vous souhaite,à toutes et à tous, de passer un bon aid el ahdha avec joie et satisfaction d’avoir accompli notre devoir spirituel envers Allah. Mes meilleurs vœux à toutes et à tous.

Salamo aalaykom [Peace be upon you], dear friends of Agharass. I wish you all a good aid el ahdha with the joy and satisfaction of having done our spiritual duty to Allah. My best wishes to all.

Maryam of My Marrakesh gives thanks of a different kind…to the sheep which are sacrificed for the Eid al-Adha feast. In a post called “A Shoukran [thank you] to Sheep,” she says:

So many of you have given your lives today.
On this holy day, this holy day of Aid.

Please know….

Your symbolism has not gone lost.
Your sacrifice has not gone forgotten

Including to those tender hearted.

21 comments

  • Redouane, can you read and reason? The previous generation to current children is the current adult generation.

  • Redouane

    Jillian,
    Thanks for making that clear. That’s really made a whole lot of difference about the issue of starving children. I thought it was PLO Arafat’s generation and those who came before. I really did not think that children now have to suffer for those who are alive and for those who themselves are making the childrens life miserable. Another reason why you shold tell Hamas about the miserable lives of children. They would be able to listen to you, since they still alive and well.

  • Redouane

    Alloush,
    I did not tell myself that because I was addressing you about your guilt about the starving children in Gaza. And besides I do not believe what I WANT to beleive, I beleive of what is fact.

  • Redouane
    —————
    All Gaza under siege, more than million citizens under brutal siege, that’s the only fact here, and you deny it, what else left to discuss.

    I’m no longer interested in this discussion.

    A “human” justifying putting Citizens including kids under siege cause of individuals acts and “refute” any human sympathize with them deserve nothing but a shoe in his face.

    SHAME ON YOU.

  • Manus

    Redouane the Iranian Neo-con (Sorry Persian) is at it again or maybe just a flip-flopping Habbad propagandist running from one blog to another to provoke Arab people and disseminate half-truths without bringing anything constructive to the argument. I still cannot figure out what creed you are my friend. However, I am 100% sure that you are from what you say, a converted Yehudah Zoroastrian. This is a blog for Democrats and people that have faith on humanity. We are here to close the gap not widen it by using misrepresentations and deceit. Here we go stifling the debate by using the old trick of labelling the others as “Anti-Semite” and “Anti-Zionist”. You do not need to be religious or Anti-Zionist to describe what is going on in Israel. It is simply the biggest open air prison on the planet, and anybody that says otherwise is simply a fraud. Let me correct one of your fallacies, Hamas is a relatively recent political movement and with all its ills was Democratically Elected (Of course that is if you believe on the tenets of democracy – I think you are more what I will call a believer of a uni-faceted type of democracy. The one that suits your pre-conceptions). From my understanding, and correct me if I am wrong, the other political entities were secular and laic, ie: The PLO or Fatah who historically were social democratic nationalists and Israel did not reach a deal with them to resolve the conflict. Hamas on the other hand came decades after all Palestinian secular parties. It was founded by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin 1987 and only gained political prominence in 2006 when they won the elections. I will tell you my friend which terrorist threw the peace process in the rubbish bin. The peace process went down the drain the day Yizhak Rabin was assassinated by a terrorist named Yigal Amir, and I might add an Orthodox Jewish fanatic fundamentalist son of a rabbi who was very close to Avishai Raviv, a member of Israel’s Shin Bet or Shaba. The Oslo accords were accepted by Yasser Arafat and the whole PLO leadership. Now I give you the reason why Rabin was killed:
    According to Jewish law, anyone who is classified as a pursuer, must be killed immediately. The classification of a forfeiter of land as a rodef states that “If a Jew gives up the land of other Jews to Goyim, and he persists in this, that is, he gives up the land of three or more Jews, he is a Rodef.” The Jerusalem Post, an Israeli center-right newspaper, wrote that witnesses heard Raviv tell Amir: “Be a man! Kill him already!”

    Call me a conspiracy theorist, but if Rabin stayed alive, and the Oslo agreements were implemented, maybe just maybe and I invite to dream with me here:

    • A Palestinian state exists today
    • Hamas would have become a historical detail.
    • 9/11 would have never happened.
    • The “neocon-neolib” would have been defeated and the American people controlled their destiny.
    • Bush would have never been elected.
    • Islamism would not have exploited the political vacuum and democratic forces would have been on the ascendency now.
    • Obama would not have selected a Minyan for an administration
    • Simply, the world would have been a better place with less conflicts and less “Collateral damage”.

  • Redouane

    @Alloush,
    You are still under the spell of self-righteous emotional outburst. Your self-righteousness is supreme, and anyone who do not agree “shame be on him”. That’s OK, I have seen and experienced hatred from people like you. As for me I do not try to shame, humiliate people or instill fear on them. I usually try to question their claims, if I disagree.

    I disagreed with you ONLY about starvation in Gaza.

    But you try to use your emotional guilt for having plenty of mutton in celebration for Eid to suggest that I am a monster for accepting the situation in besieged Gaza. It seems to me that everything is framed in light of CHILDREN, (the innocent ones, the underserving, the angels) yet adult go free in doing what they do. I am afraid that this stuff is too mushy and too naive self-righteous for me to accept. It can work with some type of people but not me.

    I beleive that the problem we are having, has nothing to do about children not having enough to eat or starvation (as you purposely proclaim) It is ALL about much bigger issue, which what is our opinion of the state of Israel. Isn’t it? It seems that we have to condemn someone and it has to be Israel. I simply cannot agree, the blame CAN also be set on Hamas side too. Yet, I know you cannot beleive that an Arab would have such ideas that counter the OFFICIAL idea.

    If anyone questions the (your) official claims (usually emotional) or explanation of things, then he is labeled as crude, bad, shameless person, that deserve a foot of the head. Here we go again, resorting to name calling or violent mean. If this is the case, than you are right, there is nothing to discuss. I am too not interested in discussing anything with you. Keep the official propaganda running on the web but do think that people are so gullible to accept anything you tell them about your opinions. Have a nice day.

  • Manus

    Amazing, you use the same techniques used by “Fox News” Redouene. You try to take a legitimate cause and muddy it enough to create a doubt or strike a draw. Also, you are trying to purposely muddle these issues. Many Arab democrats have genuine grievances vis-à-vis theirs regimes and governments, and you use that state of mind to sneak in a plethora of other issues where most of the time there is a consensus across all the spectrum of political persuasions. I do not know what you stand for, however you are trying to describe anybody who criticises Israel for their policies as a bunch of schizophrenic paranoid loonies. You use slogans like “Flip-Floppers”, “self-righteous”, “anti-western diatribe”, “Scapegoat”. You should apply for a job with Fox-News. I believe in democracy and secularism that does not mean when other democracies act like tyrants we should not take a position different to the Status quo, without being labelled as self-righteous, or label it as propaganda. You suffer from a severe case of the “Pot calling the kettle black”

  • jean batist

    It seems to me that poeple are mixing up things here. Writing to themselves instead writing for others. Let me be frank, after reading this thread entries, I am amazed by the level of ignorance and self-pity.

    I do not think that there is a need for lecturing people here (comment #15). It is too long and it has nothing to do with the controversy Redoouane was trying to raise which is whether there is starvation in Gaza or not. If however we are talking about moral and ethical values (which are not debatable at all) I am not sure where all bla bla bla is going.

    Let me start by the question is about starvation in Gaza. Is there one or not? First, no picture of starvation have showed up. Not even malnutrition. What I have seen lately from the different Arab medias are Shoe throwing contests in Gaza, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan. Everybody is having fun showing to the world how they hate George Bush. Women and children are the first in line in these images. I think it is Ok to show your anger, but celebrate the hero journalist for having the guts to throw shoes at the American President, I am not sure it is best way for politcal persuation and swaying of public opinion of the world.

    Second issue is the siege of Gaza. By all accounts I have read and seen, the siege is having many negative effect of Gaza. The most crucial is the education institutions because of lack of oil and energy supply which affect probably everything from sewage treatment plants, small manufacturing and agricultural harvesting and exporting. The only entity that think that the siege is OK, is Israel. No country is siding with Israel on this, at least in political ground. I understand the anger of early commentators before Redouane the Arab renegate started to fuel the controversy. The anger and frustration of many arab people is that nobody can do anything about the siege, that is, to lifted it either by political means or military means. It is a sad situation, nobody has to suffer for other people’s faults.

  • Manus

    I am not trying to lecture anybody or at least that was not my intention.
    It was not me who said and I quote: “It is ALL about much bigger issue, which what is our opinion of the state of Israel. Isn’t it? It seems that we have to condemn someone and it has to be Israel” . A statement like this one deserves an adequate answer. Yes let’s talk about the bigger issue.
    What type of comment is that when there is an international consensus about this issue? There is “no bigger issue”. It is the same issue since the “Declaration of Belfour” as far as I am concerned.

    Also, I do not find his revisionist tactics helpful at all. The fact that there is no media interest in the story does not mean at all that there is no starvation or malnutrition. It is exactly the same tactics Holocaust Deniers like Jürgen Graf used: “There is no footage or documents showing people dying in gas chambers, hence it did not exist. They all died from typhoid and other diseases”.

    Well, let me provide you with my sources (To name but a few), as I do not watch or read anything to do with Rupert Murdoch Media Empire:
    The United Nation position. http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=25439&Cr=palestin&Cr1
    • Western Media:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7766509.stm
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/palestinian-malnutrition-at-african-levels-under-israeli-curbs-say-mps-568896.html

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3507065.stm
    http://endthesiege.blogspot.com/2008/06/with-economic-siege-comes-malnutrition.html
    • Israeli Media:
    http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/847548.html

    • Jewish Organisations:
    http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/18673/edition_id/375/format/html/displaystory.html

    • Other: http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article9588.shtml

    I do not think that there are many TV networks in the West that have the power or the courage to show an objective representation of the conflict and report an accurate and unbiased picture of what is really happening.

    I quote: “MALNUTRITION RATES in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank are as bad as those in sub-Saharan Africa”
    I do not believe that the state of Israel in its present power structure is able to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians. On the other hand the Palestinian options are extremely limited as they have nothing to offer the Israelis to change the situation on the ground (Or for that matter the whole Arab world). Israel is an ethnocratic theocracy with Universal suffrage, with an ideology founded on the principal of the Judaization of the Land and changing the geopolitical reality in the region.
    To reach that aim, all resistance or fight from the Palestinian population needs to be sucked out them. Starving them and making their daily lives hell is an integral part of that strategy.
    My beef with you guys is that you are trying to rationalise and oversimplify the issue by coming with all type of really irrelevant comments or red-hearings. The Palestinian question is stain on the human consciousness and to degrade it by nit picking and looking for all type of issues that takes the focus out of what is really happening is a tragedy and in my book the ugliest form of intellectual terrorism.

    Redouane’s comments made me extremely annoyed as many people lost their lives because they did not toe the OFFICIAL line, and I consider myself extremely fortunate to be alive today. These “Democrats Abroad” chose the easy way at the time and kept stum when the going got though. It was only when they left their countries they started becoming more “Royalist than the Queen”.

    I believe in democracy and the virtues of justice as a matter of conviction not as a membership of a club. I do not adhere to the theory of “My ally right or wrong”. So, I do really find his comments offensive. Many people around the world have criticised Israel and I just happened to be one of them. I would appreciate it if you stick to the political argument and tone down the rhetoric, instead of labelling anybody that differs with your skewed sense of analysis with all types of adjectives. Especially when many of my Jewish friends, and many Jewish intellectuals hold that same point of view.

    I am very sorry I am not able to join the bandwagon or be part of your unstated assumption that it takes two to tango. In this tango there is only one performer and it is not the Palestinians.

  • jean batist

    There is no need to to defensive with me. I am not the one who is trying to label people as royalist or neo-con. And if you are trully a person who beleive in democracy than good for you. I believe in it too. “Democracies are not perfect form of government but they are the best we have at this moment”, once said Winston Churchill. The situation in Gaza is not as simple as you made it sound. There must some malnutrition as some reporters have suggested. But we have not seen starvation yet. Malnutrition is everywhere in most under-developed countries.

Join the conversation

Authors, please log in »

Guidelines

  • All comments are reviewed by a moderator. Do not submit your comment more than once or it may be identified as spam.
  • Please treat others with respect. Comments containing hate speech, obscenity, and personal attacks will not be approved.