ABSTRACT
Even before the events of September 11, 2001, it was already becoming clear that rapidly increasing levels of education, greater ease of travel, and the rise of new communications media were developing a public sphere in Muslim-majority societies in which large numbers of people – not just an educated, political, and economic elite – expect a say in religion, governance, and public issues. Terrorist attacks in the Muslim-majority world since then, from the October 2001 bombings in Bali to the carnage in Casablanca and Saudi Arabia in May 2003, have been accompanied by calls for democracy or promises that it is just around the corner. In an important December 2002 speech, the Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department, Richard Haass, argued that ‘when given the opportunity, Muslims are embracing democratic norms and choosing democracy’ and that this trend was good both for people living in Muslim-majority countries and ‘also good for the United States’. He assured his audience that the United States has no ‘hidden agenda’ behind its motivation to encourage democracy ‘in Iraq, or elsewhere in the Muslim world’ (Council on Foreign Relations, 2002). By March 2003, the active phase of ‘regime change’ in Iraq was underway. A week after Morocco’s May 16, 2003 suicide bombings in Casablanca, the main slogan of demonstrators was ‘no to terrorism, yes to democracy’, in Arabic, Amazighi (a first for Morocco), and French. Yet there were limits to the proclaimed tolerance, as the police banned two organized Muslim ‘moderate’ groups, Abdesslam Yassine’s unrecognized ‘Justice and Welfare’ movement (al-‘adl wa-l-ihsan) and the recognized Justice and Development Party (PJD) from taking part (Le Monde 2003). Many Moroccans took this prohibition as one of the continuing signs of the government’s efforts to limit the possibility of the PJD sweeping to power in the municipal elections scheduled for September 2003 – elections already postponed because of reaction to the regime change in Iraq. In Morocco as elsewhere, state authorities continue in many ways to be arbitrary and restrict what is said in the press, the broadcast media, and in public, but with new media – including satellite television, the widespread circulation of video and audio cassettes, and growing Internet access – the methods of avoiding such censorship and control have rapidly proliferated. Today, silence in public no longer implies ignorance. Instead, it often implies prudence or the realization that the price of resistance outweighs that of evident compliance.
