Fatima Sadiqi: Native Culture in the Global Context: The Role of Women

Being a native language, Berber possesses the historicity, dynamism and vitality of mother tongues. As a rural and almost exclusively oral language, Berber has not been competing with the ‘literate’ Standard Arabic. It has mainly been maintained in rural and semi-urban areas and is still used primarily in homes and intimate gatherings. Berber is also the language of communication between the (male) migrants to the cities or Europe and their families left behind. Paradoxically, the presence of French in Morocco helped to maintain Berber in the sense that through the dissemination of education in the French language, language itself gradually became less associated with its religious base in the minds of Moroccans, a fact which tacitly ‘legitimized’ the use of Berber in everyday life and improved attitude toward it. Finally, the millennial presence of Berber in North Africa makes multilingualism and orality fundamental components of the cultures of the region.

The history and present of the Berber Language and culture and that of Berber women have had a common fate. Both have been marginalized in the public spheres of power until the last decade of the last century, and both were propelled to the forefront of the Moroccan political scene, almost synchronically, at the beginning of the present century. Berber was officially recognized in 2001 by the creation of the Royal Institute of Berber Culture, and women’s rights were officially recognized by the royal promulgation in 2003 of the new (and progressive) Moroccan Family Law. The two have been attributed tremendous symbolic value inside and outside the country. The spectacular change in Berber and women’s fates has, in turn, propelled Morocco to the forefront of the Arab-Muslim world with respect to cultural rights and women’s rights.

I deeply relate to both in my personal life and in my scholarly work. When I was studying linguistics as an undergraduate student in the 1970s at the University of Rabat, I often heard from my fellow students that Berber was not a language because it did not have a grammar book and a dictionary. I then promised myself to find out. Most of the then available literature was in French and hence tainted with colonial ideology. I then decided to search further and was most attracted by Chomsky’s idea that languages are by definition grammars and that we come to the world with a mental equipment to acquire any human language. The idea that the grammar of Berber was in my mind and that I only needed to bring it out was thrilling. I wrote my MA thesis on the Verb in Berber and my PhD thesis on the sentence (the verb and the sentence constituting the backbone of grammar). In 1997, I finally wrote Grammaire du Berbère in French and co-authored Amazigh Grammar in 2004.

In a quest for my cultural and personal rights, I added a sociolinguistic perspective to my writings on Berber grammar and embarked in the study of women and gender studies. When I started writing about the Berber language and culture in the 1980s and about Moroccan women issues in the 1990s, I was attracted to both, but as two “separate” domains of reflection. From the mid-1990s onward, I gradually began to sense the extraordinary link between the two, not only in theory but also in my own life:

I originate from a monolingual Berber rural village and became multilingual through education and movement to the city. I, therefore, experienced the pervasive power of patriarchy and that of language very early in my life. I want this paper to be both scholarly and personal because it is in that combination that I find myself most. My main message is that globalization offers the right context for Berber language and culture, on the one hand, and Moroccan women’s rights, on the other, to thrive, and that, on a more theoretical level, the two provide Moroccan feminisms with a new framework: a larger-than-Islam framework of reflection which while encompassing Islam does not deny its impact. This papers falls into three sections:
(i) the official perceptions of the Berber language and culture in the overall Moroccan culture,
(ii) the Role of women in preserving the Berber language and culture,
(iii) Berber Language and Culture in the Context of Globalization: teaching, activism, and research.


Official Attitudes toward Berber

There is a clear evolution in the official attitude toward Berber. In the two decades that followed Morocco’s independence from France in 1956, the official attitude was rather indifferent, if not straightforwardly negative. The then state-building process needed a “one nation, one language” slogan to build its national identity and forge itself a place in the Arab Umma (nation). From the mid-1980s onward, and with Morocco’s gradual opening and democratisation in the face of Islamic extremism, the call for human rights, including linguistic rights, intensified and, consequently, the official attitude toward Berber started to change positively. However, the real turning-point in the official attitude toward Berber was the late King Hassan II’s speech on August 20, 1994. In this speech, the king, and for the very first time in the history of Morocco, declared that teaching and learning Berber “dialects” was mandatory for all Moroccans. Following this speech, the already existing Berber associations duplicated their efforts to promote the Berber language and culture, and new NGOs were created with the aim of implementing the royal decision. TV news in the three varieties of Berber were launched in 1997. This buoyant Berber civil society was backed by human rights organisations and started to attract international attention.

Another important follow-up of the August 20, 1994 royal speech was the creation of the “Pôle Amazigh” (Berber Pole) of the BMCE Foundation, a private national bank. This foundation started an innovative model of construction and management of rural community schools where Berber was taught. The success of this endeavour led the Foundation to fund the first ever textbook manuals on the teaching of Berber. I was one of the authors of these first manuals.

The spectacular revival of Berber language and culture came at a time when Islamic extremism started to gain space in the Moroccan political landscape. The then political elite saw in the promotion of Berber, a secular language, a shield against the growing Islamist ideology and the Middle Eastern homogenizing Pan-Arabism.

The official attitude toward Berber became even more positive after King Mohamed VI’s October 17, 2001 Ajdir speech where he clearly stated that “the promotion of Berber is a national responsibility.” This date was also the occasion of sealing the royal decree creating and organizing the Royal Institute for Berber culture (IRCAM). I was nominated to the Administrative Board of this institute. According to this royal decree, IRCAM is charged with “safeguarding, promoting and reinforcing the place of our Berber culture in educational, socio-cultural and national media”.

The creation of IRCAM marked a new phase in the history of Berber: the institutionalization of the language. In 2003, IRCAM signed a cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Education whereby programmes integrating Berber in school curricula and training sessions for teachers were to be elaborated. In September 2003, Berber entered Morocco’s public schools.


The Role of Women in the Preservation of the Berber Language and Culture

The factors that have ensured the maintenance of Berber are linked to women: women are the ones who have perpetuated the language; they are the illiterate ones, and they are the ones who have stayed home to take care of the children when the men migrate. To the extent that Berber is the language of cultural identity, home, the family, village affiliation, intimacy, traditions, orality, and nostalgia to a remote past, it perpetuates attributes that are considered female in the Moroccan culture. Indeed, the fate of Berber has always paralleled the fate of women in Morocco.

This type of women’s agency is not visible in the Moroccan mainstream feminist perspective where agency is linked to the public spheres of power. Up to now, feminist writings on Moroccan women have been mainly produced from a sociological, political, and literary perspectives, and, as such, these writings assume Islam and Arabic as a framework and root women’s agency in the innovations that Islam came up with. In the book I am currently writing, I adopt a linguistic and anthropological perspective where I assume the pre-Islamic era and Berber as a overarching framework where Moroccan women’s agency is rooted in the 3000 years old pre-Islamic era. Though Berber is not backed by a religious book, Berber women have always expressed the sacred in their own way and have always managed to transmit religion from generation to generation. The book is called Opening the Door of Silence for that very reason: it highlights the hitherto invisible Berber women’s contribution to the construction of Morocco.

I think that in order to include Berber women’s agency we need a larger-than-Islam Framework. A framework that would highlight the profound and pervasive impact of time-honoured Berber women’s expressions of faith, self, and life experiences, on today’s experiences and discourses of religion. Berber women’s religious expressions constitute the cultural roots of present-day Moroccan women’s voices. Only a language and culture perspective can inform this framework.

The major reason for the hitherto absence of the language and culture perspective in modern mainstream research on Moroccan women’s issues in general may be due to two reasons: First, the official history in the entire Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia)begins with the coming of Islam and as such, glosses over more than 3000 years of pre-Islamic recorded history. Second, Ibn Khaldun’s influential work forced the polarizing dichotomy “urban vs rural”(with negative connotations associated with the latter) on subsequent research in Morocco and the Maghreb. The reading of these two facts within a heavily patriarchal context makes of Berber rural women’s oral expressions the most disadvantaged category of research. With the advent of colonization and state-building in the middle of the last century, oral languages, especially Berber, and women (the great majority of whom using only oral languages) were completely marginalized under the pretext of building a state that belonged to the larger Arab Umma (nation).

I have been gathering Berber women’s expressions of the sacred in the form of inscriptions, oral and written texts, art motifs, carpet weaving, and ritual for over a decade and a half. These are expressions combining daily concerns, faith and spirituality. Their appeal resides in their non-institutional symbolism that has survived for millennia in the collective unconscious of North Africans and southern Mediterraneans. After the tragic WWW II destruction of most of the southern Mediterranean’s rural life, these expressions may well be the only remaining link between the two shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

Prior and during the colonial era, many European missionaries and orientalists found interest in Berber women’s rituals. This interest was, however, part of larger narratives of indigenous cultures, colonialism and anti-colonialism. In the post-colonial era, considerable work by American, British and Moroccan anthropologists was carried out on the cultural roots of authority in Morocco (Geertz, 1968; Gellner, 1969; Eickelman, 1985; Combs-Shilling, 1989; Kapchan, 1996; Hammoudi, 1997). These works, however, did not underline the various means by which Berber women inscribed their role in shaping these very cultural roots of authority.

Berber women’s expressions of the sacred in the works cited above are marginalized, scattered, fragmented, sometimes uprooted, dispersed or simply diffused into larger male discourses of political and ideological power and counter-power. This fragmentation not only deepens the historical gaps in Berber women’s histories, but it also blurs continuity in women’s agency and stands in the way of any coherent explanation of present-day Moroccan women’s religious voices.

No serious work has focused on the cultural roots of Moroccan women’s religious discourses; yet, it is there that resides some explanation of continuity in today’s Moroccan women’s religious expressions, a continuity shrouded in silence and forever elusive (or made to be). The roots of this silence are also the roots of the various patriarchies that have been shaping and controlling Moroccan societies over ages. These patriarchies have been largely based on a strict segregation of space with the public space being allocated to men and the private one to women. The expression and performance of the sacred in these patriarchies have always been understood as a token of authority in both the public and the private spheres and, thus, as a men’s prerogative. This resulted in the subjugation of women and the creation of a context where their voices (oral and otherwise) are awra (taboo) (Sadiqi and Ennaji 2006). This resulted in the high rate of female illiteracy, a strong veneration of the scriptural aspect of Islamic culture, and the gradual development of women’s own (often private) expressions of religion and the sacred.

Women’s expressions of the sacred are rooted in ancient history and cultural patterns; these expressions have survived through various women-related means of transmission, and as such, have never ceased to be central to women’s overall agency and power in and outside the family. Women’s oral texts, art and rituality preceded, accompanied and followed the coming of Islam in Morocco; the Qur’an itself was recorded from oral texts and printing reached Morocco only in the 17th century.

In so doing, Opening the Door of Silence tells the story of Berber women’s complex, millennial, and multi-vocal religious agency which is rooted in the pre-Islamic Punic era, profoundly moulded by the early Islamic period, sporadically revived throughout the pre-colonial and colonial eras, and regaining momentum in the present-day era. The first goddesses and priestesses of ancient times developed into Islamic female saints and spiritual leaders, and have ever since infiltrated women’s expressions of the sacred and political, re-emerging in today’s Moroccan women’s orality, rites, art, and discourses. Such a story may also help us understand the deep commonalities between present-day Moroccan feminisms (liberal and religious). The roots of Moroccan women’s expressions of agency have been wrongly associated with the encounter with the West, often constructed as “civilizational” and “urbanizing”, or the Mashriq, often constructed as “illuminating” and “inspiring”. In this book I argue that while the West and the Mashriq have had a significant impact on literate (often urban) women’s agency, they do not constitute the characterizing feature of this agency. In other words, assuming a Western or Middle-Eastern explanatory framework for Moroccan women’s agency is misleading: it not only glosses over the pre-Islamic and the pre-colonial eras, but it also erases the rural female oral, ritualistic, and artistic legacy which is still dynamic and vibrant. The book seeks to reclaim Berber women’s agency in a beyond- the-Western and the Mashriq frameworks.


Berber Language and Culture in the Context of Globalization

Morocco is characterized by linguistic diversity. Four major languages are used in this country: Standard Arabic, French, Berber, and Moroccan Arabic. The use of these languages carries specific political and socio-cultural meanings: Standard Arabic is the official language; it is associated with authority in public institutions such as religion, the government, education, administration, and a large part of the media. French is a second language; it associated with business, education, the military and elite media. As for Berber, and colloquial Arabic, they are largely associated with home, the street and popular media.

The teaching of Berber, was officially motivated by two things: the necessity to safeguard it as a token of Morocco’s ancestral identity, and the fact that millions of children spoke it as a mother tongue. This view was resisted by conservative forces but generally speaking, it was supported by large portions of the ruling elite (Ennaji 2007). This positive attitude proved to be indispensable to the continuity of the Berber, language. Thus, the ebb and flow in the continuity of Berber, depends on the ebb and flow of the official attitude towards this language. In order to better understand this dynamic, it is important to consider the socio-political background of the teaching of the Berber, language.

In September 2003, Berber, officially entered the Moroccan educational system, a powerful public space, for the very first time in its history. This spectacular entrance marked the transition of Berber, from the private sphere to the public arena of authority. Three major factors were behind the teaching of Berber: the Berber, cultural movement, the work of academics, and the king’s will to integrate this language into development.

The combination of these factors has been favoured by an overall process of democratization that Morocco launched in the last decade or so. From 2003 to 2009, the teaching of Berber, in Morocco witnessed ups and downs. In spite of the fact that there is no going back in the process of teaching the language, the overall enthusiasm of its beginning is now fading out.


Socio-Political Background of the Teaching of the Berber Language

The demand for teaching Berber, needs to be situated in the overall Moroccan socio-economic context. From the mid-1980s onward, the Moroccan educational system has had to face a genuine challenge: the growing demand for more human rights, including linguistic rights. During this period, Moroccan society has been experiencing rapid change, whose implications are myriad. The majority of Morocco’s population (56%) now lives in urban areas, with the figure steadily rising at an annual rate of 3%. There is a spectacular drop in Morocco’s population growth rate – from a steady 3% annual rate in the 1960s and 1970s, to 1.3% at present. The rate of female illiteracy in rural areas is still appallingly high: 87%, while in urban areas it has dropped to 49%.

Alongside these changes, Morocco has been witnessing a steady democratization process, including an “opening” on Berber, with the aim of teaching it at school. Berber, was becoming increasingly politicized and its codification gave rise to the 2002 heated media debates between conservatives (who preferred the Arabic script) and modernists (who wanted the Latin script). The ultimate choice of Tifinagh, an ancient Lybic alphabet that Berber used.

The new language policy on Berber, was also motivated by the need to reform the Moroccan educational system and establish a new language policy in this field. In the 1999-2000 school year, the National Charter for Education and Training was adopted with the agreement of all political parties and syndicates. This charter aimed to define the future steps towards higher performances in national education and to break with the past. It also aimed to restructure the Moroccan educational system and included a series of articles related to the future language policy that was to be implemented in the educational system.

The new Charter explicitly mentions the need to have an open approach towards the Berber, language. It also makes reference to the importance of improving the educational system and the teaching of foreign languages, and even to the need to have a good command of them and use them in class.

Finally, the Charter underlines the fact that language policy needs to be compatible with the country’s socio-linguistic reality and with the educational practice carried out.

The language planners, thus, opted for a multi-sector language policy where the teaching of Berber, was perceived as a token of modernity and diversity. It is interesting to note that Berber, was excluded from the school system in the post-colonial era in the name of unity, and it is in the same name that it is introduced in this system. Likewise, the once association of Berber, with tradition started to shift to associating this language with modernity. This shows that continuity and failure of Berber, are linked to the concepts of tradition and modernity. The pre- and post- independence failure of Berber, were blamed on tradition and the relatively recent continuity of the language is being linked to modernity: as Berber, is not backed by a holy book, it becomes secular, thus modern. This is proof that the concepts of tradition and modernity, just as those of continuity and failure, are not fixed; they are constantly recreated in specific historical environments and for specific socio-political aims.

The presence of French and now Berber, in the Moroccan educational system strips teaching from the religious database that is associated with Standard Arabic. Further, not being supported by a holy book, Berber, is further secularizing the Moroccan educational system. In order to solve the problem of training instructors, curricular design, pedagogical materials, etc. the King created the Royal Institute of the Berber, Culture.

Thus, with the advent of globalization, “linguistic authority”, just like religious authority, is no longer placed in one single language. New dynamics between Moroccan languages is being attested: the initial rivalry over symbolic power between Standard Arabic and French, on the one hand, and Standard Arabic and Berber, on the other hand, is giving way to a drastic reduction of the space of Arabic in education, the emergence of Berber, in schools as a sign “opening”.

Opening and democratization”, the adoption of French by conservatives as a sign of “pragmatism”. (French, more than any other language leads to jobs), the emergence of once foreign” languages, namely English, and to a lesser extent Spanish, as strong languages of education, especially the private one.

Against this overall socio-political context, three major factors propelled the teaching of the Berber, language to the forefront of the Moroccan political scene: Berber, activism, Research on the language, and the royal will. The royal will was dealt with in the preceding section, Berber, activism and research on Berber, are dealt with in the following two sub-sections.


Berber Activism

After the independence of Morocco from France, activists started to call for the recognition of Berber, as a specific identity. For example, the “Association Marocaine de la Recherche et de l’Echange Culturel » (The Moroccan Association for Research and Cultural Exchange)" was founded in 1968 with the goal of promoting Berber, identity and preserving Berber, language and culture. This gave rise to other associations such as and the 1980 “Tafsut n Imazighen” (The Spring of Berbers) which demanded cultural and linguistic rights.

For Berber-language activists, Berber ought to be restored and revitalized through teaching it and use in formal and informal settings. They reject the idea of Berber becoming a memory language and fight to turn it into a language of active usage and everyday communication. However, for conservative Arabophones, the promotion of Berber may be a danger for national unity and political stability. These views are purely received ideas which aim to maintain a socio-cultural status quo (cf. Boukous 1995, Sadiqi 1997, Ennaji 2005).


Research on Berber

Of the three countries of the Maghrib, it is in Morocco that research on Berber language and culture is best carried out. This research started during the Protectorate with the work of pioneering linguists such as David Cohen, Camps, etc. After independence and with the rise of humanities and social sciences, a number of MA and PhD theses were written on the phonology, sociology and grammar of Berber in both French and English. This gave rise to the setting up of research group such as GREL (Groupe de Recherche en Linguistique et Littérarture) (Research Group on Linguistics and Literature) which was created in Fes in the early 1980s. These groups greatly contributed to motivating students to write their monographs and MA and PhD theses on Berber language and culture.

On the other hand, considerable progress is being made in the flourishing area of language and gender (Sadiqi 2003).


Progress in the Teaching of the Berber Language

In the previous section, it is stated that a combination of the Berber activism, research on Berber language and culture, as well as the royal will led to the inclusion of Berber in the Moroccan educational system. Another factor that helped in this respect is the linguistic proximity between Berber and Arabic as the two languages share more or less the same phonological and grammatical systems.

In terms of reference, the teaching of Berber is based on three things: Al-Mithaq (Agreement) which is sanctioned by all decision-makers (the king, the parliament and civil society), the October 17 Ajdir Royal speech, and the Decree by virtue of which the Royal Institute of Berber Culture was created. According to these legal and constitutive references, the teaching of Berber is to be based on universal values and human rights that need to be reflected in all the teaching strategies, methodologies, and textbook manuals.

The next positive step in the process of Berber teaching is the cooperation between the IRCAM and the Ministry of Education at the level of pedagogy, teacher-formation, and the generalization of Berber teaching throughout Morocco. This cooperation resulted in considerable progress in the teaching of Berber.

Thus, in 2005, 140 teachers and inspectors were formed in some 32 centres. In 2007, this number rose to 2000 and then dropped to 75 in 2008. The latter decrease is normal given the offer and demand logic. The number of beneficiaries from Berber teaching reached 807 in 2003 and 1140 in 2008.

Progress was also made in curriculum development: the number of hours allocated to Berber in the primary school curricular was fixed in 3 hours per week. This allowed syllabus makers to include various components of the Berber curriculum such as text comprehension, grammar, maths, and paralinguistic activities. The syllabus designers also allowed for a progression in the teaching of these items. Thanks to the rigour and efficiency of these pedagogical materials, the teaching of Berber has now reached the 6th and final year of the primary school level. Efforts are being made to extend the teaching of Ber to the second level and beyond.

At the university (tertiary level), Berber has been present as a topic of research in Moroccan universities since the 1970s. In the last couple of years or so, a , partnership between the IRCAM and three Moroccan universities (Agadir, Fes and Oujda) resulted in whole department-like branches (called “filières”) of Berber. This new development allowed both students and teachers to study Berber and prepare future teachers of it.

The progress in the teaching of Berber is a strong token of this language continuity in an era marked by transition at the national level and globalization at the international level. This continuity not only promotes the language at the personal, social, economic and political levels, but it significantly gives legitimacy to the long years of Amazigh activism and research on this language. However, this progress is not steady, from 2008, it has started to show signs of regression.

Conclusion

To conclude, I would say that the fate of Berber language and culture, on the one hand, and that of women, on the other hand, have thrived in the era of globalization: they have improved official attitudes to both, they have allowed Berber and its millennial alphabet to enter the Moroccan educational system for the first time in history, they have invigorated research and activism in Berber studies and women studies in the region, and they have raised a new issue: will their fate remain parallel now that both women and Berber are gradually investing the public spheres of power?