Rabat- Claims of plagiarism and “ingratitude” have led two of Morocco’s most famous sexologists to exchange fiery messages and question each other’s academic credibility.
Abdessamad Dialmy is one of Morocco’s leading sexologists, and his 1985 book Women and Sexuality in Morocco is considered by many as the first fully-fledged academic exploration of sexuality and related topics in Morocco. On June 10, Dialmy took to Facebook to denounce the “ingratitude” and “lack of academic rigor” in the emerging sexologist Sana El Aji’s work.
Sanaa El Aji has made a name for herself challenging established norms and rules about sex and sexuality in Morocco. Her books and op-ed pieces on virginity and married women have attracted public attention from passionate admirers and heavy critics.
Dialmy particularly attacked El Aji’s PhD thesis, which he said is filled with unacknowledged borrowed ideas and theories.
Opportunism and plagiarism
While Dialmy’s fury is primarily grounded in his claim that El Aji appropriated his ideas, he also explained that he once gave her an unpublished book for her to promote when El Aji was a well-known journalist.
Instead of promoting the book, he explained, she read and took advantage of the ideas in the book. “That is pure opportunism,” Dialmy fumed. He further accused her of not mentioning his name in her PhD thesis while deliberately borrowing his ideas.
Dialmy wrote: “It pains me to now consider you as a person unworthy of my friendship and respect, as you lack both religious and civic morals, in addition to lacking professional and academic ethics.” Dialmy’s lengthy Facebook post, which is organized in five acts, further slams El Aji as “a pure opportunist.”
His post accused Sanaa El Aji of appropriating his concepts and theories, such as “sexual frustration” or “sexual transition,” in the Moroccan social context.
Dialmy also accused El Aji of wrongly attributing the “bricolage sexuel” (sexual tinkering) concept to another sociologist, Mounia Bennani Chraibi. The term was coined to explain the detours which single Moroccan men and women use to circumvent society’s rigid and marriage-focused rules on sexuality.
Sanaa El Aji’s reply came just an hour later on Facebook. She said that her work on “sexual transition” was inspired by Michel Foucault’s work on sexuality and violence.
El Aji argued that Dialmy is only furious at her because of “an obsession to see his name” and be quoted, and to be recognized as the “father or precursor” of concepts and ideas which he himself borrowed from other researchers and thinkers.
“Or is he insinuating that Foucault plagiarized him, too?” she asked sarcastically, dismissing Dialmy’s arguments as “baseless and unsubstantiated.”
The origin of the phrase “bricolage sexuel” cannot be ascribed to Abdessamad Dialmy, she said, explaining: “Mounia Bennani’s 1994 book Between submission and rebellion: Youth in Morocco explored the topic three years prior to the source that Dialmy suggested.”
In the emerging market for ideas and books, topics such as sexuality or sexual misery in the Muslim world are popular among thousands of readers. While the exploration of such hot button topics had been exclusively left to artists—cinema, novels, music, etc.—there is a widening of interests among academics, especially sociologists, and journalists.
Unwelcome Clash
However, the clash between two of Morocco’s leading figures in the emerging field of the “sociology of intimate lives” did not sit well with readers and followers.
While acknowledging his status as “one of the precursors” of the sociological study of sexuality in Morocco, most of the followers who commented on Dialmy’s post called it “uncalled for,” “impetuous,” and “unworthy of a respected academic.”
Others saw in his gesture the “uneasiness and jealousy that successful” emerging voices cause among those who consider themselves established and more experienced.
