A 29-year old woman from Tetouan was sentenced to one month in prison for a crime that was committed against her
Rabat – The “Moulat Lkhimar” case shows once again the impossible mission government’s undertake when enforcing morality laws. The 29-year old woman from Tetouan was sentenced to one month in prison after a former partner shared a private video made six years prior.
The “Moulat Lkhimar” case
The woman in question is charged with extramarital sex and indecent assault while her reputation is besmirched by public commenters. The irony of the affair is that it is not the person who published the video, or those who watched it, that are criminalized. Instead, a woman is punished and humiliated for being the victim of so-called “revenge porn.”
When young people are in love, they occasionally do inadvisable things.
The Moroccan Diha F’Rassek (Mind your own business) movement has recorded countless cases of women being pressured by those they think will be their long-term partners. Instead, men use existing morality laws to pressure and control women in direct violation of Morocco’s 2018 law that bans all forms of violence against women.
“I loved him a lot and I was ready to do anything so he stayed with me,” a victim of a similar case as the Moulat Lkhimar case told Diha F’Rassek. As long as the state enforces morality, it allows men to pressure women and exploit their fears and the expectations society demands of them.
The Moulat Lkhimar (“Veiled One”) case was made worse by the fact that she wore traditional Islamic clothing as her then-partner recorded their private acts. Still, the courts incomprehensibly ruled that it was not the man who had recorded and published the video of the veiled woman that had damaged her modesty.
As such, she now carries the heavy, double burden of victim and perpetrator: Deceived and exploited by a man she loved, she is now blamed, punished, and character-assassinated for a private video she did not publish.
Mission Impossible
If there is anything that all religions agree on, it is that humans are not perfect beings. Life is supposed to be a journey of challenges, mistakes and a process of learning. Yet in the Moulat Lkhimar case, her prosecution means she is judged for not being perfect, while her reputation is ruined.
Cases like the Moulat Lkhimar case show the impossible tasks that governments undertake when trying to police morality laws. No state is perfect, especially not in its law enforcement efforts.
Examples of the difficulty to police behavior are plentiful. The multi-billion dollar police apparatus in the US was unable to predict and stop an assault on their congress. In the Netherlands, a fully modern digitized system was unable to stop mass exploitation of poor families, leading to the collapse of the government.
Governments and law enforcement agencies are not perfect, flawless entities, yet they are tasked with enforcing morality laws.
Asking the government to monitor the behavior of millions leads to flawed prosecutions and selective enforcement, which undermines the morality these laws intend to protect.
Private matter
By asking the state to enforce morality laws, we demand an imperfect system to deliver perfect results. This impossible mission takes away the ability for families to deal with such issues, removes the responsibility from individuals and makes victims perpetrators.
If the state was not asked to prosecute crimes it does not have the resources to enforce, the Moulat Lkhimar case would have remained a private family matter. She, her family and whomever they themselves chose to involve, would have been the arbiter of her fate.
Because we ask the government to fulfill an impossible task, we have turned a victim of a man trying to ruin her reputation into a criminal. This undermines the credibility of the state, removes the ability to learn and evolve from mistakes and gives men a powerful tool with which to oppress women.
According to a government study, more than half of Moroccan women are subjected to violence, yet only 6.6% report such criminal behavior, because they fear prosecution.
If we would not ask our imperfect government to police matters that require perfect information and abilities, the morality of both men and women could be safeguarded without victimizing women.
Islamic tradition
All major religious texts demand personal responsibility over our own morality. We are not supposed to act morally out of fear of government reprisal or public shaming, we are supposed to do so out of our own morality and religious (or personal) convictions.
Protecting the rights of women is not a step towards secularization, but a recognition of the rights of women entrenched in Islamic texts, according to various renowned religious scholars. “Passive faith will be of no use to our Islamic emancipation,” says Asma Lamrabet, author and former Director of the Center for Women’s Studies in Islam.
For Lamrabet, expanding the rights of Muslim women is not a move away from traditional Islam; it is a return to its original reading. It allows to “militate for the rights of Muslim women, from within Islam as a religion, a way of life, according to a globalizing and contemporary vision,” she argues.
Personal responsibility
If we want to create a more moral and just society, we ought to consider not to ask our imperfect, earthly governments to enforce religious and moral rules that they are not equipped to enforce.
Just as our religious texts say, this is a matter of personal responsibilities shouldered by individuals and their families, not by inefficient bureaucracies.
While the man who ruined the 29-year old woman in the Moulat Lkhimar case’s reputation and possibly even her future runs free, she will be in prison for a month while being publicly shamed.
This problematic case once again shows that we should see morality as a personal affair. If we do not, we risk turning victims into criminals while their immoral oppressors escape judgement.
Releasing the government from its impossible mission to enforce morality frees up police resources to prosecute violent crimes and fraud that costs citizens and the state dearly every year. Our spiritual leaders ask us to be moral ourselves, so let’s stop asking the government to shoulder this responsibility for us.
