Jeune Afrique and Morocco

Moorishgirl highlights a Jeune Afrique special on Morocco, focusing on the old secularists vs. Islamists debate (a largely misleading debate, in my opinion) and then says:

I was disappointed by the piece on the media: No mention of the problems that Tel Quel, Le Journal Hebdo and other news magazines have had with the judiciary.

Want to know why? Because Jeune Afrique is bought and paid for by the Moroccan regime to provide positive reporting. Le Jounal Hebdo, a real independent weekly, did a great piece on how the whole setup works, with on one occasion Jeune Afrique receiving 950,000 euros for its work. I've seen similar paeans to autocratic regimes much worse than Morocco's, such as Tunisia's. The magazine's publisher is doing little more than accepting blood money to keep silent, even if the odd article (notably on culture) is interesting.

Comments

[Issandr El Amrani]

I saw Moroccan Islamist specialist Mohammed Tozy a few months ago and we talked about Adl wa Ihsan after Sheikh Yassin. He thought that Nadia Yassin is completely isolated from the political leadership, who would likely take over and turn the group into a more normal Islamist group, with ambitions to become a legal political party or work in a manner analogous to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt -- i.e. field independent candidates to elections, which apparently it already does at the local level.

There is a lot of resentment of la fille a Papa in the group, apparently, so a Nadia takeover seems unlikely. Nadia is also a lot more liberal in some ways than the paleoconservative core. I sat with her for about two hours not long ago and was quite charmed! A splinter group, though, is a possibillity.

Also, Sidi Lounsbury, perhaps the Sufi aspects of the group are more evident when talking to someone like Nadia. But I also seem to recall a lot of mystical mumbo-jumbo about Sheikh Yassin, like this stuff about him being able to see the future in dreams, walk through walls etc. that is so often derided in Tel Quel.

And I've been meaning to post about the new licenses -- just haven't had time to look at it properly. Your post was very informative, though. Tel Quel's take seems to be that a lot of VIPs such as Mounir MajdI (personal secretary to the king for you Moroccan neophytes) were passed over in favor of the son of army bigwig. And then there's the recent big military parade... But so much of this stuff seems to be speculation and rumor-mongering anyway.