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In 2006, I founded ZapBoom Consulting, which specializes in the analysis of how digital
tools like cell phones and the Internet can be used in social change campaigns in developing countries. I have
researched and written reports on topics ranging from 
The news of Attorney General Gonzalez's Senate hearing and the massacre at Virginia Tech grabbed most of the headlines in the US this week. However, you may have noticed a small item in the international section of the newspaper or a line scrolling by at the bottom of the screen during a newscast: Morocco has experienced three suicide bombings in the past two month, two of them last week alone. This new violence paints Morocco as yet another redoubt of violence and fanaticism in the Middle East. But I know Moroccans better than that. I lived in Morocco for two years, from August of 2004 until May of 2006. I loved Morocco and I still do and I know that it is not a country of fanatics.
When I came to Morocco in 2004, it was approximately a year after the May 2003 suicide bombing of a Casablanca hotel. My parents were a little worried about me going to Morocco. However, when I got there I learned that the vast majority of Moroccans vigorously oppose terrorism. On billboards and car bumpers I saw the symbol to the left: a red hand of Fatima, a symbol of protection, and on it the words "don't touch my country." This symbol and its anti-terrorism message resonates with the vast majority of Moroccans.
But to say that most Moroccans oppose terrorism is too facile. If there have been three suicide bombings in the past two months, four suicide bombings in the past three years, then there must be something in the Moroccan character that lends itself to this kind of action. I believe that Moroccan terrorism is rooted in the deep religosity of Moroccans, combined with the economics of despair. For a pious young man who sees no future for himself in this world, the open doors of paradise are tragically appealing.
How can religious martyrdom seem so real to people living in the modern world? Morocco is conservative, but more in the sense of tradition than intolerance. Look at the way people live in rural areas, where subsistance farming continues, and in the open markets of medieval cities like Fez, and you can see why the time of the Koran and the prophet Mohammed seem so close, so relavent to everyday life.
a video I made of the city of Fez. Life there has not changed in hundreds of years.
Moroccans are very religious, but more in a sense of piety than fanaticism. During the monthlong fast of Ramadan everyone and I mean everyone takes part, neither eating nor drinking from sunrise to sunset. This includes not only the very religious but even those who privately admit to being atheists or agnostics. Jamal, the only Moroccan aetheist I knew, would say "inshallah" when speaking about the future, a popular Moroccan saying meaning "God willing." He admitted this didn't make sense, since he doesn't believe in God. In Morocco, relgious observance is a way of life that goes beyond simple belief in God. Islam is the basis of culture, what gives life meaning.
Islam is a guide for everything from sexual behavior to diet to personal hygiene to philosophy. When a Moroccan has questions about life, he looks to Islam. When he wonders how to act, he looks to Islam. When he is desperate, he looks to Islam. It is this despair which I believe is the source of the terrorist attacks.
In Morocco there is a a rather sad joke about youth. According to this joke there are three kinds of Moroccan young people: haraga (young men who want to emigrate to Europe to find work), barbu (bearded fundamentalists who reject the West), and the minorité Star Ac (the bourgeois minority who are concerned with frivolous things like Star Academy, the French version of American Idol).
The first two groups make up the largest segment of Moroccan youth. There is a feeling of hopelessness, that there are no opportunities in Morocco, no work. In 2002 20% of Moroccans were unemployed and another 20% were living on a dollar a day. Approximately half the population is illiterate. Government corruption is rampant and dehumanizing. This despair can lead in two directions: a desire to escape and a desire to take revenge on the unjust system. The vengeful become suicide bombers.
I think the correct response to this recent rash of suicide bombings is for the government to finally start pushing back poverty. Morocco is not a poor country, but its resourcely are squandered and mismanaged by the monarchy and corrupt bureaucracy. Give young Moroccans hope, and they will stay in this world rather than blowing themselves into the next. I fear, however, that this violence will revoke the opposite response - greater repression from a monarchical system more concerned with its own stability than the wellbeing of the people. I hope for the sake of all Moroccans that I am wrong. Moroccans are kind and beautiful people. I hope that neither their lives nor the image of their country are marked by violence.
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Invoking some cultural theory will be beneficial to expanding upon this track of analysis. In Explanation and Power: The Control of Human Behavior, Morse Peckman defines culture as "those semiotic redundancy systems which maintain not merely behavior patterns but human behavior itself. (183)" In other words, culture provides "instructions for performance. (Peckman, xviii)" By this definition, culture tells people how to act and how to govern their own lives so that "when culture falls down on the job...life grinds to a halt. (Ernest Becker, The Birth and Death and Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective of the Problem of Man, 2nd Ed., 82)" Whether conscious of it or not, people are very vulnerable and their sense of safety and personal empowerment is dependent upon culture to continue to instruct the ways of life. James T. Myers concludes "a primary source of human anxiety is the ever present possibility that culture may fail to provide adequate directions for performance in the empirical world.("Whatever Happened to Chairman Mao? Myth and Charisma in the Chinese Revolution," Victor C. Falkenheim, ed., Chinese Politics from Mao to Deng, 19)" Based on this framework, I suggest that Moroccan culture has collapsed on some level and people are looking elsewhere to for answers to life's problems.
In other words, they are looking for those "instructions for performance" that will maintain a belief system that they can rely on when they rest of the empirical world has left them high and dry without hope or direction. Some respond with a reverence for a kind of ultra-culture--a magnified version of the hyper-traditional--something that predates the problems of the modern world. That, I believe, is the fanatical study of the Koran. It can be interpreted as something pure, indigenous, and untouched by the modernity. Others simply pack up and leave to try their luck in worlds dictated by culture that provides instructions for performance that can actually lead to prosperity. This is the pathway toEurope . Some still look to “Star Academy
Suicide bombing is not something indigenous to Muslim culture or teachings. As you point out, however, young Moroccans are vulnerable. They are particularly susceptible to falling prey to clerics in positions of authority who appear to have the wisdom and insight to properly instruct the performance of young would-be fanatics. The clerics, of course, have their own political agendas and thus suicide bombers can become tools the broader mutilation of culture.
This sort of analysis does not, of course, provide answers toMorocco