Morocco load against the Freedom of expression and of sexual identity. He Moroccan Criminal Code It falls like a heavy slab on the expectations of freedom of the Moroccan activist in favor of sexual diversity and the rights of the LGTBIQ+ Ibtissame Betty Lachgar collective, 50 years. It was arrested last Sunday by order of the Moroccan Prosecutor’s Office under the accusation of blasphemy. He spread on July 31 on social networks a photograph of his in which he carried a shirt with the legend “Allah [en árabe] It is lesbian [en inglés]”. Lachgar faces a long penalty of jail.
The Prosecutor’s Office considers that this “offensive message to God”, revealing that the alleged modernization and westernization of Morocco is far from reality in religious matters. Morocco is a country marked by fractures. The traditional is the economic one, but it is no less the one that divides society from a cultural point of view and, above all, religious. The detained activist, known for her defense of individual freedoms, the rights of women and LGBTQ+citizens, has opened a complex pandora box with possible internal impact and abroad. Next to the photo published a text that described Islam “like all religious ideology”, “fascist, falocratic and misogynist.”
Cyberbullying and threats
Lachgar has affirmed on Facebook that he has been a victim of cyberbullying and has received “thousands of threats of rape, death and called lynching and stoning” by the shirt “with a very well -known feminist slogan (modified). The Moroccan Criminal Code provides for a penalty of six months to two years in prison and a fine of 20,000 to 200,000 dirhams (2,210 to 22,100 dollars) for any offense against the Islamic religion, being able to reach five years in prison if the “offense” is committed in a public medium, including electronic. In Morocco, relations and homosexuality are still punished with jail. Despite religious inheritance, sexual diversity is evident amid the modernity of large cities. Lachgar, founder of the alternative movement for individual freedoms in Morocco, is the Adalid of the new Morocco who struggles for freeing himself from the last of the past, in a Morocco that aims to convince the world that despite its conservatisms in terms of customs, it has a vision of tolerant Islam. The cause of Lachgar will demonstrate what is the reality of the current Morocco.
