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Notes -
Sexual Panopticon in the Kingdom of Morocco
“Are you guys having sex in there??”
[I wrote this for Jesse Singal's newsletter in December, now unlocked for everyone]
Let's talk about sex. Specifically, let's talk about the bizarre dynamics of how sex is policed in the Islamic Kingdom that is my homeland.
Morocco's government is explicitly religious — there is no such thing as separation of Mosque and State. The constitution establishes the King as Amir al-Mu'minin, the supreme commander of the faithful. Morocco isn't alone here, as Muslim countries are notable not only for formally adopting a state religion but for regularly using government violence to enforce pious conduct among their populaces. This kind of enforcement is facilitated by a population's homogeneity — ninety-nine percent of Moroccans are Muslim and drawn from the same Arab-Berber ethnic stock. Given these factors, you might expect a very strict, orthodox version of Islam to reign, but the truth is a little more complicated.
Saudi Arabia stands out for its uniquely puritanical approach to Islam (known as Wahhabism), and for the notoriety of its religious police force (known as the mutawwa'in). The stories you've heard about Islam in general are probably true. Alcohol is haram. Pork is haram.Premarital sex is hella haram (unless you get a temporary marriage with a prostitute), and don't get me started on the premarital sex with a drunken pig hat trick. Some edicts are easier to enforce than others (say, by monitoring agricultural supply chains), but because fornication usually happens behind closed doors, the mutawwa'in schlep around Saudi Arabia's public spaces to cut off the problem at the source: ensuring no unrelated people of the opposite sex ever get a chance to interact alone. The authorities will do things like surveil entrances to shopping malls and make sure single men never set foot inside unless they're accompanied by a female relative. Any boy and girl caught on a date at a park or wherever might get forcibly escorted to the local police station. (Paradoxically, this obsession with disrupting such dyads might have the unintended consequences of making it easier for gay men to date — no one bats an eye at two dudes hanging out.)
Morocco is significantly chiller on this front. Compared to other Muslim countries, Morocco is known for being fairly relaxed — the land where women can wear bikinis to the beach and are not legally prohibited from operating motor vehicles, and where men and women freely comingle in public without the threat of being caned.
What accounts for this? It's Complicated™, but one explanation has to do with tourism. As the birthplace of Islam, Saudi Arabia welcomes millions of visitors for the Hajj — the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Because this enormous "tourism" economy comes preinstalled, the country has long been kind of hostile to and uninterested in Western tourism (entire cities, like Mecca and Medina, are completely forbidden to non-Muslims).
In contrast, Morocco's location as one of the gateways to the Mediterranean is consistent with its long history of welcoming Western visitors (fun fact: it was the first country to recognize the newly independent United States back in 1777). Morocco often ties Egypt for first place as the most popular tourist destination in Africa, with millions of visitors every year, despite not having any pyramids. The economy's heavy reliance on tourism necessarily encourages tolerance of foreign kafirs purely as a cynical, pragmatic matter.
The puzzle about how the government can have its cake (enforce religious mores) and eat it too (don't scare the tourists) nevertheless remains. One way it tries to solve this conundrum is simply by explicitly bifurcating the legal code, with some laws carving out broad exceptions for foreigners. It's impossible to keep this laissez-faire approach exclusively quarantined just to les étrangers, and so the tolerance for secularism necessarily bleeds out somewhat.
While Morocco may lack Saudi-style Sharia SWAT teams, a distributed network of civilian snitches can step in to fill the void wherever the government's efforts at morality policing fall short. In 2016, two gay men were violently beaten by neighbors who shouted on the now-unavailable video "this is not manliness" throughout the attack. The assailants were the ones who summoned the police, who then arrested the victims for "sexual deviancy." For economic reasons, but also to avoid the impropriety of scandal, single adults in Morocco are expected to reside with their families and move out only when they get married. Studies have consistently established that the most reliable form of birth control is to live in your parents' apartment with your four siblings. And so landlords in Morocco will flat-out refuse to lease apartments to unmarried individuals, especially women, for fear of potentially bringing dishonor to their roof. Good luck finding a place to hook up with your Minder match.
"What about hotels?" you sheepishly ask. You naive fool, they're way ahead of you. The ultimate example of this public-private partnership enforcement is Article 490 of the penal code, which prohibits unmarried couples from renting hotel rooms. Anyone caught is liable to jail terms, and hotel keepers are legally required to ask for marriage certificates, with police officers checking their logs every week to ensure compliance.
I was subject to this myself. The last time I visited my homeland, I briefly stayed with my sister at a hotel. I announced myself at the front desk, and upon realizing that I, a full-blooded male with no wedding ring, was going to reside in the same room as a female who also lacked a ring, the clerk gave me a raised eyebrow. You'd think our sharing a last name would have been sufficient evidence for the front desk, but given the prevalence and acceptance of cousin marriage in this area, I was required by the keeper to provide proof of sufficient consanguinity. Season two of the masterpiece TV show Ramy portrayed the titular character confronted by Cairo hotel staff about him shacking up with his cousin (spoiler: they were indeed fucking). [I can't say enough good things about this show, and I have emphatically written my praise for its contribution toward providing "true" diversity in media.]
The encounter was surprising (and terrifying) enough that some viewers expressed incredulity at this plot point, but rest assured, it's a depiction of something very real.
A cousin of mine — male, single, unmarried, and on the aforementioned form of parental cohabitation birth control — told me his favorite method for finding a place to hook up: Arrive separately to the hotel, get two separate rooms, and sneak into the same room when the coast is clear. If somehow the double-booking scheme falls through, you can get the hotelier to look the other way with a fistful of dirhams.
Maybe now's a good time to talk about how corrupt Morocco is.
[continued below due to character limit]
Part 2 [continued from above]
Maybe now's a good time to talk about how corrupt Morocco is. Not only can you bribe cops, bureaucrats, judges, officials, whoever to make problems go away, it's expected of you to make anything happen. Because corruption is, by definition, surreptitious and thus difficult to observe and measure directly, the best evidence normally available are studies like the Corruption Perception Index, which rely on subjective reporting. On that ranking, Morocco places eighty-seventh out of 180 countries for honesty. But perception doesn't tell us the full story on corruption, so I want to take this opportunity to cite what is perhaps my favorite economics study, based solely on its ingenious methodology.
Diplomats enjoy legal immunity, and for a while this extended even to banalities like parking tickets. Researchers examined the pattern of parking violations of United Nations diplomats working in Manhattan and used it to construct a plausible heuristic for each country's social norms for corruption — the idea being that a history either of no violations or no unpaid tickets (despite the lack of legal penalties) would indicate a low propensity for corruption. By the unpaid tickets standard, Morocco ranked #13 in the world for corruption.
This illustrates the other way the legal system is functionally bifurcated: money. The ban on unmarried couples staying in hotels is one of the laws that, at least on paper, applies equally both to Moroccans and foreigners. But officials know not to do something as idiotic as enforcing fornication prohibitions on dumbfounded white people just there to hashtag-Marrakesh and, most importantly, spend money. Everyone knows not to kill the golden goose of tourism, but equally as important is not to slut-shame it either.
Similarly, Muslims — which all Moroccans are legally assumed to be unless officially denoted otherwise — are purportedly prohibited from purchasing alcohol of any kind in Morocco, and yet this decree is flagrantly and openly violated every day. Alcohol bodegas are found on almost every corner, and none of the proprietors inquire about the Shahadah at the point of sale. Same with Moroccans rich enough to eat at a restaurant — they're presumed to be secular enough to be trusted to peruse the wine list. Either way, there's enough lucre to grease the wheels and keep the coppers at bay.
The economist Bruce Yandle coined the term "Bootleggers and Baptists" to describe a type of regulatory capture. Baptists are the ones pure of heart, who want to ban alcohol for moral reasons. Bootleggers are the profiteers, who want to ban alcohol for their pecuniary benefit because they have a competitive advantage working within an illicit market. The ones who want to uphold the law work synergistically (if unintentionally) with the ones seeking to break it for profit. The movement to repeal Morocco's hotel law has made some progress, but it has also been hit by pushback from Baptists and Bootleggers alike. The Baptists are ever concerned about the youth's downward trajectory into degeneracy, and anxious about transforming the Kingdom's hotels into functional brothels (which, given the lack of hook-up venues, is not an unreasonable concern). The Bootleggers are hoteliers who benefit from the "double-booking" trick and government officials reluctant to give up a source of extorted bribery. Meanwhile, the loopholes built into the system mean that the law really only applies to the poors, so who cares?
I'll end with a story an aunt relayed to me, which perfectly illustrates the bizarre amalgam of business-as-usual corruption within Moroccan law enforcement.
My aunt was driving with her friend to another city, miles away from her home. A cop pulled her over for speeding. The traffic code is enforced under penalty of a fine, with the money paid directly to the officer (I know, it's nuts). If you don't happen to have the money on hand, not a problem — they'll just confiscate your actual driver license and hold it at the local Sûreté Nationale bureau until you can come back with the funds.
Problem number one: My aunt did not have enough to pay the full traffic fine amount, the functional equivalent of about $40, and having her license confiscated this far away from her home would be an enormous hassle. While the cop was away, her passenger helpfully suggested offering a $10 bribe to the officer. But problem number two: My aunt had only a $20 bill, with no way to make change. Ten dollars would be a perfectly appropriate amount for a bribe, but getting only a 50% discount on the traffic fine felt like an awful bargain.
The cop heard all this. He popped up and said, "I have change for a twenty." My aunt kept her license that night.
If you don't mind a bit of a non-sequitur, I've always had Morocco in my top 10 travel destinations for many reasons. What would you say are the best ways for a tourist there to grease the skids, avoid the annoyances, while also experiencing most of the interesting foreign-ness of the culture?
By way of example, I've been to Greece with my wife, and we know many native Greeks who return annually or nearly that often. They told us a bunch of important things such as: Athens is a shithole, stay there only a day or two, and book a hotel near the Parthenon. We thought we had done the 2nd, but it wasn't quite so "near" and had to traverse streets full of people doing drugs off of stair steps to get there. Also, we went to a west coast island instead of east coast, which are the more tourist-trap islands. West coast is where the rich American-immigrant Greeks vacation.
This is tough to answer because whenever I visit I get the inimitable privilege of having a bevy of family members eager to have me stay with them. That said, I don't think I've ever heard much complaints from Western tourists when they visit Morocco because the places everyone go to are generally completely authentic.
Maybe the most eye-wateringly touristy area is Marrakesh, but I found it really fun to visit as a native for the first time. The main market square is not some Potemkin village; it's a real bona fide market square that the locals go to, and despite the allure of appealing to Western wallets, you see plenty of street storytellers drawing huge crowds of bystanders by telling poems/jokes/stories in the local language.
I'd say almost all the main cities with medinas (Marrakesh, Fes, Rabat, etc.) are solid destinations because it's such a unique urban landscape. Sale is personally my favorite place, in part because it's not a tourist area, but because that also means it doesn't have a cadre of police officers around to chase off the riff-raff. Casablanca has some neat places but mostly it's just a big boring modern city with modern conveniences (my grandpa's house got demolished and is now a Starbucks).
Oh, and make sure you eat all the street food. Seriously, it's all amazing and safe. I asked my cousins for advice on which street vendors I should stay away from to avoid getting sick, and they completely did not understand the premise of my question. It might be a cultural thing; there's no shortage of scammers and pickpockets in Marrakesh, but apparently fucking with food is just unconscionable.
That is exactly the sort of thing that will give me a jumping off point!
Plus, I love street food.
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I don't have much to add, but this is a great post. It's always nice when posters take us on a deep dive into their country or subculture.
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This is only tangentially related to your post, but I totally agree with your effusive praise for Ramy. The show is brilliant, even though I rarely feel like watching it (because I don't feel like being sad most days). One of my biggest takeaways from the show was also about representation, similar to yours (though slightly different). To me, the show perfectly demonstrates why the push for representation in media is complete bullshit.
On paper, I should in no way feel like the show is for me, right? I'm a white Christian from the Midwest US, so Ramy and his family are about as outgroup as it gets. But actually I feel a deep connection to those characters. Part of that is the way the writers deftly ensure that everyone gets humanized (even characters you think are just there to be villains). But part of that is because growing up in a conservative Christian environment, I get it. I may not be Muslim but I totally understand feeling like you're just a bit out of step with the world because of what your faith teaches. I totally understand being a young man with a young man's unbearably strong sex drive, but with no ways to fulfill it without breaking God's rules. I totally understand having friends who vacillate between "don't take it so seriously bro" and "whoa how can you do that, you know it's sinful". I totally understand having parents who love you but wish you could live up to the faith more.
So while Hollywood probably thinks that show doesn't represent me (because it's about brown people who don't share my religion), it turns out that it actually totally does represent me. I feel seen, as the kids say. And the fact that I can identify so strongly with the characters on this show really demonstrated to me why the demand for representation in media is bullshit. It's because the people who are pushing this don't get it at all. They think that what people want is to see characters who superficially look like them. But what I want, and what I am willing to bet everyone wants, is to see characters who go through what I go through. I don't give a damn if the characters share my skin color, religion, or gender. That stuff is surface level. What actually matters is having people who live like you do, and have experiences similar to yours.
I feel like you wouldn't disagree with any of this, and is what you're getting at when you say you want "true representation". I just feel like it's so different from the "representation" that the woke ideology pushes, that it's really not the same thing at all. Representation, as practiced by Hollywood and the like, is complete bullshit. It doesn't actually represent people at all because it doesn't understand them. Having characters with similar culture and lives (or "true representation" as you put it) is what we need.
This would be fargroup.
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Yes!! What you describe is what, to me, should be the platonic ideal of narrative media. There's something almost deliriously wholesome about discovering a shared tenet of an alien human culture. The purposes here isn't to cement a permanent kumbaya sentiment, but solely to be reminded of how predictable we humans can be despite the kaleidoscope of superficial cultural differences we conjure up. The real differences are important as well, and highlighting both aspects is foundational to presenting a rich palette of human experience.
I don't want to experience a story (movie, tv, books, whatever) where the "diversity" of characters is just an algorithm that goes through the finished script and randomly assigns different identities, with no regard for how their experience changes.
There are so many other media examples that come to mind. One is the Isreali TV show "Shtisel" which depicts a strict ultra-orthodox Jewish community. I know nothing about their lives, but I absolutely resonated with and understood the main character's experience, as he struggled to balance familial obligations while chasing after romantic infatuation. And the differences were illuminating as well. I would notice innocuous details that were not remarked upon by the characters (such as the separate beds for husband and wife) and it would only pique my curiosity to figure out why.
Another is the Australian Aboriginal movie Ten Canoes (2006) [full movie link]. It's a simple story, set in an authentic ancient aboriginal past, and refreshing to me just how funny it can be despite the enormous cultural gap inherent.
Imagine how deprived, how barren, any of this would be if the only difference was a superficial adornment to meet a diversity quota.
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There are bit characters in Hollywood who are conservative Christians that live a bit out of step with the world and aren’t villains or completely flat, but for some reason Hollywood is unwilling to make them the star of the show. And that’s a shame; it’s a potentially interesting character arc that’s being left to reality shows which predictably are uninterested in exploring it.
I haven't watched either, but would Yellowstone and Hillbilly Effigy count as examples of them trying to broaden their reach? I assume there's plenty of money to be had by serving that demographic, so I'd assume the hurdle is the myopic biases that (typically liberal) media executives have.
There's an issue there in that a film studio doesn't just need customers - it needs employees. Using party affiliation as a rough proxy for tribe - every single Hollywood-related occupation I could think of is 90%+ Democrat and in some cases >99.5%. And the rest would be scared of "cancellation", because they depend on that 90%+ for any future job.
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Now there's a Freudian phrase. Elegy it is, but effigy it turned out to be.
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Thanks! And yes, that's an accurate description of the division. Because of Morocco's ties to the West, it's impossible to interface with the rich and powerful without adopting their secular mores. I don't know enough about Malaysia, but I wonder if the upper class attachment to Islam has anything to do with maintaining business/political relations with their devout Indonesian neighbors (edging out Pakistan as the biggest Muslim country in the world).
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This malay-chinese divide matches my experience in Indonesia and other places. Less pronounced in Thailand though - I assume due to Thailand having fewer, if any, Muslims (buddhism is the overwhelming majority I think?). But for Indo, the rich non-Chinese were definitely more promiscuous than the non-rich lower classes. Is this not he case in Malaysia?
For Pakistan, there is similarly a 3-tier system you pointed out. Maybe these same systems exist in most Muslim countries, unless there is a significant minority that adds nuance?
I wonder if that’s an expression of class divide wherein(as in America) the poor tend more to claim they’re religious while the rich are more likely to practice their religion.
Is this established as true? I assumed that atheism heavily correlated with education and wealth.
The poor and uneducated are more likely to call themselves Christian and more likely to claim to believe in God. They are much less likely to actually go to church(and do so less often when they do), are less likely to know what Christianity believes, pray less often, etc.
Measures of behavior are mostly picking up that illegitimacy and drugs are poor people vices.
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