Controversy Erupts Over Cultural Festival Near Mosque in Morocco’s Souss-Massa Region

Voices have been raised against the holding of these cultural activities near mosques, after the organization of the "Tamlalt Lberj" festival in the Tiznit region, on a square adjacent to a mosque. Even if these festivities took place "with respect for places of worship and prayer schedules", they did not fail to provoke a controversy on the web.

To try to explain the phenomenon, some academics evoke "the theory of the mosque and the dance place", highlighting "the interconnection between the mosque and the dance place within the framework of a cultural system". Lahoucine Bouyaakoubi, a professor at Ibn Zohr University in Agadir, explained to Hespress that "Saiss has represented since the dawn of time a place to organize Amazigh festivities, meetings and resolve conflicts between members of the tribe, etc."

The expert added that "this place is not only dedicated to festivities and shows, but also reflects the link of the Amazigh man with the land, identity and language, without neglecting the religious and spiritual aspects", explaining that, "from this point of view, the inhabitants of the villages of southern Morocco, especially Souss, have not found a better place for Assays than the squares adjacent to the mosques".

The academic also denounces a "distortion of the facts". "The celebration next to the mosques is not a recent phenomenon, but goes back much further, to the very origin of man, and is deeply rooted in the Amazigh consciousness," he recalled, stressing that "what is new perhaps is the introduction of modern modes of celebration, such as fireworks and others... but this will never eliminate the place of Assays as a source of modes of entertainment in Amazigh society".

"If the link between Asays and Timzkida is something normal and familiar to everyone within the framework of a cultural system, the change of mentalities in some people has led them to see the organization of a festival near a mosque as something strange, while it has been natural for centuries in all Moroccan rural areas," said a professor of anthropology at the same university.