The King’s City and the many Moroccos
Daniel Stoker Daniel Stoker

The King’s City and the many Moroccos

Shortly after returning home from Morocco last week, I chatted with a fellow professor who had visited me in North Africa. During our conversation he gushed about the city of Rabat and expressed shock that so many tourists ignore the Moroccan capital in favor of the touristy Marrakesh, historic Fez, or Bohemian Chefchaouen. After spending five weeks living in Rabat’s historic medina, I agreed with much of what he said. The city’s streets are clean and often lined with neatly pruned trees. Throughout the city one can find museums, malls, parks, and gardens not to mention beaches, fortresses, and Roman ruins. In some respects Rabat has a little something for everyone. Murals graced buildings throughout Rabat reflecting an artistic flare found in parts of the city. After a couple days in Rabat, I began telling friends and family that Rabat was the cleanest Arab city I had ever visited with the possible exception of Dubai (in many respects, Rabat felt much more authentically Arab than Dubai).

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Sufis, Saints, and Birthdays
Daniel Stoker Daniel Stoker

Sufis, Saints, and Birthdays

A week ago much of the Muslim world celebrated Mawlid al-Nabi or the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. The Prophet’s birthday is a national holiday in most Islamic country where it is often celebrated in a carnival-like manner with parades and festivals. However, there are a couple of notable exceptions. Both Saudi Arabia and Qatar do not officially celebrate Mawlid due to their strict Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. In the 19th century Islamic fundamentalist movements, like Salafism and Wahhabism, began to push back against celebrations of Mawlid which they saw as modern innovations without precedent in early Islam. Along this vein, the patriarch of my host family here in Morocco was sure to remind me that Mawlid was not an Eid or feast because it is not in the Quran or the Hadith. Salafi and Wahhabi adherents are quite critical of Sufism and Sufis who are among those who often celebrate Mawlid fervently.

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The Omnipresence of Palestine
Daniel Stoker Daniel Stoker

The Omnipresence of Palestine

With the change of plans, I figured that the visibility of Palestinian issue would be marginal. When I visited Morocco three months after 7 OCT 2023, I barely noticed that Moroccans were even aware of the massacres taking place in Gaza. Outside the sighting of an occasional keffiyeh (the traditional head covering worn by Palestinian men), there was almost no trace of local awareness of the Palestinian issue. This isn’t to say that I believe that Moroccans weren’t aware of what was going on in Gaza and concerned with the growing death toll, it just didn’t register in the same way that I had seen in countries like Egypt and Jordan. I personally chalked this up to Morocco’s more moderate stance on the Israeli-Palestinian issue than many other Arab states.

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Speed Traps and Barbary Macaques
Daniel Stoker Daniel Stoker

Speed Traps and Barbary Macaques

In my two trips to Morocco I’ve probably logged about 30 hours of driving; mostly between cities with a lot of kilometer to show for it. My reward for being an adventurous driver: four speeding tickets. I’ll admit to having a bit of a lead foot, but given I’ve only had one speeding ticket in the states in the past four years and only been pulled over twice, my experience in Morocco feels like it should be an aberration, but it likely isn’t because there are speed traps just about everywhere. I recently completed my first major road trip (see map below) across the Morocco and I probably saw one police checkpoint for just about every 1.5 hours of driving. At just about every checkpoint you see several dozen people pulled over being written up for speeding.

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Maghrebi Adventures
Morocco Daniel Stoker Morocco Daniel Stoker

Maghrebi Adventures

Eighteen months ago I began planning for my first sabbatical as a professor. My original plans were to spend several months in Jordan refreshing my Arabic and immersing myself in Arabic. About a year ago, as tensions between Israel and Iran began ratcheting up, the prospects for studying in Jordan looked shaky and I pivoted to studying in Morocco. Throughout my education and professional career, the focus of my studies has been focused around the Mashriq, or the eastern portion of the Arabic-speaking world (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and the Gulf countries), and the study of the Maghreb (Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria) has been neglected. While I visited Tunisia in 2022 and Morocco in 2024, my knowledge of the country is still pretty limited and I’m really excited for the upcoming seven and a half weeks I’ll be spending in the region studying Arabic and Medieval Islamic history in Morocco and Spain.

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