Thursday 18 February 2010
Alcohol Stirs Morocco Law Row
Posted on 13:12 by google
RABAT – Amid an upsurge in alcohol consumption in the conservative Muslim country, calls are growing in Morocco for enforcing laws banning alcoholic beverages in the North African kingdom.
"There is a law forbidding the consumption of alcohol by Moroccans and it is clear," Saad Eddine Othmani, leader of the Islamic-leaning opposition Justice and Development Party (PJD), told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"It must be respected."
Stringent laws, imposed more than 50 years ago by French colonial rulers, ban the sale of alcohol to Moroccan Muslims.
However, sales and consumption are widely tolerated in the Muslim-majority country.
Supermarkets enforce no restrictions on alcohol sales and bars make no attempt to hide the sale of alcoholic drinks to Muslim and non-Muslim clients.
Even restaurants offer alcoholic drinks to Muslims with their meals.
To hide wine sales, restaurants draw curtains on the windows, keep bottles from view and taint glasses to disguise their contents.
If police visit, Muslim diners are advised to say they are consuming soft drinks.
Morocco produces more than 40 million alcohol bottles a year, generating €45m a year.
Moroccans are consuming 50 million litres of alcoholic drinks a year.
Islam forbids Muslims from drinking or even selling alcohol.
No Change
Some Moroccans see the alcohol consumptions as an individual freedom.
"The law forbidding the consumption and buying of alcohol by Moroccans must be repealed because it is a matter of individual liberty," Khadija Rouissi, a member of the Authenticity and Modernity Party, told AFP.
Her view is backed by the Bayt Al-Hikma (House of Wisdom) organization, a non-religious group formed a few year ago by a friend of King Mohammed VI.
"The law which says alcohol can only be sold to foreigners is against the constitution, which recognises fundamental individual freedoms," it said in a statement.
But this position is ridiculed by many Moroccans.
"When the king presented his plan on reforming the law on women to parliament in October 2003, he said he could not 'permit what Islam forbids'," said political commentator Mohammed Darif.
“And Islam formally forbids alcohol consumption by Muslims.”
Despite the wrangling, analysts expect no major shift on enforcing the alcohol-banning laws.
"You must realize that the alcohol trade generates profits for the Moroccan state, even if the general tendency is towards conservatism given the growing influence of religion within Moroccan society," said law professor Michele Zirari.
"I don't see any substantial change in the short, or medium, term."
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