50 women qualify as Muslim preachers
Morocco promotes moderate Islam
Five graduates of a program that trained 50 Moroccan women as Islamic preachers show the certificates they earned in Morocco on Wednesday. Training women for the role is part of a pioneering effort to promote moderate Islam in the nation that has grappled with extremism. (JALIL BOUNHAR/Associated Press)

BY SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI
ASSOCIATED PRESS
May 5, 2006

Five graduates of a program that trained 50 Moroccan women as Islamic preachers show the certificates they earned in Morocco on Wednesday. Training women for the role is part of a pioneering effort to promote moderate Islam in the nation that has grappled with extremism. (JALIL BOUNHAR/Associated Press)
RABAT, Morocco -- Fifty women have graduated as Muslim preachers, part of an effort by authorities in Morocco to promote moderate Islam in a country grappling with extremism.
Another 150 men graduated Wednesday as imams, or prayer leaders. The 50 female religious guides, or morchidat, won't lead prayers in mosques, a job reserved for men, but will be sent around the country to teach women -- and, occasionally, men -- about Islam.
While Moroccan officials said the appointment of female state preachers was a rare experiment in the Muslim world, others said it was unprecedented in Morocco and the majority of other Arab countries.
The women's training is part of a campaign launched by the young King Mohammed VI, a descendant of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, to strengthen state-controlled mosques while undermining radical clerics who preach extremism. He has vowed that no foreign religious doctrine would be tolerated in the north African kingdom, which is a close ally of the United States and a partner in its war against terrorism.
Moroccan officials say the May 16, 2003, suicide bombings in the commercial capital of Casablanca were inspired by radical Muslim clerics who preached violence to poor and disillusioned youths in slums of the big cities.
More than 2,000 people were arrested as a result of the bombings, including Mohammed Fazzazi, who is serving a 30-year-sentence for preaching violence. Two other well-known hard-line Islamic clerics, Abu Hafs and Hassan Kettani, were arrested before the bombings. They were convicted and sentenced to 30 and 20 years in prison respectively for being the ideologists of the Salafia Jihadia militants.
In an interview with a Moroccan weekly six months before the Casablanca blasts, Hafs bragged that his mosque had been packed every Friday since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and that his taped sermons were widely sold. He said the Sept. 11 hijackers were heroes.
Since the Casablanca blasts, Moroccan authorities have been monitoring the country's mosques closely to ensure that they do not recruit insurgents. Friday prayer sermons now must be approved by authorities. Underground mosques are believed to exist, although there are fewer than before the blasts.
The pioneer group of morchidat, who finished a yearlong course in Islamic law, philosophy and the history of religions in early April, was trained to give basic religious instructions in mosques and provide support in prisons, hospitals and schools. Their salary is about $500 a month.
Applicants for the course must have a bachelor's degree. Males must know the Quran by heart, while female applicants should know at least half of it.
Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.