National Day for Mosques will be celebrated yearly in Morocco

By Mawassi Lahcen - Magharebia- Casablanca, Morocco

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

In his capacity as Commander of the Faithful, King Mohammed VI announced Sunday (April 1st) that a National Day for Mosques will be celebrated each year on the Prophet's (PBH) birthday, the Mouled.

The king believes the holiday will provide an opportunity to evaluate efforts to rehabilitate mosques, to provide them with a regulatory framework, and to protect them from extremism, fanaticism and terrorism.

The first official celebration of the National Day for Mosques took place in Marrakech, where Mohamed VI presided over a religious ceremony in the historical Koutoubia Mosque. During the ceremony, the king initiated a series of measures to preserve "spiritual security" and doctrinal unity among Moroccans.

The new measures aim to improve the lives of imams, khatibs or preachers, and custodians of the mosques, by providing them with health coverage. The procedures also call for improvements to mosques, including regular water and electricity connections.

During the ceremony in Marrakech, the monarch also announced a national plan to improve the country's mosques through co-operation between the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs. The plan seeks to regulate the geographical distribution of mosques and the implementation of a new law on places of worship which regulates the construction of mosques and the collection of contributions.

The Ministry of Endowments and Islamic Affairs has stated that the central aim of the new measures is to defend doctrinal unity among Moroccans and to strengthen facets of culture that are distinctly Moroccan, in order to counter what it views as imported religious concepts.

The ministry promotes a moderate and tolerant doctrine based on the school of Imam Malik with regard to jurisprudence, the Ashaari School with regard to philosophy and Islamic thought, and the school of Al-Junaid with regard to Sufism.

This support has extended to training muezzins on performing the call to prayer based upon Moroccan traditions. "We are running instructional courses to benefit muezzins so that the call to prayer is the same in all mosques," said Abd al-Salam Marizq, Delegate-General for Islamic Affairs in Casablanca.

Morocco has focused a great deal of attention on its mosques since the terrorist events of May 16th, 2003 in Casablanca, in which a group of khatibs was arrested and tried on charges of generating support for terrorism and incitement to terrorism.

"We have exerted considerable effort to make mosques fit for their purpose, particularly in the field of organising instructional courses for imams and khatibs," Marizq said. The offices of the ministry have been distributing the Imam and Khatib Handbook, which gives guidance to imams on improving the sermons they deliver in the mosques.

The handbook addresses a number of relatively new subjects, such as human rights issues, women's rights, fighting bribery and corruption, combating extremism, and calling for temperance and moderation.