Christians in Morocco

Although widespread, few people outside of the region are aware of the persecution Christians face in predominately Islamic nations; according to persecution.org and the Holy See, over 100,000 Christians are oppressed worldwide for their faith, with a majority of them being in Islamic dominant nations.  While harsh on lifelong Christians, these governments tend to take an unforgiving approach to Muslim converts to Christianity.  The Islamic controlled nation of Morocco is no exception to this practice.

Article one, chapter six of the Moroccan constitution names Islam the official state religion but protects the freedom to practice ones own non-Islamic religion.  This implies that Christianity would be embraced and accepted; in actuality, however, it is barely tolerated in the nation.  For example, article 220 of Morocco’s penal code prohibits proselytizing (converting from one religion to another); additionally, the distribution of Christian religious materials is also prohibited under Moroccan law.  The practice of the government to persecute all religions that are not Islam directly contradicts article one of the nations constitution.

For a while, Morocco allowed Christian missionaries and other Western Christians to live in their cities and perform aid work.  The government was fairly lenient on their enforcement of laws regarding religion.  One day in 2010, seemingly out of the blue, over 100 Christians were deported and banned from reentering the country.  No one is entirely sure what sparked this change of heart by the Moroccan government but the Interior Minster stated, the Christians “are guilty of trying to undermine the faith of Muslims.”  Another representative to the King held that, “the repatriation measures were not taken against the concerned parties in relation to their Christian faith, but because they had committed criminal offenses.”  From what I have been able to gather, the criminal offenses that these people are guilty of have remained unnamed.

After the deportations of a number of Western Christians, conditions continued to worsen.  The most recent story that I was able to find about these ongoing persecutions is the story of Mohamed El Baladi who was fortunate enough to have his case dismissed by an appellate judge due to a lack of evidence.  El Baladi was arrested for allegedly proselytizing two Muslims to Christianity.  When the police raided his home, they found an assortment of Christian media and a sum of money that they believed suggested that he was being paid for performing conversions—nothing that our culture would typically think of as warranting an arrest.  In Morocco however, it justified El Baladi’s arrest, sentence to 30 months in prison, and a fine that amounted to approximately one hundred and eighty-two U.S. dollars.  The fortunate decision of the appellate judge to dismiss the case is unusual as Morocco has a history of executing or expelling converts in addition to imprisoning them for an extended period of time.  As stated previously, they take a much harsher approach to converts than they do to native Christians.

Due to the vicious persecutions of Christians at the hands of the Moroccan government, they make up less than one percent of the current population of over 32 million people.

-Katie Testut

Sources

• http://www.christianpost.com/news/christian-convert-from-islam-has-proselytism-conviction-overturned-in-morocco-114260/
• http://www.persecution.org/2014/02/19/christians-fight-for-middle-east-religious-freedom-watchdog/
• http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2007/90217.htm
• http://www.al-bab.com/maroc/gov/con96.htm
• http://dailycaller.com/2010/07/08/morocco-the-limits-of-islamic-religious-tolerance/2/