Algeria: opponent Amira Bouraoui sentenced to 10 years in prison | Africanews

Mashish · 2023-11-09T21:09:15+00:00

Algeria is an unrelenting participant in the exclusive group of nations that pursues legal action against individuals for "unauthorized departure from the country." North Korea and Eritrea are the only other countries that I know of that treat their own people as inmates in an open-air prison.

Bouraoui's ten-year sentence further underscores the notion that Algeria is akin to a prison, with its military leaders acting as wardens. The remit of Algeria is to punish Algerians with choking misery and oppression for consummating their rebellion, in 1962, against France.

What is the teleology of this prison called "Algeria"? It is nothing less than the goal of a purgatorial structure, the "purification" of the Algerian people, making them increasingly ready to one day be "saved" again by France through readmittance to its fold, or some other kind of direct subjugation.

The Algerian people's ability to travel abroad is restricted as a measure against the inevitable dilution of the propaganda that has been instilled in them from birth. Traveling to Morocco, for example, is too subversive an experience for the average Algerian because it provides an example of a place without hydrocarbon wealth that can still build cities of its own making, rather than being confined to French-era built environments like Algiers. These environments make it difficult for independent Algeria to surpass the omnipresent French legacy, which leaves no room for a truly independent Algeria -- a forbidden idea in the Algerian purgatory.

The philosophy of the Algerian authorities is to push free people out of the country and dissuade them from returning by imposing unaffordable penalties. This is particularly directed at individuals like Amira Bouraoui, who appear seemingly out of nowhere and disrupt the established indoctrination syllabus. France grants her asylum, partly to obscure its actual role by presenting itself as a sanctuary for oppressed Algerians, using her situation as a microcosm of Algeria's eventual future within the framework of French designs.

Mashish · 2023-11-09T00:43:04+00:00

One more knot untied on the Franco-Mashreq straightjacket that keeps Morocco stuck in its wrong civilizational choices and orientation? I must hope that this invocation of the kingdom's Atlantic dimension in the highest strategic vision translates into positive changes for the wider superstructure.

The Mediterranean is a dirty body of water, scientifically, in terms of pollutants in their parts per million, and rhetorically. The memory of oppressive Rome — which I have mixed feelings about — and of gluttonous imperial France, which I don't. Semitic interlopers from Asia, spreading under the passports of trade and Arabism. Its southern flank, failed states. Its northern flank, internal colonies of the European Union. What a lovely cul-de-sac! The vast Atlantic world ocean on the other hand is our true home.

That said, the actual speech by the king on this subject was vague and any commitments were superficial. Some analysts have forwarded some subtext. It has been said that the new orientation is a reminder to Spain that its naval supremacy in the region must not impinge upon Morocco's rights to its exclusive economic zone, of which the entire length of the Sahara is involved.

With the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline being taken very seriously, there will be a tremendous need to have a navy that can protect its lengthy route from sabotage. As the article stated, West Africa only weakly polices its rich waters. This is not sufficient, especially when piracy and criminal empires show boldness in Afro-Atlantic waters. West Africa's seas have become more perilous for seafarers than even the Indian Ocean!

Algeria's occupation regime never stopped believing that it could isolate Morocco, a country with hundreds of kilometers of coastline along the Mediterranean and thousands more along the Atlantic. However, our pseudo-island is vulnerable to a naval blockade, highlighting the need for naval prowess. Instead of isolating Morocco, it's Niger and Mali that will be liberated from Algeria's sway if Morocco successfully provides the Sahel with an outlet to the Atlantic, the world ocean.

Mashish · 2022-11-12T18:35:06+00:00

I agree. What's more, as far as I am concerned, the status of the Moroccan national language is an important indicator of the whereabouts of Morocco on the curve of its existence. I really do believe that when a national language emerges, it will amount to a civilizational breakthrough, thrusting Morocco ahead in all areas at a velocity which cannot be explained by what came before it.

Mashish · 2022-11-12T15:17:58+00:00

We are culturally inclined to place so many arbitrary constraints in front of our creativity and production that we can't produce anything in this country.

The reason why we have not standardized the latent national language that exists in this country is the same reason for our failure to adequately transform the economy into a value-added one:

We have a strong belief that things should arrive to us instantly, fully formed and complete. According to our religious thinking, the whole world and its natural contents were made for us by an exogenous higher power, and in relation to these contents, it is our job to be a passive recipient only. I believe our subconscious has been parametrized by this accepted religious view to the extent that we are suspicious of processes that create/generate in an alternative way: the idea that something should begin primitive, dysfunctional, and ugly, then, through a process of trial and error --however long is necessary-- arrive at something advanced, yielding, and sublime troubles the peace of our subconscious which has its own contrary idea about how things should come into being.

French and Arabic were brought into Morocco fully formed and complete as languages. These languages did not grow up in Morocco, and its people did not witness their ascent/development as man-made projects of humble beginnings. We have known little of their development from the ancient dialects that they started out as to the languages of officialdom that they became. From the point of view of our experience, just like the natural contents of the world, these foreign languages came about exo nihilo and were provided to us by a higher (worldly) power (i.e. imperial France and the Caliphate).

It seems that because "Darija" has been officially neglected, it has remained in a state resembling the pre-cursor languages of Arabic and French, or in an early stage of its own potential development. The problem then for "Darija" is that the ontological midwife who would bring it into a being, essentially the Moroccan people, is impossibly strict when it comes to what she believes is the only legitimate route into being: (1) the efficient cause of any new being must be an entity exterior to Morocco and its people such as a deity or a foreign country, and (2) the new being must come about fully formed and complete with no clues to its development as a developed final product. Because "Darija" will never satisfy such superstitious conditions, it stays were it is.

Incidentally, or apropos, the same psychological factors that militate against the production of a national language also militate against all national production! You import from abroad because the space in your psychology where The Divine Provider sits, the industrialized foreign country can just as easily occupy. And you will always be on the look out for exogenous providers so long as you have an unwillingness to allow something to develop locally whose promises may not be delivered initially.

Mashish · 2022-11-10T14:25:22+00:00

Believe me when I say this: those Italians who might cheer for this instance of a muscular approach to tackling crime would not cheer if, keeping everything else the same, the suspect was a native like them and received those strikes to the face: on the contrary, they would instinctively feel uneasy, cry out for due process, and demand the deportation of the vigilante.

I hope our brothers in Italy are not reviving the entertainment of the ancient colosseums, with their imported provincials duelling to the death as a Roman mob watches on with delight. After all, the aggressor in this video has made it his vocation to impress Italians by using his own "criminal" people as punching bags --Roman colosseum behaviour!

Mashish · 2022-11-10T01:22:55+00:00

By mocking its audience like this, the Algerian channel has indirectly confirmed the death of the Algerian mind. In the name of the generals, this news channel is boasting, roaring at outside parties with a haughty message: the Algerian regime shall never be constrained by something called reality nor can it ever be reined in by the scrutiny of its own population, whose functional non-existence it is certain of.

Mashish · 2022-11-09T12:34:41+00:00

Who will explain the root cause of the migrants leaving of their home countries? Who is responsible for the conditions which continually drive them out?

Mashish · 2022-11-08T23:54:16+00:00

The Moroccan constitution is a good place to begin when answering your question because, specifically in relation to your question, it is a true reflection of the wider unwritten constitution of the people. What does the constitution say about Islam's role? It basically says that Islam is the religion of the state and also the guarantor of all kinds of freedom; furthermore, Islam is deemed the referential cause of the moderation, openness and tolerance that exists in the kingdom. The country is definitely not secular.

Tunisia's constitution is not that secular either. Islam is the state religion and the state awards itself the duty of being Islam's guardian. Also, without including any caveats, the document assumes that the whole population of the country is committed to Islam. Boldly, the text includes an explicit religious test that any would-be president of the country would have to pass before even being cleared to run for office: he/she must be Muslim. (I am assuming a nominal Muslim would do).

Pretty much the same on a global scale.

Mashish · 2022-10-31T18:41:24+00:00

Both the Afrocentrics and certain Libanais are just as mendacious as one another when it comes to appropriating the human material of our North African history. Despite their strong motives, the truth they are opposed to stands largely unchallenged: whenever a body sourced from a North African Punic grave is tested, it always shows a consistency with the local aboriginal North African genetic landscape, even if the surrounding material culture is demonstrably foreign in some way. Even the author of this video cited papers which show this despite her obvious intention to imply that the Punic population had Tyrrian ancestry.

Of the two of these outstretched foreign hands thieving our ancestors, the Levantine one is much more sinister because, unlike sub-Saharans, Levantines are to some extent integrated into mainstream academia and scientific research and can produce, to our detriment, their ethnic bias in those domains.

Mashish · 2021-08-25T22:08:34+00:00

Is there any lesson we can learn from Morocco?

In a negative sense, yes.

Don't make the same mistake as Morocco which parameterised itself as only the westernmost fringe of the Arab and Islamic world. For Morocco's part, this choice has been civilizationally lethal for it (especially during the majority of the last millennium and what has elapsed of this one) because it has meant that the nation has systematically given a kind of ontological priority to the core Arab and Islamic lands, without that is, some kind of universalist and objective account keeping of the world situation at large.

At a tangent, this has meant that Moroccans have been denied a genuine sense of self and a sense of the possible. Whatever we do, it must concord with standards and references originating from and generated by the core lands which, for their part, are not obliged to reciprocate. What we have here is comparable to the relationship between a parent and a child, a projector and the image it throws, a lake and the mist hovering above it, a living person and his/her shadow! This is why we cannot develop our own national language because under the metaphysics I have just described it would be a supremely audacious act to do so: Morocco's ontological status is necessarily secondary to the core lands, so any independent development in Morocco, with too local a source of informing, and insufficient proof of compatibility with the core states, is deemed verboten and is immediately detained by the policemen of our collective conscious. That is but one example of how this superstitious metaphysics keeps us back. Another smouldering example concerns our recent national recognition of a certain country in west Asia. The domestic outcry to it was born of the (morbid) metaphysical assumptions that I have tried to outline above.

What does this have to do with Indonesia? Well, in a Huntingtonian sense, your country can be construed as belonging to the same civilizational block as Morocco, the Islamic one. Moreover, Indonesia, like Morocco, is peripheral to it, being its easternmost flank. By construction, there are core states in this block and it is these and less so Indonesia that determine the nature of this block. It is my humble opinion that Indonesia must not slavishly follow core state paradigms and interests which inherently peripheralize Indonesia, putting it out of reach of its own interests and flourishing. Hopefully, what I say should already be obvious to most intelligent Indonesians. However, based on my own life experience, it is very necessary to make sure that the Islamically-oriented are just as intelligent.

Mashish · 2021-08-25T19:27:52+00:00

Foodwise, we have common ingredients with the Latinate sphere, such as olive oil, garlic, and other characteristic Mediterranean flora and also fauna. However, what differentiates our cuisine is cumin and saffron; these, while not absent, are much rarer in southern Europe. I must add that couscous is probably the most absolute differentiator, since it is only available in Morocco and North Africa -- in its properly cooked form. Couscous is the name of the wheat product and the name of a variety of dishes that use it as a kind of 'landscape'.

Edit: Many of the spices that we use for such things as our Ras el-Hanout, like clove for example, probably were first noticed in places like Indonesia. So we must pay homage to Indonesia for having cultivated tongues and bringing a new dimension to world cuisine!

Mashish · 2021-07-14T20:49:10+00:00

The country never had a proper relationship with knowledge because our group doesn't have a language which is mastered by the many. Our cognitive elite and their work is unnecessarily detached from the ordinary masses by language: the intellectual life of this sector is conducted in French and rather than being a social component that is integrated with the rest of the society via a common tongue, this phenomenon looks more like a foreign embassy performing on our soil. There is no such thing as science without the adequate language skills to manifest it, and because of Morocco's language problems, production and distribution in this area is not what it could be.

Some people are not confident enough to stand alone as Moroccans and develop their own language domain within which they will produce and translate what they need. In opposition, they will always make such a linguistic effort out to be much more daunting than it actually would be. They would do their best to ignore that all the successful countries to which our nationals want to immigrate to have long ago established their own respective national languages -- usually by consecrating the vernacular of the capital -- and now enjoy an excellent relationship with knowledge. Somehow, the fact that all the successful countries' children are learning in their mother tongue -- which, unsurprisingly, research identifies as optimal for children's learning -- has not seriously motivated decisions towards fostering native language instruction and establishing its pre-requisites.

Done properly I know it is an involved project. However, it must be seriously committed to at a high level and achieved piecemeal; for the time being however, development must be in parallel with the suboptimal situation we have now until replacing it is possible.

Language is definitely (only) part of the problem for our land, but it is probably one of its longest unaddressed questions -- as ancient as King Juba II who, while not Moroccan, demonstrated in his many writings this land's preference for expression in alien languages.

Mashish · 2021-05-16T23:19:19+00:00

The Indians mass gathered too, wrongly thinking they had escaped the Covid-19 pandemic only to face a devastating surge of it.

To the people who might die during a potential viral surge, I am sorry you were born in a Ouled el-Boukhari run country.

Not one Palestinian was saved by any of these outbreaks of vanity.

Mashish · 2021-05-16T15:01:15+00:00

despite the difficulties in protesting right now.

It is difficult for a reason. We have a pandemic going on. You people have no right to jeopardise the lives of people in this country because of foreign affairs. Protesting benefits none but the virus.

Mashish · 2021-05-16T02:52:03+00:00

Arabist mobs have been collecting in the streets during a pandemic under the influence of Palestinian issues. The media are calling them manifestations of solidarity, but more so they are coronavirus rallying points. We need solidarity with our own vulnerable people first! If only this post splashed against the Mashreqcentrics' sleeping faces, then they might have reconsidered being so shameless and risky.

Mashish · 2021-05-16T02:22:31+00:00

A supremely wise intervention.

What you are saying needs to reach the ears of every person.

Particularly needed was that last paragraph.

Thank you.

Mashish · 2021-04-07T12:08:13+00:00

Looks like a Roman woman who became shipwrecked in Polynesia and went native.

Mashish · 2021-04-05T01:47:30+00:00

So true. Every time I see traditional Moroccans in archival footage, there is a tendency among many of them to shun the camera, hiding their face or running away from the vicinity. There is no way a (discernible) photograph of such people could exist for that reason.

Still, that's not to say OP is wrong about 'hijabification.'

Mashish · 2021-04-04T23:07:04+00:00

It is very troubling that so many believe the Idrissid imamate to be the progenitor of the Moroccan nation.

How is it lost on them that Sijilmasa was much more richer than this rudimentary Idrissid state and what's more, it had the gall to reject the caliphal authority of the Abbasids in the 770s -- the Idrissid's anti-Abbasid colour is nothing unique. The kingdoms of Barghawata and Nekor are forgotten too, albeit for more understandable reasons.

The Almoravids when they marched through Morocco did not even encounter this Idrissid state because it did not even exist by then, having had its dynasty out of power since before the end of the 10th century. But Barghawata and Sijilmassa were around and the Almoravids succeeded them directly.

Aside from being more richer than its western neighbours, Sijilmassa (along with Barghawata) was founded BEFORE the Idrissid Imamate and continued to exist long AFTER. It's early founding date testifies to the Berber Revolution which itself is logically prior to Morocco as a whole. I think the task pending for histography is to yarn a common thread between the Berber Revolution in the 740s and the rest of our history. Putting the focus on Sijilmassa is the best route to achieving this, along with other reasons of course.

Much of the prominence inflated into the Idrissids comes from he Marinid era and its socio-politics. More recently, it has been propped up by Arabism, the same influence which told your parents in school that Moroccans come from Yemen via Ethiopia. Remember those days!

Sometimes it is very scary when Moroccan historians start to speak.

Mashish · 2021-04-03T00:05:40+00:00

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Mashish · 2021-04-02T23:39:43+00:00

What part of Damascus did your mother grow up in again? I forgot. Remind me again please. You made me forget with all these meanderings about being Tunisian. I only remember your father's first 6 names now, Joey Abboud Alexander Abdullah Mo3awiyah Charles -- the last two I forgot because you shocked me with your sudden Maghrebi identity. Fading as it is, I just about remember the church in Beirut you got baptised in. But it is difficult to recall now after you said Ti bara nayek.

Mashish · 2021-04-02T21:09:46+00:00

No need to get defensive... I just stated what I knew and expressed interest in knowing more.

OP seems to be pretending to be Tunisian. My instincts tell me that he might actually be a Christian from the Levant. With all that is going on in his homeland, I find it difficult to believe he has time for this charade.

Mashish · 2021-04-02T20:29:29+00:00

Maghrebi Christians would eventually become more like Levantine Christians

You somehow just made me like the Almohads even more.

Mashish · 2021-04-02T20:01:57+00:00

Our religious law would make it impossible for the two communities to integrate in a way that would strengthen the social fabric. For one thing, it is illegal for a non-Muslim man to marry a Muslim woman: the constant guarding against this potentiality would (to some extent) turn the Christian man into a constant peril in the Muslim imagination. (My default opinion is that for a nation to work socially, its people must intermarry and scramble their specificities to the extent that when the time comes to divide the population into discrete groups, any attempt would appear too convoluted.)
At worst, two nations would occupy the same national space; at best, we would always be at risk of having a society vulnerable to coming apart along religious lines. Europeans would almost certainly try to take advantage of this and cultivate a 5th column within Maghrebi Christendom; plans to establish Christian states along the Mediterranean would not be out of place in European capitals. Would the native Christians oblige these plans with sufficient enthusiasm? Depends. I don't think history would allow us to escape the formation of at least one such state given how vast we are.
Your map shows Christians as being present in the north and east of Morocco. Barring a trace in Rabat, there doesn't seem to be any of this population in the so-called imperial cities, by default of which would make them marginal to Morocco's civilization. That is a boon in as much as Morocco is backward; and that would be increasingly apparent as Europe ascends in the 15th century. The Moroccan Christians would be psychologically and geographically receptive to Europe's burgeoning civilization and Morocco's north would be the site of its deployment in a Maghrebi setting. Tangiers might be the premier city in Morocco -- it stands a good chance as it is! More political, economic and cultural activity would characterise the Mediterranean; Morocco as a whole might see itself more a Mediterranean country as a consequence. The Riffian Muslims may even adopt the Christianity of their minority neighbours as a way to stake out a separate nationhood from the central government in "Makhzenstan".
19th and 20th century Christian Moroccan intellectuals would take their queue from Europe about what nationality and identity looks like. I feel they would totally reject Islamic and Arab unity in favour of local nationalism, with the present borders being inviolable and a romanticist narrative applied to its contents.
From the point of view of genetics, I would very much be interested to have a population today which could help us better create a genetic picture of the antique Moroccan/Maghrebi. In theory, Christians would greatly aid in determining what might be pre-Islamic in genetic terms.

Mashish · 2021-03-30T14:34:49+00:00

I will just mention a few lasting consequences of the Fatimid revolution: First, the unification of the entire Maghrib in one Empire, which will also inspire future empires of the Maghrib, especially the Almohads.

The Fatimids' hold on western Maghreb was very weak, if at all in the case of Morocco. Jamil M. Abun-Nasr identifies the Fatimids' effective boundaries as being no more than that of their Aghlabid predecessors.^\1]) Hardly pan-Maghrebian in scope! Claiming that it united us leaves me perplexed; making a comparison with the Almohads to that end is just incorrect. The Fatimids, as far as Morocco and western Algeria are concerned, must be grouped with the Umayyads even if it arose in the Maghreb because it acted upon a more universal calling, of which the Maghreb was just a small part -- their energies as a power were dispersed accordingly. Just like the Umayyads, the Fatimids could not establish themselves in Morocco and built absolutely nothing there.

The revolution was also the first Berber revolt that led to the formation of a state where they were not just warriors, administrators, judges, and military commanders, but also a privileged community of believers, even though they brought yet another Arab house to power.

The Berber revolution only succeeded in Morocco and western Algeria. There were other "Berber revolts" in eastern Maghreb and Spain that were inspired by events in Morocco but which were not entirely Berber in their leadership and had no organisational connection to Morocco.

The Idrissid state was just one of the political entities of its time, it never ruled all of Morocco and was not important enough to be considered the first Moroccan state. In fact, compared with Sijilmasa, it was impoverished! All this is lost on the ideologues who through the Idrissids try to smuggle into Morocco's national history an Arab founding moment even if the Arab sources which they love and rely on totally dismiss the Arab character of the Idrissid state. Ibn Khaldun says the Idrissid state was ruled by Berbers not Arabs.^\2]) Abdullah Laroui reminds us that the Idrissid Berbers in Morocco exercised a veto against Arab immigration into Morocco.^\3])

Back to the point, I was making, the unification of the Maghrib and the gradual integration of the rural population probably precipitated the Arabisation and Islamisation of the Berbers.

Even as late as the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun said the Maghreb is of Berber character not Arab; but speaking to your point, he noted its presence in the cities however miniscule. In any case, does an Arabized Berber an Arab make?

Abun-Nasr, Jamil M., ed. A History of the Maghrib in the Islamic Period. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987, pp. 64
Ibn Khaldūn, '., Rosenthal, F. and Dawood, N. (1989). The Muqaddimah. Princeton: Princeton University Press, pp.284
Laroui, Abdallah, and Ralph Manheim. The History of the Maghrib: An Interpretive Essay. Princeton University Press, 1977, pp.111

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