The New Leader of Morocco's Justice & Spirituality Party

Here is an article, originally from TelQuel that has been translated and republished by alMonitor. It gives an interesting glimpse into the life of Mohamed Abbadi, the new leader of the banned Justice and Spirituality Party,Adl wal Ihsaan(translated as Justice and Charity in the article below) ; although as usual in the media, the language used when discussing "Islamists" is a bit patronizing.

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Morocco’s Banned Islamist Party Gets New Leader

By: Mohammed Boudarham Translated from TelQuel (Morocco). 
Before Mohamed Abbadi succeeded Abdesslam Yassine as head of the Justice and Charity Association (JCA), he endured extensive trials and tribulations. But who is he? And how much influence does he have within the movement?

On Jan. 1, Abbadi, who is in his sixties, moved out of his home in Oujda’s ​​Beni Khairane neighborhood. He bid farewell to his neighbors and to the huge crowd that came to greet him. This iconic Islamic jurist from Morocco’s Oriental region moved to Rabat to perform his new duties.

A week earlier, JCA’s consultative council had elected Abbadi, who hails from the Moroccan Rif area, as leader. But he did not inherit the title of “supreme guide” from his predecessor Yassine. Instead, Abbadi fills the newly created position of secretary-general. Fathallah Arsalan, JCA's spokesperson, was appointed second-in-command.

“That was done for the sake of continuity, but it also shows that JCA wishes to dissociate preaching from political action,” explains Mohamed Darif, a political scientist and an expert on the movement. JCA’s new chief will follow in Yassine’s footsteps in regards to spiritual affairs, while leaving civilian matters to the political wing. Abbadi fits that profile: he has always been immersed in religion and spirituality.

An encounter with destiny

Abbadi was born in 1949 in a village called Beni Houdayfa in the Al-Hoceima region. His family was of modest means, like most Riffian people at the time. His family moved to Oujda, where the young Abbadi excelled at school. He had the Quran memorized by age 12. He received his baccalaureate in 1970 and followed that with five years of religious studies under the guidance of scholar Benseddik Abdellah, the alter ego of Mokhtar Soussi in the north. Soussi was Yassine’s teacher.

The first shock of Abbadi’s life came while teaching at an institute under the Ministry of Islamic Affairs in Azemmour. By then he had become an Islamic jurist. The ascetic Abbadi was shocked by how the youth of the city lived. He thought their lifestyle was far removed from Islam. So he turned more radical in his quest to reform the ummah through education and by the words of God and his prophet. After a stint in Safi, where he joined the Ecole Normale Supérieure, he started teaching Arabic and Islam at schools throughout the country at Settat, El-Jadida and Tangier, before returning to Oujda.

In the 1970s, he joined Tariqa Boutchichiya, where he met Yassine, the man who would change his life. “It happened in Marrakech with two other founding members of JCA, Mohamed El-Mellakh and Alaoui Slimani (both deceased),” said a young JCA member. Abbadi and Yassine began an unshakable relationship based on friendship and loyalty. JCA members would describe that relationship as “sohba” — or companionship at the time of the prophet. When Ousrat al-Jamaa (JCA’s name before 1987) was created in 1981, Abbadi was one of its founding members.

The ascetic of Oujda

After his family moved to Oujda, Abbadi earned the respect of all those who knew him. “This is a great man. At Assalam school, even the most difficult students respected him,” recalls one of his former students.

Many townspeople used to come and pray with him at the Tafoghalt mosque, or assist in the conferences he gave at schools and places of worship at Oriental’s capital Oujda. After retiring in the late 1990s, Abbadi was not seen very often. But his home on Zerktouni Avenue (one of Oujda’s main roads) remained open to anyone seeking a religious opinion, especially JCA followers, who used to gather for long sessions reciting the Quran and Awrad (poems praising the prophet).

“He is a man of science who is extremely modest. He immediately puts you at ease. His everyday life does not differ from that of the overwhelming majority of Moroccans,” said Abdelaziz Aftati, deputy from Oujda in parliament and Justice and Development Party (PJD) leader.

“He is a man of great honesty. He is frank and bold,” added Mohamed El-Herd, longtime director of the local newspaper Al-Sharq.

“Like Yassine, he has chosen to live in austerity like the ‘men of science.’ He does not complicate his life nor that of those around him,” said Omar Iharchane, member of the JCA political circle. Men of science is Islamist jargon for those who devote their lives to religious studies and eschew worldly pleasures.

FULL ARTICLE

A Good Year for Moroccan Dates

Here is a piece from National Public Radio (NPR) about an abundant date harvest this year in Morocco, alhamdulilah.  Let's hope the drought breaks and other agricultural sectors have similar success.
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Moroccans Celebrate A Bountiful Year For Date Harvest
by Jeff Koehler
January 10, 2013 1:33 PM

In the heart of the Moroccan oasis and palm grove of Skoura, west of Marrakesh, yellow and reddish dates dangled heavily from branches high above us. It's going to be a good year, a man harvesting dates said, offering me a handful of fresh, still-yellow fruit cut from the tree just moments before.

The man, holding a tamskart, a hooked knife anchored to a short wooden handle used for trimming these heavily laden branches, had just shimmied down from one of a dozen palm trees. He was paid 20 dirham, or just over $2, per tree by the family that owns them. It's a dangerous and labor-intensive job.

Whole sprays of yellow dates, as well as mounds of riper, sticky brown ones that had shaken loose from the trees were splayed across blue tarps. They were Bouskri, a favorite variety here that is dried and best when the brittle skin shatters as you bite into it. Eaten fresh, they tend to be a touch woody in taste and texture.

I had gone to Skoura in early October to catch the beginning of the date harvest. Wandering around the palm grove, everyone told me the same thing: This harvest would be better than average and much better than the previous year.

It took two months to bring in Skoura's dates. Now that the harvest is over, how did it turn out?

Those I met in Skoura were right. According to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, the country's recent date harvest was expected to be 10 percent above the average of the past five years.

That's good news for the family farmers in Skoura, who keep the dates they'll use throughout the year and sell the excess from the harvest in the town's Monday souk.

Dates hold pride of place on the Moroccan table. Hosts traditionally offer the fruits to guests with a glass of milk, especially during the year's important holidays. The fruits are eaten out of hand, used in desserts and for topping sweet couscous, but also find their way into the country's famed lamb and poultry tagine stews. The average Moroccan eats about 6 1/2 pounds of dates each year, though in date-producing areas, that figure reaches some 33 pounds.

They are also the first item eaten with the breaking of the fast during the month of Ramadan, and controversies have erupted over where dates were imported from to meet holiday demands. About half of all dates in Morocco are eaten during this holiday.

This year, Morocco's date haul weighed in at 110,180 metric tons, according to Morocco's agriculture ministry. In Ouarzazate, near Skoura, the yield leaped from a five-year average of 56,000 tons to 65,000 tons. Nearly 90 percent of the country's dates are grown in this region and Errachidia, which lies farther east at the edge of the Sahara.

For full article see HERE

What the Passing of Shaykh Abdessalam Yassine means for Morocco

Here is a piece from the Guardian about the role of almarhum, Sh. Abdessalam Yassine the founding leader of the Adl wa Ihsan Party and what it could mean for Morocco. 
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What does Abdessalam Yassine's death mean for Morocco?

The Justice and Spirituality leader was a consistent opponent of the monarchy, combining Sufi piety and politics to powerful effect 

Myriam Francois-Cerrah 

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 20 December 2012 14.05 GMT

Islamism is often thought to be antithetical to Sufism, but in Morocco, a Sufi-inspired Islamist movement has represented the most potent opposition to the monarchy since the 1980s. The death of its mystical leader, Sheikh Abdessalam Yassine, last Thursday has left many asking what direction Morocco's informal opposition will take.

Tens of thousands of people converged on Morocco's capital, Rabat, to mourn the passing of Yassine, 84, the founder and spiritual leader of Morocco's largest Islamic opposition movement, Justice and Spirituality (al Adl wal Ihsan), a nonviolent group committed to the peaceful overthrow of the monarchy.

The sheikh's age and ill health had meant his public appearances had grown increasingly infrequent. Some even speculated that he may have died earlier and his death kept a secret from his devoted followers. According to Michael Willis, fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean studies at Oxford University, Yassine's death is a pivotal moment in the evolution of the movement: "The movement grew around him, all members read his key writings, he was at the centre of things – but the movement had been preparing for his death for the last decade or so – there are structures in place."
The central ideologue and spiritual guide, Yassine's appeal combined religious and political leadership, something the movement will struggle to replace. Whether his successor's legitimacy is premised on political or religious credentials could affect the nature of the movement and its popular appeal. In recent years, Yassine's daughter Nadia, a media regular and French-educated author, has grown in public prominence. Like her father, her public defiance of the monarchy, including a 2005 statement that Morocco would be better off as a republic, saw her prosecuted and kept under surveillance. However, despite her popular appeal and charisma, it is unlikely she will take the helm in a deeply conservative country, where female leadership remains contentious. An interim successor has been appointed in the shape of Mohamed Abbadi, current head of the movement's guidance council and No 2 in the movement.

The burning question for observers is whether the movement will reconsider a cornerstone of Yassine's thinking – the rejection of the monarchy's religious and political legitimacy. Such a move, favoured by younger members, would allow the movement to enter the political fray, but could ultimately undermine its oppositional appeal.

As for the monarch, the passing of such an inveterate opponent will be regarded with muted glee. For decades, the sheikh represented the face of popular dissidence, refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the monarchy and sending a succession of impudent letters to the successive kings, accusing them of squandering the people's wealth and calling on them to return to the path of God. One such letter saw Yassine imprisoned in a psychiatric ward because it is alleged former king Hassan II could not conceive that any sane man would challenge his authority so brazenly. On Mohammed VI's ascension in 1999, Yassine advised him to use his personal wealth, currently estimated at $2.5bn (£1.5bn), to eradicate the national debt. In a country with over 40% illiteracy and where more than a fifth of the population live in extreme poverty, the fact the king's 12 palaces reportedly cost $1m a day to operate provides some fodder to Yassine's call for social justice.

FULL ARTICLE 

UNESCO names Sefrou's Cherry Festival a part of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Morocco's  Cherry Festival in Sefrou has been declared a part of intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO.
Here is some info from the UNESCO website and here is a link to a detailed site on the festival.
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Sixteen new elements inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity

The Intergovernmental Committee for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, meeting at UNESCO Headquarters until 7 December, inscribed new elements on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The new elements are from Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Ecuador, France, Hungary, India, Iran, Italy, Japan, Mali, Morocco, Oman, Republic of Korea.

The following new elements were inscribed during today’s afternoon session: 

Cherry festival in Sefrou, Morocco

For three days in June each year, the local population of Sefrou celebrates the natural and cultural beauty of the region, symbolized by the cherry fruit and that year’s newly chosen Cherry Queen. The highlight of the festival is a parade with performing troupes, rural and urban music, majorettes and bands, and floats featuring local producers. The cherry festival provides an opportunity for the entire city to present its activities and achievements.

Some Rappers Promoting Conservatism,Talk Politics

Here is an article from alBawaba about rappers in Morocco using their art-form to take political sides and to promote social and religious policies.
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'Halal rap': Morocco's MC's preach politics and conservatism

Published November 11th, 2012 - 06:04 GMT via SyndiGate.info

By Mohammad al-Khudairi

 

Some of Morocco’s young rappers are using their music to show support for the country’s ruling party, espouse family values, and encourage female modesty. It’s called “Halal rap,” but can it even be considered rap at all?

Sheikh Sar (known as Chekh Sar in Morocco) is a rising star among religious youth here.
But Chekh Sar isn’t an upcoming Salafi preacher on one of the religious satellite channels proliferating throughout the Arab world. He is just a young rapper from the city of al-Rashidiya in east Morocco who used to be called Elias Lakhrifi.
His mix of religious advice and conservative values has turned Chekh Sar into a symbol of “halal” music for an Islamist audience. Chekh Sar is credited with inventing a new style of Moroccan rap called “Halal rap.” He uses it to defend the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) and call for building a conservative society.

Although Chekh Sar has denied links to the PJD in various statements, he rose to fame by performing at party rallies and later rode the wave of the party’s success when they took parliament in November 2011.
He recently released a song defending the achievements of the Islamist party and criticizing its partners in government for supposedly obstructing the PJD’s work.

In this song, he re-appropriates the phrase “Do you understand me or not?” which was originally spoken by Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane when asked to explain the rise in prices of basic goods during a television interview, but later seized on by Moroccans to mock him. Chekh Sar turns it around to attack PJD’s detractors and defend Benkirane.

FULL ARTICLE HERE

Morocco Setting up Field Hospital in Gaza

Here is an article from the AFP regarding Morocco's decision to set up a field hospital in Gaza to help the innocent people being killed and injured as Israel bombs  Palestinian civilians  in order to "defend itself. "  See link for article in its entirety.

Also, for realistic news ( not whats on your TV or even your public radio if you live in America)  on the situation in Gaza check out   http://electronicintifada.net/  or follow the hashtag  #Gazaunderattack  on twitter .
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Gaza photo courtesy of : straitstimes.com

Morocco says setting up Gaza field hospital

(AFP) – 34 minutes ago

RABAT — Morocco announced on Sunday it will set up a field hospital in the Gaza Strip to help Palestinians injured in Israeli air strikes, which the king described as "military aggression" in a statement.

Mohammed VI "ordered the immediate setting up of a Moroccan field hospital in the Gaza Strip," which will include medical staff from "the armed forces as well as Moroccan civilian doctors and paramedics," the statement from the royal palace said.

The hospital was designed to "reinforce existing medical capabilities" in the territory, it added.

"Through this humanitarian initiative... in coordination with the Palestinian authorities," Morocco will "help alleviate the suffering of a population victim to several days of military aggression which the kingdom strongly condemns."

Moroccans Leave Spain (and its Economic Troubles) for Home

Here is an article from the Christian Science Monitor on the wave of Moroccans returning to their homeland due to the increasingly bleak economic situation in Spain. The first portion of the article is pasted below.
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Spain loses title as Moroccans' land of opportunity 

Moroccans seeking economic opportunity used to flock to Spain, but with its economy tanking, Spain has less and less to offer them. 

By John Thorne, Correspondent / October 22, 2012

Tangier, Morocco

Anas Benhima spent over a decade building a new life in Spain: an education, friends, and a career. Then he left it all and returned home to Morocco

“I saw my friends losing their jobs,” he says. “And I knew that eventually the same thing could happen to me.”
Mr. Benhima, like an increasing number of Moroccan migrants, is giving up on his northern neighbor. For years Spain beckoned as a land of opportunity, but that image is now shattered by an economic crisis that has pushed unemployment there to nearly 25 percent.

For Morocco, Spain’s woes are part of larger troubles among European trading partners that have dented the Moroccan economy, too, as remittances and tourism revenue have sagged. For Spain, fading luster as a source of jobs underlines how deep its malaise has become.


Unemployment among Spain’s estimated 783,000 Moroccan workers is just over 50 percent – roughly twice the national rate, according to a report released in May on the effect of Spain’s crisis on Moroccan workers by Colectivo Ioé, a Spanish social affairs research institute. Data from Spain’s central bank indicates that remittances to Morocco fell by a third between 2007 and 2010.

Increasingly, Moroccans are giving Spain a pass. While illegal migration makes exact numbers murky, a net loss of Moroccan immigrants was registered in 2010. Last year that loss was nearly 22,000, according to Spain’s national statistics institute.

Coming full circle

Change is felt acutely in Moroccan cities like Tangier, where Spanish headlands are visible across the Strait of Gibraltar. For years Morocco’s north, a region formerly colonized by Spain, has relied on sending migrants there to help feed families at home.

Benhima grew up in Tetouan, once Spain’s colonial capital, where his father worked as a customs official. He went to Barcelona to study textile engineering in 1998, but financial concerns led him to dive into the job market instead.
“At first you work to pay for studies, but then you forget studies and just work,” he says.

He drove a golf cart by day and tossed pizzas at night, supporting himself while also helping cover medical bills for his father. He stayed in Spain for two uninterrupted years, until he got legal residency. Then, in 2000, he surprised his parents with a visit. His father died four days later.

Benhima’s mother and three siblings moved to Tangier, while he settled in Madrid. Using his ability to speak Spanish, French, English, and Arabic, he found work in 2001 handling overseas clients for an insurance company. The job put him in the top tier of Moroccans drawn by an economic boom in Spain. Moroccan arrivals peaked in 2005 at about 75,000, according to the Colectivo Ioé report.

Meanwhile in Tangier, Benhima’s mother, Badia Amrani, founded BAYSIM, a goods transit company, in 2006.

Read continuation of article here.

Being a Black Person in Morocco

Its hearbreaking to witness  Morocco go backwards with regards to racism,  but here is an article from France 24 about a recent article in  the Moroccan media on the "Black Peril, "  i.e. migrants from Subsaharan Africa.  Part xenophobia, part white-skin supremacy, the rising distaste for black people  is palpable in the big cities like Casa and Rabat ( especially if its aimed at you!).  
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08/11/2012 / MOROCCO

Being black in Morocco: 'I get called a slave'

 The latest cover of Maroc Hebdo magazine—seen as racist by some, defended by others—has launched a national debate on the struggles faced by sub-Saharan Africans living in Morocco.

“The Black Peril.” That's the controversial headline that the Moroccan weekly ran on its cover last week to tease to an article about the rise in the number of immigrants from sub-Saharan African, many of whom come to Morocco in the hopes of making it to Europe. Many are turned back and end up staying in Morocco, where they live in poverty. Some end up taking part in illegal activities to make a living. According to Morocco’s Interior ministry, there are about 10,000 illegal immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa living in the country. Human rights organisations estimate this number higher as closer to 15,000.

Headline: "The Black Peril."

Moroccan authorities are taking an increasingly strict approach to immigration from sub-Saharan Africa. Immigrants without residency permits are quickly expelled. The European Union’s ambassador to Morocco, Eneko Landaburu, recently called the treatment of these immigrants “problematic”, a sentiment echoed by the Moroccan Human Rights Organisation. Meanwhile, the Moroccan labour minister, Abdelouahed Souhail, accused sub-Saharan African immigrants of being in part responsible for the country’s employment crisis.

The International Organisation for Migration recently launched a campaign to raise 620,000 euros to help send some 1,000 illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa home.

Contributors

"Young Moroccans have physically assaulted me on several occasions, for no reason"

Joseph (not his real name) is from Guinea. He lives in Casablanca, where he studies computing at a local university. He is a legal resident.

"I came here to study computing thanks to a grant from my country. I’ve been here for four years, and for four years I’ve been a victim of racism. It happens all the time, everywhere.

The most awful incident took place at the airport. I was with my aunt, who was heading back to Guinea and had a lot of luggage. Other passengers from sub-Saharan countries, seeing her struggle to carry it, came to help her get it onto the plane, but an airline employee stopped them, saying she had to deal with it on her own because she was black. I replied in Arabic, and he replied by hitting me in the head. I told him I was going to file a complaint, and he said, sarcastically: “That’s right, go complain to the king!” I never did file a complaint.

Often, when I’m just walking down the street, people will call me a “dirty black man” or call me a slave. Young Moroccans have physically assaulted me on several occasions, for no reason, and passers-by who saw this didn’t lift a finger to help me. All my friends are black and they have all had similar experiences. Even the girls get insulted in the street. To avoid getting hurt, I now try to ignore the insults. But if someone starts to hit me, what can I do? I have to defend myself...

In two years, I’ll be done with my studies, and I certainly don’t intend to stay in Morocco to look for work. Even if someone were to offer me a job here, I would rather go home to Guinea."

Moroccan Villagers Battle to End Local Prostitution

Here is an article from the New York Times about people in Ain Leuh taking a stand to end prostitution in their town.
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 Villagers in Morocco Drive Out Prostitutes

By SUZANNE DALEY   Published: October 29, 2012

AIN LEUH, Morocco — For years, this mountain village with its crumbling whitewashed walls was known locally as the place to go for sex. Women — some dressed in tight jogging suits, some in dressing gowns — dallied in the tiled doorways off the main square, offering a Moroccan version of Amsterdam’s red-light district. 

The village in the mountains east of Rabat was long known as a place to find prostitutes.

But no more. A band of men here, known as the Islamists, took matters into their own hands last fall. 

The men deny that they were on a religious campaign, or that they are fanatics. They were tired, they said, of living side by side with drunken, brawling clients, tired of having their daughters propositioned as they headed home from school, tired of being embarrassed about where they lived. 

“It reached a point after Ramadan,” said Mohammed Aberbach, 41, who helped organize the campaign to drive the prostitutes out of town, “that men were actually waiting in lines. It was crazy.” 

These days the side streets are quiet. The doors, painted green and yellow, are mostly shut, though a few prostitutes remain, now trying to sell candy instead of sex. In the square, the pace has slowed, fresh chickens and slabs of meat hang for sale on hooks, and villagers take their time over displays of vegetables. Nearby, women are bent over looms making traditional Berber rugs. 

The changes in Ain Leuh are being held up by some in Morocco as another triumph of the Arab Spring — testament to what can happen when ordinary citizens stand up for change and make life better for themselves. 

For others, however, the events of the past year show how the more fundamentalist Islamists, though continuing to be shut out of power in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Morocco, nonetheless manage to promote their conservative agendas — often taking the law into their own hands, and in this case threatening the prostitutes and their customers and driving away the only industry in these parts. 

“The economy is in free fall here,” said Ali Adnane, who works for a rural development agency. “The girls rented. They had cash. They bought things. Some people here are really happy about the changes. But some people are not.” 

Morocco has avoided much of the violence that has gripped Arab countries in the last few years. In the face of mounting protests, Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, offered to curb his own powers and in 2011 pledged a variety of reforms. Since then, the country has adopted a new Constitution and elected a new government, led by a moderate Islamist party. 

The new prime minister, Abdelilah Benkirane, who has refused many of the perks of his office, has a flair for mingling with the average man. But many remain frustrated over the pace of change in a country plagued by high unemployment and corruption. Ain Leuh is hardly the only village to have seen the emergence of a local committee, known as a comité, pushing for reforms of various sorts. 

Exactly what happened in this village of 5,000 in the Middle Atlas Mountains, about a two-hour drive from Rabat, the capital, is in dispute. Mr. Aberbach says the Islamists never did anything illegal. The campaign, he said, largely involved demonstrations in the main square. No one threatened anybody or used violence or stood at the entrances to the village demanding identification from men who wanted to enter. 

“That would be against the law,” said Mr. Aberbach, a friendly man who owns several shops here and has big plans for the future of Ain Leuh.

But others, including Haddou Zaydi, a member of the town council, say all those things, and more, took place. Sometimes, he said, the Islamists used padlocks to imprison the prostitutes in their houses after a customer had gone in. Then, they called the police. 

In the past, many here say, the prostitutes would pay off the police to look the other way. Now, though, the authorities, still getting the feel for a newly elected government led by a moderate Islamist party, the Justice and Development Party, let the Islamists have their way. 

Mourad Boufala, 32, who runs a cigarette and candy shop in the main square, said he was not in favor of prostitution. But he was offended by the Islamists’ methods. “The way they did it was really rough,” he said. “They hit girls and scared them. And the problem is that they offered them no alternatives.” 

Mr. Boufala worries that the country is adrift, easily prey to self-appointed militias like the Islamists.

“No one is governing,” Mr. Boufala said. “The militias exist like they are the authorities.”

Repeated phone calls to local police officials were not returned. 

Curiously, few people here see the campaign against the prostitutes as particularly religious. Mr. Aberbach and several other members of the Islamists frame the campaign in moral terms — and business ones. They say the name “Islamists” was attached to them because they are members of various Islamic parties, including the governing one. 

They say that they consider the prostitutes victims of criminal gangs that brought drugs and human trafficking to their village. And they are determined to end the corruption that allowed such crimes to flourish in their streets. 

“What we did is related to the Arab Spring because it brought the culture of speaking out,” Mr. Aberbach said. 

“We could have tourism,” he added. “But we have no good roads or hotels or restaurants here. There are beautiful things around here. Waterfalls, a lot of things. But who is going to come to a village known for prostitution? It got to the point where if you were a woman you could not say you were from here.” 

For the prostitutes who remain, the last year has brought hard times.

“I won’t even make 10 cents today,” said Khadija, 34, who has tried to earn a living selling cigarettes, candy bars and small toys displayed on a round table outside her door. “My neighbors are feeding me.”

“They are watching us all the time,” she added, referring to the Islamists. 

Up the street, Arbia Oulaaskri, 64, said her family has been living in terror since the Islamists’ campaign began. Her house is luxurious compared with others in the village. Her living room easily seats 30, and more than 50 tea glasses are arranged on various coffee tables. She says she was never involved in prostitution and obtained her money from her family and from her daughters who live abroad and send her checks. But, she said, the Islamists carrying chains arrived at her doorstep night after night, telling her to leave. 

Her son, wearing a gold lamé jacket, exhibits a room nearby that shows signs of a fire and says the Islamists did that, too. But, Mrs. Oulaaskri says, the authorities would not listen. She is facing charges related to running a house of prostitution.

“We filed a lot of complaints,” Mrs. Oulaaskri said, “but no one followed up.” 

Aida Alami contributed reporting.