Controversy over expulsions of Christians from Morocco

By Mohsin el-Hassouni and Sinikka Tarvainen Apr 1, 2010, 7:21 GMT

Rabat, Morocco - Expulsions of Christian aid workers from Morocco have sparked controversy in the Muslim country.

Critics accuse the authorities of an unjustified crackdown on Christians, while those defending such measures claim that US-based evangelical groups are taking advantage of Moroccans' poverty in attempts to convert them to Christianity.

Up to 70 Christians were expelled in March from Morocco, where King Mohammed VI is the official leader of Muslims, who make up about 99 per cent of the population.

Moroccan law allows freedom of worship for the country's mostly foreign Christians and a few thousand indigenous Jews, but prohibits any attempts to convert Muslims to another religion.

The expelled aid workers and priests have mainly been Protestants of various nationalities, including Dutch, American, British, New Zealand and Korean citizens.

Among them were 16 Christians running an orphanage in Ain Leuh in the northern Atlas mountains. There, they raised Moroccan orphans and abandoned children, some of whom had been brought to them by the local authorities themselves, the weekly Tel Quel reported.

When the Christians were suddenly ordered to leave, the children were brutally separated from people whom they considered their parents, the magazine said.

The group running the orphanage had promised to raise the children as Muslims, and they were taught Islamic religion by Muslim teachers.

The orphanage had been operating for a decade in Ain Leuh, where some of the locals described the Christians as discreet and respectful people, Tel Quel said.

The Interior Ministry, however, said hundreds of leaflets and CDs pointing at proselytism had been seized in the village.

A few years earlier, Moroccan newspapers had quoted some of the children as saying that they were learning Christian songs at the orphanage.

'If these people were suspected of proselytism, they should have been brought to trial and allowed to have lawyers' instead of just being expelled, lawyer Abderrahim Jamai said.

US and Dutch diplomatic representatives also criticized the expulsions, while Western media spoke of a crackdown on Christians.

Morocco has occasionally expelled small groups of Protestants, but those who had to leave in March even included an Egyptian Catholic priest based in the Tangier diocese.

'Never before had a Catholic been expelled for religious reasons from this diocese,' Tangier archbishop Santiago Agrelo told the Spanish daily El Pais.

'We enjoy freedom of worship in Morocco, but ... there is no freedom of religious conscience,' Agrelo added.

The clampdown on Christians 'could be a political strategy aimed at Islamic fundamentalism, which is a much bigger problem for Morocco than the small number of Christians there,' says Doris Gray, a specialist on women and Islam in Morocco at Florida State University.

'The government wants to show the Islamists that Morocco needs nothing more than its traditional brand of Islam, and that it won't tolerate proselytizing by Islamists any more than by Christians,' Gray told the German Press Agency dpa.

However, there is also genuine concern in Morocco over what is perceived as increasing proselytizing conducted mainly by US-funded evangelical groups, according to analysts in Rabat.

'We do not want Morocco to become inward-looking,' but covert missionaries were trying to convert poor people in urban and rural areas, said Abdelhamid Aouad of the nationalist party Istiqlal.

While large Christian churches such as the Catholic or Russian Orthodox ones are not seen as engaging in proselytism, they could eventually follow the example of the evangelical groups, sources close to the government told dpa.

Hundreds of Moroccans are estimated to have converted to Christianity. Some of them may have been motivated by the generous funds handled by missionary groups, analysts said.