The Moroccan government continued to do this week what many other secular governments have done in majority-Muslim countries in recent decades: use religion as a political tool.

French magazine L’express published an article about Christianity and Islam. On the cover of its French edition, the magazine depicted both Jesus and Mohammed. In protestant Christianity, depicting Jesus – who is believed to be God – is not done; in Catholicism it is allowed, however.

L'Express covered Muhammad's face in the Moroccan edition

In Islam, depicting Mohammed is generally considered illegal: one of the main reasons for this is that the depiction of Mohammed and other important religious figures would, Islam fears, lead to people worshiping these images or statues, as if they were Gods.

So, L’express decided to use a different cover for the same edition in Morocco, a Muslim country. Mohammed’s face was covered by a white veil.

Although this would normally suffice to prevent most Muslims from feeling offended, the Moroccan government declared that the magazine had crossed the line, insulted Islam (it remains unclear how depicting Mohammed in general would be an ‘insult’ to Islam) and banned it.

The magazine, not understanding what it had done wrong, contacted the government asking why it had been banned. The answer was simple: although they used an acceptable cover in Morocco, they used an unacceptable cover in France. The magazine’s Morocco department should, then, be banned simply because the French department did something quite some Muslims believe to be in breach with Islam.

To most, the ban will not make any sense: after all, the magazine did everything in its power not to insult Moroccan readers, while using the freedom and traditions of France for another cover, which is considered perfectly acceptable in Europe.

Some critics of Islam will probably answer that the goal of these people is to force the non-Muslim world to accept Islamic rules. In other words: to live like Dhimmies, even though they are not living in majority-Muslim countries. These critics will argue that the Moroccan government’s ban of L’express is a sign of things to come in the years ahead, when Muslims everywhere will supposedly try to force non-Muslim Westerners to accept Sharia and, thereby, to submit to Islam’s superiority over every religion and political ideology.

The above explanation makes sense to such critics only because they do not understand Morocco and Muslim countries in general. They do not understand the complex nature of these countries, especially when the ones in charge of them are actually relatively secular politicians ([Arab] Socialists and / or conservative Monarchs mostly). They think that whenever such a government uses religion, it is a sign that the government is theocratic, and trying to turn every other country into an Islamic one.

The real reason for the ban has nothing to do with Islam in itself: rather, the government is doing something many other relatively secular governments in the region have done in recent decades. They abuse religion. They are not proponents of a state in which religion is more powerful than the state. Instead, they consider fundamentalists – who want to make the state and Islam one – to be their main domestic enemy.

In order to prevent fundamentalists from taking over, these secular rulers use Islam every now and then, mostly in quite harmless ways. The ban is not meant to punish L’express or to force the West to accept Islamic rules; these governments do not even submit to ‘Islamic’ rules themselves. No, the only purpose of the ban is to give Muslim voters the impression that the government is willing to ‘defend Islam’ (every now and then), and thereby to make life more difficult for fundamentalists. The more the reasonably secular government appears to ‘appease’ ‘anti-Islamic forces,’ the more popular fundamentalist movements will become. These secular rulers know this, and have to use Islam every now and then to strengthen their own position.

This becomes even more clear when one looks at the situation in Morocco itself: the Moroccan government recently alienated and angered fundamentalists by closing down all Quranic schools in the country. This was considered a major defeat for fundamentalists, while it was once again a sign that the Moroccan government uses Islam to its own advantage every now and then, but that it is far from theocratic.

The closure of Quranic schools could cause a major backlash, however. It could cause fundamentalists to revolt, supported by the average Moroccan who would agree that the government had proved itself to be an ‘enemy of Islam.’

So, the government had to do something to bolster its ‘Islamic credentials.’ Not something that would truly change the country, for it does not wish to change the country into a theocracy, but a purely symbolic act. And then L’express came along, giving the government all it needed to undo some of the damage it caused by closing the Quranic schools.