State holiday for JanuaryCelebrated on January 13th in Morocco, it is another step in the re-evaluation of Berber culture in the North African kingdom. Under Mohammed VI (59), who has held the throne since 1999, the language and culture of the Berbers, or Berbers, has been slowly brought out of the dark. In 2011, Berber was already recognized as an official language along with Arabic.

And the king, with his recent decision, proved that the Amazigh heritage is “an essential part of the authentic Moroccan identity” for him, which he celebrated on Wednesday evening. Royal family statement. Berbers make up a large percentage of the country’s 37 million citizens: estimates range from 30 to 70 percent. They speak Tamazight, as the Berber language is also called, but often also Arabic, the language that the Muslims brought along with Islam who conquered North Africa in the seventh century.

As the language of the Qur’an, Arabic is the dominant language in contemporary Morocco. “In the 1980s you could end up in prison if you wrote in Tamazight,” says Abd al-Rahman al-Aysati (63). In 1991 he came to the Netherlands from the Northern Rif region, where he teaches and researches the Berber language. From 2008 to 2016, Aissati was also a member of the board of directors of Ircam, a Rabat-based institution whose mission is to promote Berber culture.

With Mohammed VI at the helm, he says, Morocco is “one of the few countries in the Arab world that isn’t afraid to ask questions out loud about Islam and its cultural identity.” In addition to the sacred Arabic language, he created a space for Berber. Although we must not forget that this space was claimed by the Amazigh community itself, with an educated elite making itself more and more heard, says Aissati. “Designating January as a holiday is not a gift from the king, but it has been on the Amazigh agenda for some time.”

He describes the fact that the country will now celebrate January as “beautiful”. ‘For several reasons. Now that it is a national holiday, Moroccans who know nothing about Berber culture will be curious about it. This is another encouragement for the Amazigh community to claim its status. Look at language protection: we didn’t even dare dream about it in the 1980s.

Although there continues to be a large gap between theory and practice, he cautions. Berber schools are rare and you can rarely rely on the Berber language to communicate with the government. This is while you can go almost anywhere in French, which is not an official language. If you speak that language, Alesayi says, you must matter. “Amazigh is seen as inferior.”