This article was automatically translated from HIBAPRESS, the Arabic version:
HIBAPRESS-RABAT
That year, an event of great political significance will constitute both the tear and the baptism of fire of this Morocco which is learning to recognize itself in its young King. The Residence concocted, under the influence of a few researchers in mountain sciences, soldiers and ethnologists from the Berber environment such as Maurice Le Glay, fierce defender of what was called “the jurisdiction of Berber custom”, a villainous law whose promulgation will have the effect of degrading relations between the protectorate and the Palace at the same time as it aroused violent reactions among the Moroccan people: the sinister Berber Dahir of May 16, 1930.
Perhaps the colonial officers, the Resident General of France, the Berberist sociologists and the lobbies in Paris, when they impose their views on the Sovereign, do not appreciate the extent to which such a text, disguised with pseudo legalism, provokes a fracture within Moroccan society, divides the population between Berbers and Arabs, creates exclusion, establishes two-speed justice… These apprentice sorcerers also do not realize that the people, supported by other Arab countries, will not only revolt but proclaim total support for HM Mohammed V.
The Berber Dahir, the cornerstone of a colonial policy at odds with Lyautey’s conceptions, arouses strong emotion in the country. It constitutes, without doubt, the birth certificate of Moroccan nationalism which the French administration will measure to its fullest extent, four years later, in 1934, in the face of the delirious welcome reserved for Mohammed V by the people of Fez, in cries of “Yahia al-Malik…”
We can indeed argue that the symbiosis between the King and the people took its starting point with the Berber dahir and the trip to Fez, the city where Moroccan nationalism began to take shape. Does he lack an ideological platform? It then deploys collective hope, already inscribing activism as a motto and freedom on its front as an essential demand. Does he lack a leader and a guide? Mohammed Ben Youssef will embody him perfectly… What the experts in colonial policy at the Residence feared the most suddenly happened.
In Fez, the people take to the streets, overflowing the services of order and protocol, to shout their attachment and loyalty to Mohammed V who, moved, returns it with nobility. For the Sovereign, this warm crowd bath is obviously a great moment in his personal journey. For the most perceptive colonial administrators, this manifestation constitutes a historical date with which it is now worth reckoning.
