HIBAPRESS – Ahmed Al-Musaed
The debate surrounding Article 222 of the Moroccan Penal Code emerges with each month of Ramadan, bringing to the forefront an unending intellectual and legal conflict regarding the limits of individual freedoms and the sanctity of public space. While some see it as a constraint on personal choice.
In this context and the controversy sparked by influencer Mayissa Salama Al-Naji, the lawyer and former parliamentarian, Professor Salima Faraji, wrote on her page the correct context, where she affirmed that public space is not a space for absolute freedom, but rather a space organized by the law of the state and the balances of society. She added that Article 222 clearly stipulates the punishment of anyone "known to be adhering to the Islamic religion and publicly breaks the fast during the day in Ramadan in a public place without a legitimate excuse." This text does not come from a vacuum, but rather draws its spirit from the preamble of the Moroccan constitution, which confirms that the Kingdom is an Islamic state, and from its first article, which makes Islam the first constant of the nation. But, as Professor Faraji clarifies, the constitutionality of the state does not mean a comprehensive and literal application of all jurisprudential rulings, but rather an "identity reference" that frames positive laws. The penal code here does not punish "not fasting" as a personal act of worship between the servant and his Lord, but rather intervenes to regulate "material behavior" in public space during a sensitive time. The article also responds to those who try to equate not criminalizing abandoning prayer or drinking alcohol with demanding the abolition of criminalizing public breaking of the fast. This analogy, from a legal point of view, is "inaccurate"; the law does not oblige people to perform positive worship (such as prayer), but it intervenes to prevent an apparent behavior (public breaking of the fast) that is considered to be a violation of public order or an incitement to collective feelings. As for comparing breaking the fast to bribery or corruption, it is an irrelevant comparison; because bribery is criminalized by law, and if there is a flaw in combating it, the fault is in the "implementation" and not in the "legislative principle". At the heart of the discussion, Professor Faraji recalls what was raised in the corridors of legislative discussions (amendments of 2016), where the logic of Article 222 is based on protecting social peace. Publicly breaking the fast in a conservative social and cultural environment may turn into a "spark" for tensions or violent reactions, which the modern state seeks to avoid by regulating the public expression of behaviors with a strong symbolic dimension. The call to abolish this article remains a legitimate intellectual discussion, Faraji adds, but its assessment must go beyond narrow rights slogans to touch upon the "specificity of the Moroccan context." The issue in the end is not a conflict between "freedom" and "religion," but rather a search for an equation that guarantees the individual's right to practice his convictions in his "private space," without turning "public space" into an arena for mutual provocation or symbolic conflict. The state does not pry into the consciences of the fasting, concludes Professor Salima Faraji, but it guards "coexistence" in the street. The usefulness of maintaining the logic of Article 222 lies in maintaining a delicate balance between individual liberation and social stability, in a country that has chosen balance as the title of its identity.
