Loading ...In Morocco, It’s Jennifer Lopez Versus Jihad
On a windy day on Morocco’s Atlantic coast, kitesurfers tear across the turquoise water, their colorful sails seemingly floating on air. The wind here is so consistent that Dakhla, a coastal town in Morocco’s Western Sahara region, recently hosted the World Kitesurfing Championships, drawing contestants from as far away as Australia.
When it comes to the Middle East and North Africa, kitesurfing is about the last thing that comes to mind. But Morocco, a close American ally, stands out as an improbable haven of tranquility in a region caught up in the violent aftershocks of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the Arab Spring and the rise of the Islamic State, also known as ISIS.
At first glance, Morocco’s stability appears counterintuitive. Poverty, corruption and youth unemployment—some of the same problems that sparked the Arab Spring—also plague this arid North African kingdom. Morocco hasn’t been immune to violent extremism, either. In 2003 and 2007, suicide bombers linked to Al-Qaeda killed 46 people in Casablanca. And by the government’s own reckoning, some 1,500 Moroccans are fighting for ISIS in Syria and pose a potential threat if they return home. Yet just last month, Pharrell Williams, Usher, Sting, Maroon 5 and Jennifer Lopez felt secure enough to headline an outdoor music festival in Rabat, the Moroccan capital, before a crowd of 160,000 cheering fans. And when some conservative Islamists took offense at Lopez’s booty-shaking performance, they filed a lawsuit, which is still pending against the singer and her Moroccan promoter, but there was no violence. “There’s something schizophrenic about Morocco,” Sarah Feuer, a North Africa expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, tells Newsweek. “On one hand, the country is stable. At the same time, some people are joining the jihad.”
Source: www.newsweek.com