During a marathon meeting which lasted more than five hours last Monday with members of the Justice and Legislation Commission in the House of Advisors, the Minister of Justice, Abdellatif Ouahbi, declared that certain reactions on social networks have exceeded the limits of decency. He first castigated those who blindly attacked the Minister of Islamic Affairs and Habous, Ahmed Toufiq, whose comments on secularism were misunderstood.
In its edition of Wednesday December 4, the daily Assabah reports that the Minister of Justice estimated, before the advisors, that given the flood of reactions “unfriendly, superficial and subjective” on social networks, the limits of “freedom of expression have been blithely violated.
According to him, it was an eminently populist speech which reacted to Ahmed Toufiq’s declarations on secularism, addressed “in its philosophical, cultural and historical meanings“. However, those who attacked Ahmed Toufiq chose the angle of narrow vision, that which reduces secularism to a strict separation of the State and religion, as did Abdelilah Benkirane, who completely, and through scientific ignorance, distorted the explanations given by Ahmed Toufiq.
Ouahbi, in turn, qualified as a historical lie the false idea which has always presented secularism as being, neither more nor less, a separation of the State and religion, while scientific analysis has always been focused on the political significance of secularism. And who better, said Ouahbi, than Ahmed Toufiq, “who spends his time between carrying out his government mission, reading books in Arabic, French and English languages, and disseminating knowledge», can speak scientifically about secularism?
Ouahbi regretted the unhealthy tendency among certain political leaders, followers of populism, who always work to portray those in power as incompetent and corrupt, while presenting themselves as scholars and models of integrity.
Furthermore, Ouahbi noted that nothing and no one is respected in Morocco because of what is spread on social networks. Even court decisions do not escape this vindictiveness, he said, citing the example of a lawyer, a former judge, who challenged a court decision on Facebook, calling it unfair. The worst, warned Ouahbi, is that social networks today make it possible to attribute to any individual words that he or she has never uttered, such as the false statements that have been attributed to him on the penalization of crimes of use of social networks.
The minister concluded by affirming that he does not agree with those who say “the caravan passes, dogs bark», believing that “the caravan must pause to silence the dogs.”
