Morocco slaps ban on sale of burkas
• Morocco has banned the sale and production of the burka in what appears to be the latest stage of the kingdom’s tough stance on Islamic extremism.
Letters announcing the ban were sent to market vendors this week, with businessmen given just 48 hours to get rid of their stock.
It is unclear whether the ban, which is linked to security concerns as the burka fully conceals the wearer’s face, extends to wearing the garment in public places.
“We have taken the step of completely banning the import, manufacture and marketing of this garment in all the cities and towns of the kingdom,” a senior Moroccan government official said. The kingdom’s government was unavailable for comment Thursday.
Relatively few Muslim women in Morocco wear the burka. They instead opt for the hijab, a head scarf, or the niqab, which leaves the area around the face visible.
The burka is more commonly worn in conservative Muslim societies such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Foreign Office says there is a “high risk” of terror attacks in Morocco, a popular tourist destination.
King Mohammed VI, who oversees the Moroccan government, has said that he favours a moderate version of Islam and has vowed to crack down on homegrown terrorism.
“Those who engage in terrorism, in the name of Islam, are not Muslims,” he said in a speech last August.
“Their only link to Islam is the pretexts they use to justify their crimes and their folly. They have strayed from the right path, and their fate is to dwell forever in hell.”
The Moroccan interior ministry claims to have dismantled 160 domestic terror cells since 2002, and the kingdom has been relatively untroubled by jihadists compared with other North African countries.
It believes 1,500 Moroccan nationals are fighting in Syria and Iraq, of whom 220 have been jailed after returning home. A number of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant extremists who committed terrorist attacks in 2015 and 2016 had links to Morocco.
Salah Abdeslam, a coplotter of the November 2015 Paris attacks which left 130 people dead, is a French national of Moroccan descent.
Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who also helped plan the attack, had dual Belgian- Moroccan citizenship.
Oussama Atar, another Belgian- Moroccan citizen, is suspected of planning the Paris attacks and the March 2016 Belgian bombings, which killed 32.
In December, Moroccan citizen Redouane S was arrested in Germany on suspicion of plotting the Paris massacre. His full name has not been released due to Germany’s strict privacy laws.
The British Foreign Office’s travel guidance on Morocco says there is a “growing number of Moroccans sympathetic or belonging to ( ISIL) and other extremist groups”.