“A routine of constant erasure”: Moroccan identity and the World Cup

For centuries, Morocco has had a difficult time acknowledging its African identity. Reports like Arab Reform Initiative’s “Ending Denial: Anti-Black Racism in Morocco” point to the anti-black and anti-African sentiment that has inundated Moroccan society, resulting in a stronger self-identification with the Arab influence of their heritage that has until recently influenced how the country was geographically perceived.

Although an African country, Morocco has often been considered a Middle Eastern and an Arab country; in fact, some media outlets at the beginning of the World Cup only addressed it as an Arab nation. From “Morocco becomes first Arab country to ever reach quarterfinals” to “Arabs rejoice as one after Morocco’s historic World Cup,” these headlines brought to many non-Arab Moroccans like Hanan Midan, a Moroccan-Amazigh activist, a feeling of hopelessness before what she dubbed, “A routine of constant erasure.”

While the debate over Moroccan identity has often been the source of fights and disagreements, it seems like the point that activists like Hanan are making has started to be acknowledged. With the advancement of the Moroccan team through the World Cup’s stages, the press has increasingly been acknowledging the Africanness of the country, and Moroccans themselves are starting to feel proud of being African too. 

Morocco’s history and demography have never been just ‘Arab’

As Hanan argues, the mainstream narrative that had been built around the Moroccan team during the World Cup at the beginning was one that erased the true nature of the country and its people: which is that Moroccans don’t only have Arab ancestry. Leaving little room for controversy, the preamble of the Moroccan constitution establishes that Morocco is a country whose “unity was forged by the convergence of its Arab-Islamic, Berber [Amazigh] and Saharan-Hassanic [saharo-hassanie] components.”.

In fact, the indigenous peoples of Morocco are the Amazigh, those who occupied large areas in North Africa and the Sahel until the Arabs started to expand from the Arabian Peninsula around the 7th century. With their arrival, the indigenous Amazigh population of certain lands decreased; although studies suggest that Tunisians, Algerians, and Moroccans are still “close to Berbers, suggesting little genetic contribution of Arabs who populated the area in 7th to 8th century AD.”

Genetics aside, the current Moroccan population already shows a diverse society, far from a unitary Arab character. The Indigenous Working Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) suggests that, although official data positions the percentage of Tamazight speakers as 30% of the population, local groups affirm the real figures to be found around 65%. 

The Amazigh faces of the Moroccan national team

If all seems to point at the fact that Morocco is far from being an only-Arab country, and that it is rather an African country with Amazigh, Arab and other influences, the current configuration of Morocco’s national team accentuates this phenomenon. 

Many of the members of the national Moroccan team come from predominantly Amazigh areas and are of Amazigh origin. Players Hakim Ziyech, Sofyan Amrabat, Selim Amallah and Munir El Kajoui, as well as the president of the Moroccan football federation Fouzi Lekjaa, are originally from the Moroccan Rif. Player Ahmed Sabiri, in contrast, comes from the town of Goulmima, which was historically inhabited by the Amazigh tribes of the Atlas Mountains. 

Walid Regragui, the trainer of the Moroccan national team, was one of the first people to publicly defend the diverse nature of his team and country. When asked whether he thought the team represented the ensemble of the Arab world by a journalist, he responded: “First of all we defend Morocco and Moroccans, and just after that we are inevitably also Africans, and that is our priority, just like Senegal or Ghana.”. 

“Denying us from our African roots” an enactment of coloniality

If history, demography and the words of the Moroccan trainer himself make us see the pointlessness of not addressing Morocco as primarily an African country — not only in the narratives around the World Cup but in general as well — why is it still so difficult for some to reconcile this identity?

From the Moroccan Amazigh city of Al-Hoceima, in the Rif mountains, Yasmine Messaoudi believes she has an answer and it has to do with Morocco’s colonial history, which made many reject their African roots in a pursuit to look more Western:  “There’s a certain sentiment of anti-blackness and anti-Africanness that exists throughout the ‘Arab world’ and worldwide,” she argues. “Calling us an Arab country is denying us of our African roots, in a type of second colonialism. […]The break gets even deeper if you add Amazigh identity to the mix.”

When asked about how the invisibilization of the African and Amazigh character of her country made her feel, being herself of Amazigh origin, Yasmine claimed that it was “As if someone has only accepted a part of us and is denying the rest. As if we were a cake and the Arab world is only looking to taste the topping while the real thing is the whole cake itself, which is also African and Amazigh.”

Hanan Midan is a part of the active Amazigh diaspora calling for the recognition of its people through social media. As she asserts, the phenomenon of African and Amazigh invisibilization is something “we have been fighting for decades and decades.” She goes as far as claiming that the ‘Arab’ label has taken credit for most “things North Africans do, for the simple fact of speaking ‘Arabic’ and being majority Muslims” and that, as a Moroccan, she feels “as if without the label ‘Arab’ we were nothing.” 

The beauty of being a Moroccan, the mixed identities

The World Cup has helped shed light on the multi-cultural influences of the Moroccan nation. As Morocco has been progressing through the last stages of the competition, their excellent strides have united not only the Muslim and Arab world that identifies with the country but also the whole African continent. 

Media worldwide is now talking about how this is primarily a win for Africa; the players of the Moroccan team themselves, like Yassine Bounou, are also making sure to include the hashtag #Africa in their posts.

This is particularly important in a place like Morocco where, as Yasmine explains, alienation and denial towards their African identity as well as towards Amazigh and black people being at the backbone of the country’s history, are still present amongst some sectors of society. Where for years, black people – directly associated with ‘immigrants’ – were addressed as ‘Afrki’(Africans), as if they were different from the average Moroccan citizen that, ethnically and geographically speaking, would also be an African.

Therefore, rather than this being an intent to spark divisions, what this narrative highlights is that Morocco and other regional countries are starting to challenge the internal racism they once had, in addition to embracing the diversity that makes them special. As Yasmine puts it, “That is the beauty of being a Moroccan, the mixed identities which create an entirely new kind of pride.”

Edited by Shameer Ramdin, Uzoma Ihejirika, and Caleb Okereke.