Size Mattered to Morocco's Hassan II: Tallest in the world, the minaret of King Hassan II mosque in Casablanca, Morocco, rises 650 feet. The mosque was completed in 1993 at a cost of about $1 billion. (Photo by Karnevil via Flickr).
Morocco's King Hassan II was not your conventional tyrant. He liked to throw in a few paradoxes in the mix of his brutality, his megalomania and his half-hatreds of Israel.
In the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars, for example, he contributed his token share of cannon fodder, but by 1982 he was hosting the Fez summit--too rarely talked about--where he and other Arab regimes implicitly recognized Israel's right to exist and pushed the first two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, which everyone else has been mimicking since. Four years later he met Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, but with characteristically half-pregnant coyness said he had neither the means to make war on Israel nor the willingness to make peace.
At home, where he ruled for 38 years until his death in 1999, he could mix the ruthlessness of a Saddam Hussein with (much more rarely) the magnanimity of Akbar the Great. In the 1960s and 70s, his rule was creased in Stalinism, at least in its methods (Hassan himself was a right-wing reactionary in the conventional mold of Arab authoritarians). Though he didn't mind the occasional political party offering up a different view on innocuous policy matters, anyone who criticized the monarchy was arrested, tortured, executed, labor activists, leftists and tribal leaders especially. Following an assassination attempt in 1972, he had the plotters executed live, on national television, by firing squad. Nearing the end of his life, and probably thinking about improving his chances for a visa to a half-decent afterlife, he began paying lip-service to human rights.
And more than lip-service to God.
He built a mosque almost as large as the Grand Mosque in Mecca (which did not endear him to the authorities in Mecca, who felt offended by the overt rivalry of the act). It cost about $1 billion. Its minaret jutted 650 feet up. It used up 54 acres of Moroccan marbles and mosaics and a 1,100-ton roof that would be the envy of any football stadium in the United States: it retracts to let in the sky. The mosque was designed by French architect Michel Pinceau on a stretch of beachfront property the king chose in line with a line from the Koran: "The throne of God was on the water." (It's not the largest mosque in the world. It accommodates as many indoor worshippers as Lahore's 17th-century-built Royal Mosque, about 20,000, and Saudi mosque buffs will always maintain that the Grand Mosque there is the grandest of them all.)
When Hassan II dedicated the structure in 1993, four years late (it was initially supposed to be finished by his 60th birthday in 1989), he intended a ceremony as grand as the architecture. What he got, instead, was the Lebanese prime minister--the only Arab leader to accept an invitation. Why? Other Arabs snubbed him either, as in Saudi Arabia's case, because the new mosque was too much of a grandiose affront to the old one in Mecca, or because Hassan II had, in other regressive regimes' eyes, the effrontery to let a woman poet recite verses inside the mosque and invite the Israeli prime minister for a visit at the mosque.
No regime actually boycotted the ceremony for the only truly valid reason for a boycott: Hassan II had built the thing by the sweat of his people's brows even though neither they nor he could afford it. He swindled the population for money, having newspapers publish daily front-page exhortations to the "faithfuls" to donate while denying his country basic services like health care and rural education.
The United States, unsurprisingly, loved the guy for the usual narrow reasons: Hassan II didn't like Islamic fundamentalists--not because he wasn't himself fundamentalist in his own way (he claimed to be a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad, the Mayflower progeny of the Islamic world), but because he considered them nasty rivals to his rule. Plus, he bought weapons from the United States and willingly shook hands with the Israelis, for which he should be respected (the handshaking, not the weapon-shopping).
His mosque, of course, is now almost as famous, if not nearly as evocative, as Rick's Café in Casablanca.
Marvel Arches: The mosque sports 54 acres of Moroccan marble and mosaics. (Photo by Karnevil via Flickr)
Comments
all what you are talking about in this article ‘is a low cost lie’ simply because you turned in flas all the historical truth, what is your intention, i’am moroccan jew! and blieve me your allegation are simply ‘not true’ you are trying to demolish the morocco image, but my friend, simply you can not with nearly 8 million visitors per year, you are just doing redicolous propagrande, and adding new more bad points to your dead journalisme career, what about the megalomania of the empire state building, liberty statue? twin towers? la tour eifel? etc..
if you are colturaly ignorant : that mean peaple tend to leave his souvenir to the next generations simply as the previous kings did!
thanks to people like this we can study history SIR!
I was lucky enough to visit the Grand Mosque in Casablanca and it was spectacular. So i was a bit bemused when i read this article which from start to finish seemed to portray a negative image about Morocco. One needs to ask the author whether he has ever visited the Mosque and wandered at it’s unmatched Moorish architecture instead of peddling half truth’s and in some cases shameful lies.
It feels like this article written from somewhere in in the Midwest by someone who never set foot in morocco and collected token “research” material from the web to write such a laughable caricature.
It is true that Hassan II was not a democrat, but all this writer did was to lump factoid together and call it a serious article.
about.com needs to do better to be taken seriously.
Different perspectives are fine, even welcome. That’s what this blog is about. Facile slanders about my facts or About’s credibility aren’t. If you see specific errors, point them out. I’ll be glad to fix them immediately. If you have specific arguments as to why this perspective is unfair, I’d love to hear them. but please: ad hominem attacks are irrelevant and, what’s worse, dull.
One other point: I made no judgment about the architecture, which I actually find rather beguiling, being a sucker for Mediterranean marble of any kind, and don’t disagree at all that other big buildings like the ones Jalal cited have their megalomaniacal angles. That doesn’t diminish Hassan’s megalomania, especially considering the mosque’s history and his motives–which were the point of this post. I find it hard to believe that readers, in Morocco, the Midwest or the Yukon Territory, would feel compelled to come to the defense of one of the last century’s most repulsive tyrants just because he erected a tourist hot spot. Disney attracts its millions, too: that doesn’t make the Magic Kingdom inherently virtuous, necessary or redeeming, though personally I have been more inclined to find redemption floating through “It’s a Small World” than I ever did the endless times I kneeled, ambled and prostrated myself in mosques and churches, however architecturally modest or magnificent the edifice.
EVERYTHING IS TRUE TO THE T. Hassan II was a tyrant probably worse than Sadam I lived those years in Morocco and saw everything!
Hassan 2 hate jews?, that news for me, i think your confused, you mix politics and religion for the moroccan jews.
the jews in morocco are moroccan who have all rights like any other moroccan with a plus “the protection of the kings of morocco” and that was the case for hundred of years.
zizou, there’s no mention of Hassan’s hatred of Jews. There’s mention of his half-hatred of Israel. Not the same thing, though in the Middle East it way, way too often is, because Arabs refuse to distinguish their political differences with Israel, which are legitimate, from their rank anti-Semitism, which is unacceptable under any circumstance. The refusal to make that distinction, by the way, is to my mind one of the main reasons Arabs and Israelis continue to beat their heads against the many walls they put up. Prejudice, that stupid, irrational disease, divides them far more than politics.
Take a deep breath, step back and look at the mosque again.
The complexion of the sky, the reflection of the golden sun on the marble pillars, the entire composition that does not need extra balancing lights the way film industry does to have the picture of a view color-wise even.
Step back and think of all the generations past and present that fell in love with the land of Morocco- from Edith Warton, Paul Bowles, Delacroix all the way to Di Caprio and Bradd Pitt.
Step back again and reflect on the gestures of kindness that you meet in the regular Moroccan person- who doesn’t care less- as long as he’s sheltered and fed.
Step back, go back to this edifice, take off your shoes, wash your parts and spend 2 hours of the afternoon in the mosque in reflection with yourself- think of Isabelle Eberhardt and the peace she found in Moroccan mosques.
You sure will find many things missing in you,
Moroccans did participate materially in the construction of this mosque, my parents are one of those, but guess what, they don’t regret it. After all, when you fly away from Casablanca, the last view you have of Morocco is the mosque of Casablanca.
And guess what regular Moroccans adore Jews. And guess what, Moroccan Jews are in their home and they will stay here till the end of times.
So, arm your dry intellect with some deep thought and understanding and you’ll meet many areas that you have missed.
Kindly,
A Moroccan national.
I am positive that you are an Arab writer writing in native like English and pretending to be a Western journalist. Unfortunately, you are one of the few but unfortunately loud and ugly Arabs who are jealous of Morocco and have a serious problem with it.
One sign that you are not a born Western in you mentality is due to your slip of the tongue ‘having a woman read verses of the Kuran’ and ‘no Arab officials came to the inauguration’ A Western journalist would never pick that detail or mention it.
So, if you happen to be Arab with a Brit or Canadian or American passport, use that passport for a good evolutionary cause and show that you deserve that citizenship.
When will Arabs stop being jealous of each other?
That is the real shame in the Arab world. God does not change anything in people until they change those things themselves. This is where the effort should be depleted.
Also, please note that Morocco has cordial relations with all Arab countries without any exception, even with Algeria. Morocco is a peace aspiring nation. Morocco also has good relations with Israel because it’s a reality that Israel is accepted now among the Arabs.
So, stop your dirty propaganda and enlighten people instead of sowing discord and ignorance among them.
Mimi, Morocco is a lovely land with a wonderful culture. So is the United States. So is Zimbabwe. Nothing I wrote in this post suggests otherwise. That doesn’t mean that certain things about Morocco (like certain things about the United States, Zimbabwe or any other land), especially its nutty and magalomaniac former king, are very much worth examining past veils of myths.
Citing Paul Bowles, who wrote about nothing if not the heartbreaking beauties and truths but also the cruelties and regressions of the Maghreb, you should know this, although you may have a few things wrong about Bowles (Remember this line from The Sheltering Sky? “The people of each country get more like the people of every other country. They have no character, no beauty, no ideals, no culture–nothing, nothing.” Or the line about Morocco from his story entitled, ironically, “Here to Learn” about “the brutally obscene remarks made by the men to women passing in the streets” that “disgusted and infuriated” one of the story’s characters… )
Loulou, making blind assumptions is very silly indeed. That detail about Arab leaders not showing up for the inauguration of the mosque was taken from an Oct. 5, 1993 New York Times article by by Roger Cohen, who, I’m pretty sure, is a Westerner, and who wrote: “The inauguration ceremony, planned as an enormous event, was widely seen as a flop.
The only Arab leader to appear was the Lebanese Prime Minister. Western diplomats said the Saudi authorities and leaders of other conservative gulf states, who have common cause with the Moroccan King in seeking to crush proponents of Iranian-style Islamic republics, were apparently irked by the grandiosity of the mosque, whose proportions implicitly established it as a rival to Mecca.”
I am back! thank you every one for your nice comments about My country, I want to congratulate all the USA and EU friends, and for ‘the Advanced status with EU’
another thing If Hassan II was a tyrant, is our problem – It was our King and personally I agree with the most what he did for our country, he was the man of the situation ‘ in that period, the actual morocco in not the morocco of the 80ties, Hassan II was a birth person check what the other leaders wrote about him, thanks to Hassan II the capitalism won in many areas of the poor pro ww2 war, you have to understand well the history at that time, and not simply judge at the first glance, if you put the building of scare Coeur in his historical time, you will see that it was a signal for reborn of the new France (poor period in France history), Moroccans are friendly people and historically talking we were always the only Muslim country (centuries ago) to share the convictions of living together Jew or others, lately this century developed countries starts to talk about living tougher, so I think no one have to give us any lesson in human relations, and the Jew religion in morocco is part of the Moroccan history. some Arab countries don’t like it! is their problem not ours, we are the owners of this country, this is our way of living, and the Moroccan history is rich with episodes when we turned from a peaceful and friendly people to a nightmare to our enemies, fighting and wining.
As a Moroccan I feel it’s my responsibility to educate you about the main purpose for gathering money from all the Moroccan families to build the mosque. Think too much currency and not enough assets to back it up, that was the best way to gather then burn all that cash or else the country’s currency would have been worth nothing.
I lived in morocco for two years in the early 1970’s and thoroughly enjoyed the country and their people. I found the folks to be genuie, friendly, most helpful and they thoroughly loved their King. I find it very distastful of the article you wrote on such a magnificant country and a true friend of the U.S. A wonderful country and I encourage travelers to visit this most beautiful country with even more beautiful people.
Excellent article, this structure commemorates the Disney Palace with honours! good job Hass.
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