Morocco feminist activist remanded for ‘offending Islam’ online

A Moroccan court on Tuesday remanded feminist activist Ibtissame Lachgar pending trial for “offending Islam” over a post she made on social media, the public prosecutor’s office told AFP.

Lachgar, 50, was arrested Sunday after posting online late last month a picture of herself wearing a T-shirt with the word “Allah” in Arabic followed “is lesbian”.

The picture she posted was accompanied by text saying Islam was “like any religious ideology... fascist, phallocratic and misogynistic”.

The date for the start of her trial has not yet been set.

Many had called for her arrest as Morocco’s penal code carries a sentence of up to two years in prison for “anyone who offends the Islamic religion”.

That sentence can be brought to five years if the offence is committed in public, “including by electronic means”.

Moroccan rights advocates have long criticized the law as a restrictive measure against freedom of expression.

Lachgar’s post sparked strong reactions on social media.

She later said in a Facebook post she had received “thousands of threats of rape, death, lynching and stoning”.

Lachgar co-founded in 2009 the Alternative Movement for Individual Liberties (MALI), one of whose most publicized actions was a picnic held during Ramadan that year to challenge a law criminalizing breaking the fast in public without a valid religious reason.

MALI has led several other campaigns against violence towards women and against child sexual abuse.

Lachgar was already arrested -- though not prosecuted -- in 2016 for disturbing public order and in 2018 amid a MALI campaign in support of abortion rights in the North African country.