Getting married in Morocco has never been easy. You have to save for years for the bride’s dowry, until she agrees to dye her hands with henna, and for the sumptuous expenses of several days of wedding festivities on the back of an amaria or palanquin. Now it’s impossible. The strike that the old menIslamic notaries before whom the marriage contract, It prevents the celebration of an average of 400 daily connections in the middle of Ramadan.
These traditional officials – also specialized in family matters, divorces and inheritances – began their mobilizations at the beginning of the Muslim holy month with two days of strike, on February 18 and 19, as reported by the Efe agency. The more than 3,000 old men They are protesting against the reform of their professional status being debated by Parliament, which requires them to have a university degree and submit to greater control over the provision of funds – up to 150 euros per couple, half the minimum monthly salary – to citizens.
Embarking on a review of the legal professions, the Government has already warned Islamic notaries that it does not accept dialogue “under pressure”. However, after seven weeks of general strike of lawyers Moroccans during January and February, the Ministry of Justice has finally sat down to negotiate with the representatives of their professional associations.
In Morocco there is no civil marriage, only nuptial contracts are legally recognized and are governed by the Mudawana, the Family Code based on Islamic law, written in classical Arabic by the old men with the traditional rhetoric of Quranic quotes. These heirs of the scribes of the cadis of the sharia or judges of Islamic law, have closed the marriage chambers of the Family Courts and the wedding halls of the Sherifian kingdom. Without his signature, no marriage is valid in Morocco.
“We will maintain the strike until our demands are satisfied,” warns the president of the national association of the old people Suleiman Adjul. “If the Government does not amend the bill, there will be no other option but to continue with the mobilizations,” he declared to the digital diary The 360. Adjul complains above all that there is no provision for a deposit of the funds received for the issuance of documents, such as that which exists for notaries in charge of real estate transactions.
The huge sums disbursed by the bride and groom and their families for the long and massive wedding celebrations in the Maghreb country remain in the air. They begin with the bride’s request, where the old men at the signing of the contract. They continue on a second day, not necessarily consecutive, with the the ceremony of shame, that dyes the feet and hands of the bride with henna, in a feminine ritual of colorful caftans. And the visit to haman to purify yourself with the bath. All of this before the wedding reception itself, on a third (and successive) day of celebrations, in which they go all out with mountains of food and sweets.
At the end, the newlyweds are carried on their shoulders in an amaria or palanquin to the house where they will live together. Men and women live traditional wedding parties separately, although they are beginning to organize themselves mixed ceremonies in modern urban environments.
Informal weddings
Where neither old people nor any other authority intervene is in the cliffs of informal marriages that conceal underage marriages. An attempted wedding of a 14-year-old girl with an adult man, uncovered last year on social networks, revealed the existence of traditional betrothal (without legal value) through the rite of Fatiha (the simple reading of a verse from the Koran). According to a report from the Superior Council of the Judiciary, Moroccan judges approved 10,691 marriages of minors in 2024, 98% of which were women, despite the fact that since 2004 the Family Code has prohibited them as a general rule.
The resort to informal weddings flouts the legislation. Adult men marry girls through religious rites, with the approval of their parents and the consent of rural communities. When they come of age they go to a Eid to legalize the verbal contract in writing.
At the end of 2024, a new Mudawana amendment, endorsed by the Council of Ulema (doctors of Islam), it set the legal age of marriage at 18 years, with the only exception to the rule of those celebrated after the age of 17, under strict conditions – judicial authorization, forensic medical examination, investigation of the social situation – that guarantee its exceptional nature. More than a year later, this reform has still not been approved by Parliament. Feminist associations demand that “the half-hearted reforms” of the Family Code be put to an end once and for all and demand legislation that “truly guarantees equality for female citizens.”
Less than six months before the next legislative elections (called for September 23), the Moroccan parties do not seem to be in a hurry to test the reform of the Family Code. In the 2021 elections, the Islamists from the Justice and Development Party (PJD) They were evicted from power after having headed the Government for the entire previous decade. The party plummeted from 125 to 13 seats.
After returning to the helm of the PJD, its current secretary general, the former prime minister Abdelilá Benkirán has raised the flag of opposition to the Mudawana reform in an attempt to recover the conservative and religious vote at the polls. 20 years ago, Islamists called for massive demonstrations against the amendment of the Family Code, which brought together more than a million participants in Casablanca.
The Islamists maintain a front of frontal rejection of the reform. “Marriage is the foundation and center of the lives of young girls,” said the PJD leader. With this he intended to warn about what he considers “the phenomenon of excessive delay in the average age of marriage”, which in Morocco is around 26 years for women and 31 for men. He also alluded to the multiplication of “female loneliness”, in a derogatory allusion to the so-called spinsters, among women with academic qualifications and work activity.
