Maroon 323Hourani, preeminent historian of Muslim cultures, who writes that “what is
called tradition [in Islam] ... was not unchanging; it was following its own
path at its own pace.” Hourani, A History of The Arab Peoples, 311. Indeed,
history reveals a persistent interrogation of the meaning of tradition in
Muslim cultures. The questioning of tradition emerges forcefully and is the
very agent that unsettles submission to one specific definition of Muslim
society. There is no paradox in the recognition that tradition constitutes
an unfixed site of multiple significations with often conflicting interpreta-
tions of meaning. See also Lawrence Rosen, The Culture of Islam: Changing
Aspects of Contemporary Muslim Life (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
2002); Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Traditional Islam in the Modern World
(London and New York: KPI Publishing, 1997).
36.uoted from an interview with a 36-year-old professional Casablancan. Q
Interview conducted in French, February 2002. Author’s translation.
37.lass plays a central role in defining women’s place in the public sphere. C
It is not uncommon to see small clusters of destitute women sitting on
curbsides in shopping districts begging for money or offering services as
day maids. The presence of these impoverished women adds further to the
stigma against public loitering for women of other classes to the degree
that those women who beg money and attempt to gain work by barrag-
ing passersby with queries are looked down upon by other tiers of society.
Although these women are not leisuring, the stigma attached to their pres-
ence is applied likewise to those women who would seek to leisure in parks
or café terraces for example.
38.s statistic is based on 300 hours of observation of spatial behaviors in Thi
cybercafés throughout the city. Observation logs were maintained on four-
teen cybercafés in different neighborhoods. The general makeup of the
public in these cybercafés was recorded, such as gender, collective or indi-
vidual arrivals, meeting practices upon arrival and so forth. Although other
studies of Moroccan cybercafés have asserted that men utilize the sites
more than women, this is not borne out by the data I collected. The number
of women in cybers does tend to decrease during the lunch hour and late
at night (between 8:30 and 11:30 p.m.); during other hours of observation,
however, there appeared to be equitable gender representation. Studies reli-
ant solely on survey data without observation components may employ
methodological procedures that undermine comprehensive results.