There are only three religious buildings in Fes and Meknes which can legitimately be visited by non-Muslims. These are the Al-Attarine and the Bounania in Fes, and the Bounania in Meknes. All three buildings are Madrasa, or religious educational buildings, and were built in the 14th century. The Bounania in Fes has a double role as a functioning mosque, and a part of the complex is off-limits to non-Muslims.
Rather than providing a monologue about each building and its history, which can easily be found online, I have provided a selection of random quotes covering a wide range of perspectives relating to Islam to accompany the images. Some are more controversial than others and most apply to Islam generally rather than specifically Morocco..
“Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.”
“When you see a person who has been given more than you in money and beauty, then look to those who have been given less.”
s Hadith
“Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law, respect everyone; but if someone puts his hand on you, send him to the cemetery.”
“Muhammad has always been standing higher than the Christianity. He does not consider god as a human being and never makes himself equal to God. Muslims worship nothing except God and Muhammad is his Messenger. There is no any mystery and secret in it.”
“Who are your favorite heroines in real life? The women of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran who risk their lives and their beauty to defy the foulness of theocracy..”
“Whoever says that all music is prohibited, let him also claim that the songs of birds are prohibited.”
“People who change their religion should face the death penalty.”
“God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man.”
“People accuse me of having interiorized a feeling of racial inferiority, so that I attack my own culture out of self-hatred, because I want to be white. This is a tiresome argument. Tell me, is freedom then only for white people? Is it self-love to adhere to my ancestors’ traditions and mutilate my daughters? To agree to be humiliated and powerless? To watch passively as my countrymen abuse women and slaughter each other in pointless disputes? When I came to a new culture, where I saw for the first time that human relations could be different, would it have been self-love to see that as a foreign cult, which Muslims are forbidden to practice?”
“In a sense Muhammad was less the messenger than the translator, struggling to give human form — words — to the ineffable.”
“When the sun shall be folded up; and when the stars shall fall; and when the mountains shall be made to pass away; and when the camels ten months gone with young shall be neglected; and when the seas shall boil; and when the souls shall be joined again to their bodies; and when the girl who hath been buried alive shall be asked for what crime she was put to death; and when the books shall be laid open; and when the heavens shall be removed; and when hell shall burn fiercely; and when paradise shall be brought near: every soul shall know what it hath wrought.”
Qurʾan
“What it is about Islam, I thought, that can make a woman so strong that she no longer strives to be noticed by men, no longer needs the admiring gaze to feel attractive, no longer puts herself on display when the rest of the world is doing just that?”
“Knock, And He’ll open the door
Vanish, And He’ll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He’ll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He’ll turn you into everything.”