Amazigh customary laws are an effective reference for producing a code capable of responding to the Moroccan privacy of our family matters, “the Tamazalt system as a model”
The requirements of Article 49 of the Code that sparked debate as it was the prominent title of the most important amendments brought about by the Family Code at that time.
Currently, the general trend of the popular debate on social media revolves around the issue of the spouses’ rights to the funds created during married life, a requirement over which Moroccans are divided between supporters and opponents.
In the midst of this heated debate, no one wondered about the fundamental origins of this legal system?
This chapter is the only one that did not emerge from the womb of religious jurisprudence, which formed the reference base for the texts of the Family Code. Because classical religious jurisprudence, with its various schools and imams, had never before acknowledged the right of women to family funds. Rather, the religious movement, especially the Justice and Development Party and its advocacy wing, the Unification and Reform Movement, had previously recognized His opposition to the national plan to integrate women into development in the mid-nineties considered this system to be a departure from Sharia law and an unjustified legitimation of unlawfully consuming people’s money.
The interest that Moroccans pay to this legal system reflects its importance in managing family disputes because it is simply a temporal legal requirement that expresses their concerns and needs from the upcoming family legislation because it addresses the core of the problem.
So we are faced with a purely Moroccan legal system that has been embraced by Amazigh customary laws for centuries, and enlightened Moroccan jurisprudence has contributed to rooting it and protecting it from all attempts that aim to create a conflict between it and religion.
The Tamazalt system is based on the assumption that the woman is an effective and productive partner in the family institution, and all the money that is generated during married life is the result of her toil, striving, and effort. It is not fair for the husband to single it out alone so that she leaves after a years-long married life empty-handed.
Thus, the woman not only gets her share when the marital relationship is terminated, but this right applies even in the event of the husband’s death, as the money and property he leaves behind are not considered on the basis that they are an estate transferred to his successor from the legal heirs and are subject to the legal shares in terms of their division. Rather, they constitute family funds. It does not belong to the husband alone, but there is a part of it that is the private property of the wife, and her contribution to that is the toil, effort and effort she gave in establishing and developing it. It is fair to sort out her share and then divide the husband’s share among the rest of the heirs, including his wife, according to the rules of inheritance.
This system does not constitute a departure from the provisions of inheritance because it does not leave a person inheriting his property while he is alive. The wife is an heir to her husband’s property and a partner with him at the same time, and therefore her share of the estate must be separated before dividing it.
Our current reality tells painful stories of widows who spend their lives helping their husbands with work, toil, thrift, and excessive miserliness to the point of depriving themselves of the simplest needs in order to provide enough money to build a house or the grave of life. When the husband dies, the children come (mere consumers only) and seize the lion’s share of the inheritance to sell the house that they own. She built it with her pride, hunger, and patience...until she turned in the last days of her life into a homeless person...
Where is justice? Where is religion? Where is truth?…..Where is this wife’s share? Where is the reward for her work, her toil, her striving, and her eagerness to manage the family’s money?
The uproar raised by the Tamazight regime confirms our need for laws that are compatible with our Moroccan reality, laws capable of managing our real problems, temporal laws produced by man for man, whose purpose is to achieve justice and fairness. This requires openness to Amazigh customary laws and their adoption alongside the rest of the other sources in establishing family legislation. .
Mohamed Almo is a lawyer at the Rabat Authority
Source: websites