Muhammad Shafiq.. a fighter who gave his life to the Amazigh language as his weapon of thought and tongue
The time of physical courage has passed and the time of intellectual courage has come.” It is a saying adopted by the Moroccan thinker, researcher and historian Muhammad Shafiq as a basis in his struggle to serve the cause and the Amazigh civilization, and to restore consideration to its history, language, culture and identity, considering that this is a sacred patriotic duty, and aspired to A future whose purity is not marred by the body of the Moroccan national thought, Mohamed Shafiq, a major and powerful turning point in the history of contemporary Moroccan thought in general, and the Amazigh movement in particular. And the heritage of the ancestors and the preservation of the identity, historical and cultural elements of Morocco away from any melting in the values and ideas of the East or the West alike.
The spiritual father of the Amazighs armed himself in his struggle with his idea and his strong belief in the cause and the legitimacy of its demands, and adopted civilized methods that address the mind in the first place, saying that the frank dialogue adopted for logic dispenses with every conflict, and among the most prominent dialogues of Muhammad Shafiq; His message to Abd al-Salam Yassin, the leader of the Justice and Charity Group, who disagreed with his intellectual orientation after confirming that the Arab-Islamic identity of Morocco is intrinsically linked to the Qur’anic Arabic language. A non-Arabic Muslim... Is it reasonable to allow an Arab to belong to Arabism and to prevent an Amazigh from belonging to the Amazigh language? “Yes, my brother in Islam, citizenship and humanity, I am Amazigh. I should not impersonate other than my relative who my tongue preserved for me, so I keep my tongue without negligence in praising the advantages of the Arabic language nor in doing my duty in order to serve it, so my brother stopped accusing everyone who defended his tongue with fanaticism and intolerance.”
“We must stop referring to the standards of the ethnic group to which we belong and embrace broader and more comprehensive human dimensions.” Mohamed Shafiq always calls for a diagnosis of the Moroccan reality, taking into account the main dimensions of our national entity by adopting reason away from narrow calculations, so he avoided enthusiasm and haste to read the depth of the issue and understand its dimensions. He says that “enthusiasm and hasty mobilization often negate and look into matters closely, as he was very afraid that the scenario of dissolution and decline that Morocco was experiencing before protection would be repeated, and therefore he stressed the necessity of deepening the understanding of the specificity that characterizes the country and rejecting the hatred that the Makhzen circles cultivated in their generations towards The Amazighs are nothing but the fact that they oppose oppression and arbitrariness thanks to their adherence to their traditions, in order to avoid an identity crisis that will take Morocco back centuries.
However, the semi-official and unannounced denial of “Tamazgha” was a major reason for the emergence of a statement regarding the need for official recognition of the Amazigh language of Morocco to light in the beginning of 2000, as Ahmed Assid confirmed in his interview with journalist Mahdi Malik that this statement was the result of the efforts of long discussions of the elite of the national movement and therefore it It is not an individual product of Muhammad Shafiq as he is promoting it, but he preferred to edit it in his elegant language, whether in Arabic or French.
The statement contained nine basic and indispensable demands for the Amazigh cultural movement: the first is to make Amazigh a subject of national dialogue, to constitutionalize Amazigh as a national and official language, to teach the language to Amazigh, to rewrite the history of Morocco, to pay attention to Amazigh in official media, to lift the ban on Amazigh names, to restore respect for art . Amazigh ... Two years after Muhammad Shafiq presented this statement, King Muhammad VI appointed him as the first dean of the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture, and this institute was the first fruit of the effort and hard work of Muhammad Shafiq to restore legal status to Amazigh culture.
And the struggle continues...with thought
Muhammad Shafiq Kashif Al-Mastour, as described by Abd al-Jalil Lahjmari, Permanent Secretary of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco, where he said, “He is one of the personalities who left their mark on the political, cultural and educational scene in Morocco since independence,” describing him as “an honorable and adventurous man with firm convictions, humble and modest.” And the sober one who evades the spotlight at a time when others are panting after it.” He is a self-made man who paved his path among the rocks. He grew up in the Ait Saden tribe in the bosom of the Middle Atlas Mountains. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in history. He started his career in teaching in the Demnate region of the High Atlas. He was the first to be interested in teaching girls in the rural world. Secondary, technical, and training staff, and he had the honor of managing the Mevlevi School after accepting his condition that he be exempted from the royal rituals.
The Amazigh issue was always present with Muhammad Shafiq, as he took advantage of his position as director of the Mevlevi School and sent a request to Hassan II to adopt the Amazigh language in state institutions, especially the court, hospital, administrations, and gendarmerie and security centers, to facilitate communication with Amazigh-speaking citizens who suffer from alienation that is more stressful on their souls than the alienation on immigrants. out of the country as described.
Muhammad Shafiq said… “I did not receive any answer to that. After a few weeks, I courageously submitted my resignation and devoted myself to preparing an Amazigh dictionary. It took me years and years, three separate parts. Thirty-three centuries of the history of the Amazighs, and I devoted myself to writing a book on the Moroccan dialect, a field of interaction between Amazigh and Arabic, and this publication submitted a copy of it to the Royal Institution.
After a long struggle, I was appointed president of the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture. I did not want a monthly salary to do my work. Rather, all I wanted was to exploit the capabilities of the institute to frame and prepare the Amazigh language and defend the rights of the Amazighs, but after a few years I did not find my complete freedom to work quietly and without dictates or Harassment, I submitted my resignation. “Now I am living my last days in my house. I have lost my sight and my strength has weakened, but I am happy that I left an important archive for the Amazighs. It took me many years… so I concluded my path by saying, These Amazighs are men of war, and the war of this time is with science, so we must learn” the fragments of victory for the “Zai” language.
After the Royal Institute of Amazigh Culture, which was considered the first step in the institutionalization of the Amazigh language and culture, some of the demands that came in the statement presented by Mohamed Shafiq to the king at the beginning of the 21st century were fulfilled, the most important of which was the constitutionalization of the Amazigh language in the 2011 constitution. Considering the Amazigh language as an official language of the country is the culmination of the years of struggle of this thinker who gave his life to the Amazigh tongue and defended the Moroccan Amazigh identity and preserved it from obliteration and extinction through the tongue after the pen betrayed our newest in codifying their historical heroic achievements in the wars against the enemy after they dealt with good faith. They naively sacrificed themselves for the homeland to live, considering it a duty that they did not want reward or gratitude for, but what did not occur to them is that a day will come when their descendants will be forced to search for evidence and proofs that show their entitlement to this land that they sacrificed for it. Muhammad Shafiq says, “It is absurd that Amazigh looking fororiginal citizens other than the one in which they grew up nearly a hundred centuries ago.”
Source : websites