Liberals and Islamists clash over Morocco "gay wedding"

By Tom Pfeiffer and Zakia Abdennebi

KSAR EL KEBIR, Morocco (Reuters) - When rumors of a "gay wedding" spread through the northern Moroccan town of Ksar el Kebir, the only evidence produced was a video on YouTube of a man dancing suggestively in women's clothes.

Three months later, four people are in prison accused of homosexual acts, Islamists are decrying a decline in public morals and liberals are warning that the north African kingdom risks sleep-walking into extremism.

A reputation as a tolerant, nascent democracy has earned Morocco privileged ties with the European Union and helped draw millions of tourists to its cities, mountains and beaches.

But rights campaigners say the events in Ksar el Kebir are the latest sign that personal freedoms are in danger as the secular government seeks to placate powerful Islamists.

"Morocco has become a society where debate is much freer than before but many people are not happy with that freedom," said Issandr el Amrani, north Africa specialist at International Crisis Group. "There is a real risk of people with conservative agendas influencing politics."

The Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD) has become a major political force by drawing on popular anger at poverty and corruption and calling for more morality in public life.

Despite lingering suspicions that the PJD wants to turn Morocco into a purist Islamist state, the secular establishment sees the party as part of a moderate religious bulwark against increasingly active and well-organized radical Islamist groups.

But some say this attitude has resulted in more restrictions on personal freedoms to comply with Islamist beliefs.

Organizers of an open-air pop concert held last May to encourage young people to vote in legislative elections were surprised by what was written about their event in the conservative newspaper Attajdid.

"It said people had stripped naked, climbed on the minaret of a mosque and stopped Muslims praying -- it was simply untrue," said Reda Allali, singer in rock band Hoba Hoba Spirit.

"When someone holds a concert, these populists always trot out their favorite themes: Zionists, Satanists, drugs, homosexuality and George Bush," said Allali.

In universities, tensions have grown between left-wing students and Morocco's largest Islamist opposition movement Justice and Charity, which now dominates the main student union.

Justice and Charity, which is banned from mainstream politics because of its open hostility to the monarchy, has set up informal morality tribunals in some universities, said Driss Mansouri, philosophy professor at Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University in Fez.

"If they decide a couple of unmarried students are in a close relationship, they punish them. Some students have even been beaten -- it's a rural mentality," said Mansouri.

INSULT TO HONOUR