The combination of culture and politics is harmonious… and I grew up in a Sufi atmosphere

In the latest episode of the program “Testimonies for History” prepared by Hespress and presented by the media figure Naima El Mbarki, politician Mohamed Ben Aissa is a guest and a central figure to discuss his political career. He is known for holding several important positions within the decision-making apparatus during the reign of the late King Hassan II, as he was appointed Minister of Culture, then Ambassador of the Kingdom of Morocco to the United States of America, before becoming Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1999 until 2007.

Benaissa, a parliamentary advisor for the Authenticity and Modernity Party during the current government term, and president of the Asilah Municipal Council for more than 40 years, is currently the Secretary General of the Asilah Forum Foundation, which oversees the “Asilah International Cultural Season.” This forum is considered one of the most popular Moroccan cultural events in the Mediterranean, Middle Eastern and African cultural milieu, due to its openness to cultural figures from various backgrounds. Herein lies the strength of Hespress’s guest: the ability to combine the hat of a politician with that of an intellectual.

In this first episode, Benaissa, who is nicknamed “the minister who loves culture,” pointed out that the ability to combine political work with its cultural counterpart “is not a choice,” as he put it, explaining that it is “in harmony with the requirements of reality.” He added: “My upbringing, like all children, did not involve politics at all, but with the development of time and moving from one country to another, and the developments that our country experienced in a certain period, I was forced, somewhat unconsciously, to combine politics and culture.”

In order to provide insight into what the journalist Naima Al-Mubarki had asked about, the guest of the episode decided to go back to the first chapter of this whole story, explaining that when the Asilah International Cultural Season began (more than four decades ago), some figures were invited, including the late Bashir Bin Yahmed, founder of Jeune Afrique magazine. He continued: “He came with his wife and they were staying in my house, due to the lack of hotels in Asilah at the time.”

“One night we were chatting and he asked me to come over to him,” the speaker continued. “He said, ‘I see what you want to achieve for your city in terms of culture, but you need the ability to sign.’” Ben Aissa added, “I didn’t understand the issue at the time, but he explained to me that I was a member of the municipal council and a member of the House of Representatives, but without any decision-making ability. He then revealed to me that in order to ensure the success of this project, we needed a political hat: the presidency of the community.”

The man whose dream later came true and who actually held this position, and another that we presented in the introduction, stated that this speech, which belongs to this Tunisian man, was “the first speech that introduced to my imagination the idea of ​​combining the cultural work that I started with my late friend Mohamed Melehi in 1978 and political work,” noting that from that moment the idea matured and fermented and he began to think about how he would become the head of the municipal council.

After deciding on this point, Benaissa moved on to detailing that it is sometimes difficult to untie the “umbilical cord” between politics and culture, highlighting that “many politicians were actually intellectuals,” recalling in Morocco the example of Allal El Fassi, who was the leader of the Istiqlal Party throughout his life and was a great intellectual, as well as Abdelkrim Ghallab and Mohamed El Fassi, who were among the founders of the “Balance Party,” which formed the basis from which political work in our country was launched.

“We cannot diminish the cultural value (of the political actor); even in the modern era we find, for example, Mohamed Achaari, who was a seasoned politician in the Socialist Union of Popular Forces party, and who is at the same time a distinguished and well-known poet, novelist and writer,” the speaker stressed, continuing: “I do not think that it is a matter of politics in the political sense of reaching a position, etc.; in my opinion, when an intellectual practices politics, he practices it with a kind of intellectual, imaginative and creative elevation.”

Al-Mubarki decided to take the guest of Hespress, who was born in 1937, back to his beginnings. He said: “Like all children of that generation, we were under the yoke of colonialism and began our education at that time in the Kuttabs or ‘messid’ (…) After that, I entered school and studied in Asilah until I obtained my primary school certificate. Then, for one year, I and Mohammed Al-Melehi moved to Fez.” He added, narrating: “We had a great passion to learn the French language. This was before Morocco’s independence, specifically in 1952, but the following year, the late King Mohammed V and his family were exiled to Madagascar, so we had no way to return to Fez with the intensification of the national movement.”

“I entered high school in Larache, and in my second year I went to Tetouan (…),” the speaker continued, revealing that when he was a boy he was “passionate about the art of acting,” especially at school, then within some groups in Larache and Tetouan, and he had a performance in Tangier at the “Cervantes” theater, adding: “They were big plays for that time; I was also passionate about art, singing, music and performing arts. My dear friend and companion since primary school, Mohamed Melehi, was passionate about drawing and manual work… and so we remained until God took him.”

Speaking about his family’s origins, the Moroccan politician noted that his father was a descendant of Sheikh Al-Kamil from Meknes, adding: “One of the descendants of this sheikh came to Asilah during the reign of Moulay Ismail. (From this move) the Ouled Sidi Ben Aissa family branched out in this small city.” He pointed out that the corner that contains the graves of all his ancestors, including his father, is currently being renovated, and he recalled that “there was a tradition in this corner, which is that the circumcision of a child there would be over the grave of his father if he was dead, and this is what happened to me as well.”

The speaker noted that he felt a sense of injustice and deprivation as a child who lost his father early compared to his peers, stressing on the other hand that he was raised “in a somewhat Sufi upbringing and to a large extent,” and explained: “I lived in the atmosphere of the Issawa Sufis, and like all Sufis (the starting point) is the monotheism of God. I used to recite the Hizb every day after the Maghrib prayer and I used to sleep with my grandmother, who whenever I woke up for the Fajr prayer I would wake up with her; this is how I was raised… in an atmosphere full of honesty and innocence.”