By Jamal Elabiad
On Feb.19, 41 worshippers were killed and more than 70 injured when a minaret collapsed at a mosque in the central town of Meknes, 140 km southwest of Rabat. "About 300 worshippers gathered inside the mosque for the Friday afternoon mass prayers. When the imam [preacher] was about to start his sermon, the minaret went down," Khaled Rahmouni, whose house is near the mosque, told the Reuters news agency.
What triggered the fall of the minaret?
According to Moroccan state TV channels (2M and RTM), the minaret collapsed because of the torrential rains that lashed the region for several days. As for Interior ministry officials, they “blamed the incident on heavy rains that had weakened the minaret.”
This is not the first time both 2M and RTM have turned to fallacies such as heavy rains to mislead Moroccans. And it’s no surprise that 2M and RTM don’t differ with the Interior ministry over the reason leading to the tragedy, for the latter is their sole source of information and news.
Bad weather is innocent of the minaret collapse. "The weather was not especially bad in Meknes. It would be fair to look for another factor than the weather," said a senior official at the state weather service.
What really triggered the fall of the minaret is the cosmetic reforms which were made to the mosque from time to time, and the fact that the authorities ignored the warnings of the residents about the dilapidated state of the mosque. "We told them many times before that there were widening cracks on the walls and that its minaret had begun tipping over but they ignored the warning," a man, who identified himself as Mohammed, told the Reuters news agency.
It’s beyond doubt that the disaster could have been averted had those responsible taken seriously the residents complaints, or simply posed this question: What would happen if the minaret went down?
The main lesson to draw from Meknes tragedy is the fact that the Moroccan government does not intervene till disasters happen, notably when it’s only second-class Moroccans who will be the victims of those disasters. That means that the government didn’t take action till the minaret collapsed simply bacause the vast majority of those living near the mosque are second-class Moroccans or " bouzabal " in Moroccan darija.
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