Moroccan Police Arrest 57 Year Old For Promoting Faith

A middle aged man from Morocco was arrested by police in Marrakech on the 10th of February simply for handing out leaflets and preaching peacefully on the streets. Fateh Benaiss, born on the 10th of January 1969, has been a believer in The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light for approximately a decade. 

Over the years he has been arrested many times before by the Moroccan police for sharing his beliefs with the public in a peaceful manner, he is usually confined to a local mental asylum where he is injected with a tranquiliser and then labelled a mental patient for his preaching. This treatment is symptomatic of how the authorities treat believers in Morocco. The stories of Yahya Marfouq and Huzaifa Azuz have previously been reported by The Divine Just State magazine when they were apprehended by the intelligence services of Morocco and Huzaifa was also cruelly subjected to confinement in a mental asylum.

Word reached us from another source in Morocco. We received a voice note of Fateh from the police station where he conveyed the following message:

“Assalam alaikum wa rahmat Allahi wa barakatuhu, how are you ? All good ? I couldn't get hold of you on WhatsApp. Anyway im at the police station, they've arrested me so you know, don't be alarmed, everything is ok and it will be ok Inshallah”

With all the attention circulating the persecution of The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light in majority Muslim countries like Egypt and Malaysia since the reports published by USCIRF on Egypt’s oppression of this faith, it is not going to be long before these stories become a proof against these authoritarian regimes oppressing the human rights of their own citizens for no apparent reason.

We urge the Moroccan government to drop all charges and intimidation programmes directed at the believers in The Ahmadi Religion of Peace and Light, and to allow them to practise their faith in peace as is their right by international law according to the UN Declaration on Freedom of Religion or Belief, articulated in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.