Of all the things I could write about after my time in Morocco I would have to choose my meeting Zakaria, a Muslim from Tangiers about my age and stage in life. Our first stop was to meet him and Kawtar, an assistant at a Women’s center, to sit down over tea (very, very good mint tea) and have a discussion about our cultures. Our group of 15 began a hold-nothing-back conversation on Islamic/Arabic and American stereotypes, the veil, and politics, and we ended up focusing a lot on marriage.

Things got pretty interesting when Zakaria and Kawtar disagreed on many fronts and weren’t afraid to say so, or even argue heatedly in front of us! That’s one thing about Moroccans, they can disagree about something and still get along great. In this instance, Kawtar wore a veil, but was generally liberal in her view of Islam and in her beliefs on gender roles in marriage. As we continued, Zakaria, a more conservative fellow, but not over the edge, defended his view of husbands, wives and arranged marriage.

Kawtar and Zakaria

Although initially masked by our presuppositions of arranged marriage, I was able to see past stereotypes to see that Zakaria’s desire for arranged marriage was not for the sake of being traditional or controlling, but with the belief in and intent of creating husbands and wives that are committed to loving each other and raising their children well. He could have used the word love a little more in my opinion (it also would have made him sound a little better to our group of mostly girls, I think), but I felt a great agreement come upon me when I began to see what he desired and how much I desired the same for my fellow Christians. Among other things, I had noticed just how similar Zakaria was to me in his personality and in the way he spoke of his faith. It was like I had met a Moroccan John Webster. So later, after our group discussion I went up to him and we ended up in a friendly but intense discussion of Islam, Christianity, and Jesus. Wow! I was really happy we were both so interested and willing to share our beliefs with each other. I was dumbfounded by how similar Islam appears to be to Christianity. Just the way he spoke about his faith was very similar to the way I do, just substitute the Allah for Jesus. One small change that changes everything.

Rather than go down the rabbit hole into this discussion, I only wish to share just how surprised I was to meet someone that should have been more different from me than anyone I had ever met, only to find that he was more similar to me than most of the people in my group of Americans. And I’m not just talking faith, this guy likes skiing (yes, in Morocco) and action movies too.