Moroccan Feminist Discourses, by feminist linguist Fatima Sadiqi, explores the predominantly urban feminist discourses in Morocco in the wake of the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world. Her goal is not simply to highlight already existing debates but to explore the possibility of linking Berber women's history and culture to these discourses. Inspired by her mother tongue, by the ‘complexity and depth of Berber women's oral poetry, rituality, and art’, and also by the fact that Berber language and history have gained official prominence in recent years, she hopes to restore Berber women's agency and authority to Moroccan feminism.

The book begins by documenting the emergence of the Berber identity movement and its interactions with the Moroccan nation state. Because the late King Hassan II viewed Berber issues as divisive, from the 1960s to the 1980s, asserting a Berber identity or using the language in media or schools was forbidden. In the 1990s, a number of Berber-oriented NGOs began to appear and the monarchy softened its stance. Under King Mohammed VI, who took the throne in 1999, Berber identity has been embraced, with attempts to recognize the language at both local and national levels. However, the Islamist movement, which has grown in strength considerably over the last decade, attempts to marginalize Berber identity as a relic of a pre-Islamic past. By contrast, Sadiqi argues, embracing Berber discourses promotes universality, and not an exclusive Arabo-Islamic identity.

In the second chapter, Sadiqi attempts to reconstruct the history of Berber women's agency, a history that is often oral and unrecorded. Women have been the caretakers of identity and tradition in Berber culture, and archaeological evidence offers several examples of pre-Islamic Berber women who were warriors and priestesses. After Islam came to Morocco in the late seventh century, there were no more female priestesses or warriors, but according to Sadiqi, ‘the ancient Berber female religious authority did not really disappear with the coming of monotheistic religions; it has only been changing spaces in a continuous ebb and flow of gender politics and religion’ (p. 61). Berber women from then on began to wield authority from within the household.

Sadiqi sets up the public sources of Moroccan authority in the third chapter of the book, ranging from implicit structural sources (patriarchy) to the institutions that back them up (such as mosques). Language is included, as in recent history Arabic and French were preferred by the state while Berber was marginalized. But within most of these systems, women have a subordinate status. While the government has supported women's material empowerment, in terms of encouraging education, family planning, and work, there have still been many areas where feminist activists have demanded their concerns be heard. This leads into a discussion of feminist discourses operative in Morocco today, which can roughly be divided into two camps: secular and Islamist. Sadiqi describes the history of the women's movement in Morocco, showing how women's rights and Berber rights have both been marginalized historically. Thus it is no surprise that over the past decade, the Berber and women's feminist movements have found many commonalities in their resurgence, including the use of social media to promote their agendas and a universalist respect for human rights. The Islamist women's movement, by contrast, arose in the 1990s as a conservative reaction to the feminist movement, and is generally only interested in making certain that laws applying to women fit with principles of shari'a.

The heart of Sadiqi's argument is that the women's movement would benefit from an incorporation of Berber components. The inclusion of Berber social elements in the women's movement not only expands it by drawing on Morocco's pre-Islamic past but also by emphasizing the existence of feminine Berber symbolism and acknowledging that ‘there exists a genuine Berber women's knowledge-production’ (p. 156). Sadiqi draws extensively on Moroccan women's understandings of Islam, culture, and ritual and indigenous knowledge to show that in many ways, they parallel Berber sensibilities. Filled with ethnographically rich and complex descriptions of rituals and poetry, Sadiqi's book demonstrates an intimate knowledge of Berber oral culture. She does a compelling job linking the resurgence of Berber culture in Morocco with a call to link the two movements together.

Each chapter begins with a personal anecdote from Sadiqi's life that illustrates her personal investment in the forthcoming chapter, and these add welcome moments of ethnography to this text. Readers will find that this book offers not just an overview of significant women's issues in Morocco in the past few decades but also a multilayered glimpse of political and social struggles as well. This book will be of interest not only to historians of North Africa and the Middle East but also gender studies scholars and social scientists interested in exploring a compelling and thoughtful perspective on political movements in Morocco.