If animals could talk like humans do: Fables, Salafī Muslim imams, and local ethnographic theories on animal speech in Morocco

16th EASA Biennial Conference New anthropological horizons in and beyond Europe 20-24 July 2020, Virtual Lisbon conference ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon and ICS-Institute of Social Sciences, University of LisbonThis paper aims at exploring Islamic reformist contestation of Northern Moroccan local understandings of animal speech, particularly of those conveyed through oral narratives. It will allow us to provide insights into ethnographic theories on the articulations of the human in speculative fictions. Islam is often presented as a strongly anthropocentric religion. Anthropomorphism, in the case of God and animals as well, has been and still is at the heart of many theological debates. In many fables which are transmitted orally by both arabophone and berberophone speakers in the mountains of Jbala and Ghomara (Northern Morocco), animals are able to talk, and to express their thoughts and their feelings. Many of these fables present the characters of a wolf and a hedgehog, challenging and trying to outsmart each other. Other traditional oral narratives, in this case unproblematically aligned with Islamic core understandings (Quran, Hadith), portray both Sayyidina Sulaymān (King Solomon) and the jnûn (non-human invisible beings) as able to speak with animals. In some villages, the reform-oriented preachings of Salafī muslim imams at the local mosques have been sometimes presenting the transmission of the fables as undersirable or forbidden, adressing them as disapproved (makrūh) or unlawful (ḥarām), and considering these forms of storytelling as acts which are detestable from an Islamic point of view. Interlocutors often stress that the intergenerational transmission of these stories is strongly contested both through the mosque and the traditional quranic schooling. Drawing from long-term in-depth ethnographic fieldwork in rural communities of Northern Morocco, I will examine the local ethnographic theories on the articulations of the human conveyed through speculative fictions about talking non-human beings, particularly animals (al-hayawanat) and I will explore how they are contested by certain individuals adhering to pluralistic forms of religious reformism.Peer reviewe