Parallel Worlds
Shadow Law and Political Culture in Morocco
Scholars have frequently noted the pluralistic nature of law, including in the Muslim world—the existence of alternative forums or personnel through which a dispute may be addressed.1 In many instances people have set up their own “courts” which may bear similarities to but are not staffed by state officials; in others respected elders or intermediaries provide alternatives to the formal courts. Both of these phenomena have received significant scholarly attention.2 But little notice has been given to the occasional existence of a particular kind of parallel world of law, one in which the formal institutions of the state are avoided but parties nevertheless mimic the documentation and potential implications of the formal system, often through recourse to persons who are knowledgeable about or even involved in the official system.
In the example to be explored, squatters in Morocco have often approached individuals who work with the state-run system to have them draw up purchase, construction, rental, and partnership contracts in the same form in which they could have been obtained from court notaries if the squatters’ activities had been legal. Indeed, illicit settlers sometimes build their clandestine homes according to local building codes, even though these dwellings have no legal status. Similarly, they may approach any person they deem conversant with state-enforced law to prepare such documents—a local man working in a ministry in the capital, a respected businessman, or the stray anthropologist studying the courts.3 This shadow system may thus imitate state law or seek to fulfill professed state aims. The practice may also stem from distrust of the state or the perceived corruption of the legal system and governmental agents. Whatever the motivation and despite the lack of formal legal validity, parties are aware that some municipalities and courts do, on occasion, attend to these extralegal arrangements. Indeed, one reason for obtaining such documents is the hope that, like the construction itself, the arrangements will eventually be “regularized”—that is, brought within the ambit of state law because they accord with state-supported forms. In other instances, individuals track the formal legal system because documents they obtain carry meaning within their own circle even though they lack state-recognized legitimacy.
Thus one is confronted with an intriguing world that is partially hidden from view, a world in which the law is mimicked yet not directly applied, a world in which the rules of law may be active but lack any formal enforcement, a world that shadows the “real world” of law and forms a context for the lives of many people of different levels of education and income. It is this world to which I want to turn our attention in some detail.
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Youssef Halim runs a store on the main street of the Ville Nouvelle in the city of Sefrou, Morocco—a city currently numbering some eighty thousand people located about fifteen miles south of Fez. For many years the store was an épicerie, and though he now sells books and school supplies it still contains a tiny room at the back with barely enough space for Youssef’s small desk and a couple of chairs. There, in the mid-1960s, when Youssef was one of my first language teachers and general informants, I would cram myself into the corner and watch as people came to him to arrange their property issues. For Youssef was not only a shopkeeper but the expert on land matters for the local court. In that capacity he drew on his experience working as a contractor with his father during the late colonial and early independence period, and was often commissioned by the court to measure and assess properties, certify boundaries, and advise on the terms of agreements. Many of the people who squeezed into his office were there to complete work related to court cases and the formalities of legal transfers. But Youssef was also concerned to have me observe another group of clients, people who had no legally cognizable claim to the land or houses where they lived but who nevertheless came to him to prepare documents concerning those properties.
Beginning primarily in the early 1960s people from the poorer sections of the old walled city, as well as immigrants from the countryside, had begun establishing squatter settlements around the periphery of the municipality. Such settlements were hardly new to Morocco and many other cities of the Middle East: The well-known bidonvilles—the squatter settlements with their corrugated roofs and bric-a-brac construction that still surround cities like Casablanca and Rabat—had existed for many years.4 In Sefrou, too, several clandestine building sites also existed.5 The pattern of development was one that was replicated in many places. On abandoned or unused land settlers would put up what appeared to be an animal enclosure of thorny branches. Then at night, hidden by the darkness and the corral, they would begin to construct dwellings. Sometimes they would start by building a small mosque—which might in turn be cleverly named for one of the king’s sisters or children—and even attach some of the dwellings to one of its walls, reasoning that government bulldozers would be less likely to tear down a mosque and might thus leave the quarter itself intact.
The main settlement of this sort in Sefrou was referred to in those days as Cher Ben Seffar, the Berber term cher (pronounced with a hard ch, as in cherry, and meaning a small rural “settlement” or “hamlet”) suggesting much about the look of the place and the imputed origins of many of its inhabitants. The land had been part of a French farm until a few years after Morocco gained independence in 1956, and though the more accessible parts of the land remained under cultivation the portion that slopes down toward the northeastern edge of the city had been gradually populated by squatters. The area was formally under the rural administrator (qaid) in charge of the zone stretching well back of the city into the Middle Atlas Mountains, the territory mainly of the Ait Youssi tribe. In fact, however, the settlement wound up as a sort of administrative no-man’s land. The government-appointed mayor of the city (or pasha, as he was then called) wanted nothing to do with the settlement—in terms of either supplying it with water and other utilities or of overseeing its affairs—and the qaid, too, wanted no responsibility for it. So, the settlement grew apace, formally ignored by all of officialdom.
Unlike the more temporary-looking bidonvilles, however, Cher Ben Seffar was gradually being constructed of solid materials—concrete blocks, more permanent roofs, and even second stories. More intriguingly, even though the settlements were illegal and unrecognized, many of the residents found their way to Youssef in the process of establishing their dwellings. There, hunkered in the back office, they would have Youssef draw up documents concerning their land or houses just like those used in the regular courts. The paperwork might refer to boundary lines, proportions of ownership, or any other provision common to legally viable contracts about land or buildings. Moreover, the parties would consult with Youssef about the existing building codes and would commonly build their residences in conformity with those codes. They knew perfectly well that there was no formally enforceable basis to any of these actions. Nevertheless, the reasons they gave for this practice made sense in a certain way.
First, they said, they hoped that by following the formal rules the city would be more likely to recognize their property holdings as lawful and would supply them with electricity, sewerage, and (most particularly) water, which otherwise had to be carted in from distant municipal sources. Such strategies are hardly unique to Morocco. In Cairo, where two-thirds of the population live in squatter settlements, residents not only tap into utilities illegally and are then charged for them but in one area they even built their own on-ramp to the main circle route and later had it made official through the appropriate government agency. Secondly, the residents of Cher ben Seffar argued that custom is not separate from law but is an integral aspect of it. They would refer to various maxims to support the notion that practice is law as well as citing propositions deeply embedded in Islamic law. People would say, for example, that “when you are away your right (ḥaqq) is away,” which suggests that an unattended claim is not automatically entitled to enforceability and hence that land whose putative owner does not assiduously and continually assert his claims may be appropriated by those who make beneficial use of it. Another Moroccan saying they employed is that “a contractual stipulation takes precedence over the shari‘a (shert kat-ḥakem ‘al shra‘),”6 a proposition whose equivalent can be found in virtually all Muslim countries and periods of time Indeed, it is a proposition that underscores both the consistency of sacred law with the Quran’s emphasis on contractual relations and, in the Moroccan case, the Maliki version of the shari‘a with its emphasis on that which is socially beneficial (istiṣlāḥ, istiḥsān).7 Additionally, local custom may—as in the case of local inheritance practices—trump even Quranic propositions. Thus Moroccans, like many other Muslims, will assert that “our custom is our form of shari‘a,” a claim that carried special force when, in the early 1930s, the French colonial regime attempted to divide Berbers from Arabs by placing the former under Berber customary law and the latter under the shari‘a, only for many of the Berbers to join in revolt asserting that their custom is shari‘a.8
The fact, too, that the squatters obtained written documents, even though many of the people were not literate, added to the feeling that what they were doing had some predictability and legitimacy if only in terms of their own informal standards. On occasion, then, these documents could be produced before mediators or others to support their claims. In each instance the squatters saw in their actions a way to express the belief that local practices that do not contradict some indisputably clear divine ordinance (e.g., that there is only one God and Muhammad is the last of His prophets) are not only consonant with shari‘a but are shari‘a. By combining the existing codes with the principle that practice is law, they envisioned their relationships as “legal” and potentially susceptible to administrative recognition.
But there is another cultural element at work in this connection. For Moroccans it is the person who makes propositions credible, not the other way around. Whether it is a witness in court or an expert to whom one attends, it is by constructing a web of worldly consequential associations that a man comes to be believed. Being an officeholder may certainly add to one’s store of credibility, but it is not to the office that people address themselves but to the whole person for whom that attachment is only one of the many features that define him. The idea, therefore, that one might act only in a given role rather than amalgamate one’s position with all the other attachments one possesses is almost unimaginable. By using Youssef, who is both a quasi-official and a locally admired and scrupulously honest expert, the squatters could thus support their claims by adding that personal element—the involvement of a man of consequence—which is so crucial to legitimizing almost any kind of action in Moroccan culture.9
Although the squatters’ hopes for official recognition encountered frustrating delay at the administrative level, they were, given the cultural features outlined, exposed to less hostility from some of the judges in the state-run courts. For example, I once mentioned this tendency to seek documents through Youssef to the chief judge of the district, a man who later served as a high court justice. I suggested that the efforts of the squatters were a feckless practice since the documents had no legal validity. The judge’s exact words were very striking: “We cannot leave these people outside of the law (ma-imken-l-nash n-khali-hum ‘al b-r‘a shr‘a).” In fact, he said, he would be willing to recognize their paperwork in various kinds of land disputes or inheritance situations. By his assertion—and particularly his use of the (colloquially pronounced) word for shari‘a, rather than mere “custom” (qā‘ida,‘urf) or state-generated rules (qānūn)—he was, in a sense, ratifying both the squatters’ strategy and the propositions to which they had reference, not because he (any more than other judges) believed that law and custom are utterly separable entities but precisely because he shared the overarching emphasis on local practice as essential to preserving orderly relations, a goal he said was at the heart of the shari‘a itself.10
Although I have not been able to identify in the court records any cases that clearly turn on a squatter agreement as such, it is my understanding from clerks and from Youssef that such cases do arise under general contract terms and are dealt with by court officials informally, as when they act as mediators who employ their official position to conduce an out of court settlement (ṣulḥ) between the parties.11 It may also be relevant to note that the courts are highly dependent on experts like Youssef for all sorts of matters—for example, level of support for a wife of a given social standing, the appropriate bridewealth when a judge oversees a dependent’s marriage, the physical condition of a woman claiming abuse—and hence their concern with local practice is integral to the application of Moroccan law generally. The chief judge’s willingness to enforce such agreements no doubt gained further support by virtue of the fact that the use of such parallel approaches to authority are also to be found in other domains of Moroccan life. Since culture and law always have reciprocal effects it is, therefore, important to appreciate just how these parallel approaches play out in the broader context of Moroccan political culture.12
The parallel system of law gains further support from the fact that it is a political style that is not restricted to the realm of the courts. It is thus quite common, for example, for Moroccans to go to an official from their home region who has been placed in another location in order to have their disputes resolved, a practice Clifford Geertz once called the “shadow qaid” system.13 The practice, as I have suggested, is related to the fact that in Morocco the office one holds is generally regarded less as a depersonalized institution than as an aspect of the personhood of the individual who momentarily occupies it. Any such “shadow qaid” pattern is, then, not a simple locational issue. Rather, it demonstrates that anyone who has become a “big man” may find that people come to him regardless of location to help with their problems. An example may help.
In the late 1960s, a man named Qaid Said (from the Ait Zaikum fraction of the Ait Youssi tribe, but formally qaid in the separate Ain Dalia region of the Middle Atlas Mountains) would often be sought out by people from his home area who were involved, in most instances, in a property dispute. The qaid would sometimes address the issue himself, though on other occasions he would arrange for descendants of a local saint (pl. shurfā) to meet with the parties. While other officials used their displaced position to firm up support in their home region, in truth, people said, Qaid Said was unusual in that he was careful not to intrude too much on the prerogatives of the qaid in whose jurisdiction the property was located. Because Said was also regarded by many as the unofficial head of the Ait Youssi tribe, and because he was an important figure in the Movement Populaire political party (the so-called Berber Party) who had been imprisoned by the French during the struggle for independence and was a close ally of King Hassan II, it would be a mistake to think of him solely in terms of his position as qaid. Rather, his is an example of someone who cumulated many attachments such that, whatever else, people might go to him regardless of where his official power lay to address disputes in his home region.14 The pattern was hardly limited to the 1960s: Informants insist that it is common up to the present.
Thus, in Morocco it is not roles that define persons but the concatenation of their webs of indebtedness.15 To seek a person who has no formal power in one locale but has fashioned his ties to acquire power elsewhere gives to such an individual that air of being a big man—a person of “word,” to use the Moroccan idiom—whose credibility may carry over into multiple domains. And when one adds to this the Moroccan penchant to travel to whatever location may prove most effective to one’s purpose it is not uncommon to seek such an intermediary wherever he may be found. Notwithstanding the government’s attempt to move officials from their home territories lest they favor those to whom they are attached by local ties of kinship or alliance, the fact is that such officeholders may act informally as conduits for dispute settlement among people who seek them out in the territories far from the home area they share. Whether it is best to refer to what is at issue here as a “system,” a “practice,” an “occasion,” or a “pattern” of displaced political authority, it is clear that seeking multiple yet interrelated sources for managing one’s affairs is further supported by its manifestation in the parallel world of law.
The use of an intermediary whose formal power lies in a different location may, of course, further legitimize the state system. The use of a respected intermediary (wasīṭa) is a common practice throughout the Arab world and the sanctions they can be brought to bear by such an individual add markedly to whatever powers of personal persuasion a go-between may possess. Thus, such a person may be connected to the litigants by ties of kinship, residence, economic involvement, or political alliance, and all of these crosscutting attachments may be utilized to get one or both parties to accept the suggested resolution. But an intermediary who also occupies some official position is in a different position from other kinds of intermediaries because he might be able to use his official attachments to enforce his recommendation in ways non-officials cannot. The air of officialdom is an add-on that makes it possible to imagine that some recognizably official form of enforcement may attend this person’s approach. The result may, however, only increase the ambiguity of the situation, since involving the state is not always desirable—either for the disputants or the official. As we saw with Qaid Said, balancing the formal and informal systems is a delicate game, but the displaced use of a formal official, though sharing many features with the informal use of an intermediary, opens the possibility for yet another variant of the parallel system of law that affords disputants a range of mechanisms for addressing their differences.
Squatters and users of alternative personnel and procedures are not the only examples of a parallel world of law. Migrants working in Europe, for example, frequently obtain documents from Morocco even though by meeting the host country’s formalities they have conformed to the only legal requirements that would render their arrangements enforceable under various bilateral treaties.16 Indeed, such migrants commonly obtain not just documents notarized by the court back in Morocco but some piece of paper drawn up by a noteworthy figure that asserts a claim of status or property holding. Again, such papers may or may not be honored by Moroccan courts, but they do serve to regularize relationships and to attach people to the credibility of those issuing these documents and to their potential enforceability by state-backed institutions. Women migrants in particular, seem eager to obtain such documents, reasoning that any claim they may subsequently put forth will have greater credibility the more they are able to obtain proof of support from respected figures back home.17
Other examples show the range of variation along these same parameters. In Israel there is an organization that, even though the state does not allow same-sex civil unions, issues a document with the pictures of both parties. Also on it is an affidavit simply stating that they are a committed couple. The document has no legal value, but people will show it when, for example, visiting a partner at a hospital. This is another example in which the lines between state and informal realms are blurred. As in illegal settlements, those who seek such documentation for their personal relationships may think of these informal regimes as ones they want the state to eventually recognize (and thus, for now, they mimic state forms) or because they simply want some sort of orderliness to their relationships whose style may be superficially similar to that of the state but of such different meaning as to be a counter to the state.18
Parallel worlds of law may, then, exist in many forms—as the antithesis of the state, as supplementary models of the state, or as alternatives that co-exist alongside the state. The implications of their existence are as varied as their forms, but it is worth considering, in general terms, what some of these may be.
PARALLEL SYSTEMS MAY SUPPORT THE LEGITIMACY OF STATE-BASED INSTITUTIONS. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then any type of alternative legal setting that tracks the official system’s rules and forms may be seen as a compliment paid to it. Thus even though it may constitute a way of avoiding the cost, delay, corruption, or publicity of the state-run system, the use of the state’s forms by an informal system adds legitimacy to those employed by the state. Of course, in the case of the Moroccan squatters the mimicked form may leap over the state to what is conceived (or at least rationalized) as the shari‘a itself, but to the extent that state-run courts are the predominant enforcers of the shari‘a support for a common set of documents may actually add to the state’s claim to legitimacy.19
This may be particularly so if parties are (to borrow a popular concept from the law and society literature) “bargaining in the shadow of the law.”20 That is, if they are forging their ties with an eye to what the law would make of their situation—each, perhaps, using the threat, fear, or expectation of the formal law’s approach as a tool to gain advantage or security—this act alone would appear to strengthen the reach of the law, however indirectly. The desire for judicial validation may be present in the squatters’ agreements or attention to existing codes, although in the Moroccan case the evidence suggests that the emphasis is less on how a court to which a dispute may later be taken would handle the case than how such arrangements may contribute to administrative regularization.
PARALLEL SYSTEMS MAY UNDERMINE THE LEGITIMACY OF STATE-BASED INSTITUTIONS. The very fact that people avoid state institutions may suggest a lack of confidence in them, an unwillingness to consign one’s fate to these institutions alone. If someone avoids the official who has jurisdiction over a given person or issue, if one constructs agreements through respected persons who lack any state-backed enforcement power, and if one does so because the procedures or rules of the law feel unfair or unfamiliar, its personnel corrupt or its employment costly, the result can only be to call into question, and thus weaken, the claim of the state to be operating for the well-being or with the consent of the governed. The challenge to the state may not be direct, but in time alternative forums may take on such an important role in a people’s institutional life as to displace state-run institutions altogether.
In its most extreme form a completely separate set of courts from those of the state may develop. Various jihadist groups—whether in Afghanistan, Somalia, or Syria/Iraq—have fabricated such courts and used them as a direct challenge to state power.21 In other instances the sheer existence of an alternative forum may be seen as an implicit attack on the state. So, for example, the disputes over the creation of Islamic courts in North America, Britain, and Europe have occasioned pointed criticism and proposed legislation by those who feel that the concept of a unified national legal system is being undermined. In such circumstances, alternative forums may operate within the existing system as mediational panels whose decisions may or may not be recognized by state courts, or as religious panels that can only concern themselves with issues internal to the religion as a voluntary association. Obviously, form alone does not determine the extent to which those who avail themselves of these alternatives regard their choice as consistent with religious or cultural attachment, opposition to the overarching state, or features of both.
THE USE OF PARALLEL SYSTEMS SIMULTANEOUSLY STRENGTHENS AND WEAKENS STATE POWER. It may seem odd to suggest that parallel structures simultaneously strengthen and weaken belief in the formal law and its statist claims. But since such a possibility is neither logically nor sociologically impossible, it may in fact be precisely the result when certain cultural features are taken into consideration. Here I have recourse to the argument I have formulated elsewhere, that there is a deep-seated ambivalence to power in Arab cultures, that a kind of “tribal ethos” lends credence to the belief that power should not remain too long in too few hands, and that there are numerous practices—from humor and bargaining stratagems to conceptions of time and mechanisms for keeping all options available—that contribute to such a cultural emphasis.22 We may even be seeing a manifestation of this dispersal of power in the belief in the parallel world of the jnun (sing. jinn, the creatures of the netherworld elaborated in the Quran) since their emphasis by women and the poor often work as a threat and limitation on those who wield power over them.23 The dispersal of power across parallel domains is also seen in the not uncommon practice of placing one son in one political party or religious brotherhood (zāwiya) and another in a rival organization, both as a hedge against lack of affiliation with the powerful and as a check on such powers. Informants in Casablanca thus recently explained their inconstant voting behavior by telling an inquiring anthropologist that they did not want to be co-opted by any one political party, preferring instead to insure that power was divided. Since context, personal disposition, and perceived implications affect parties differently, their shared sense that power must always be approached while keeping alternatives alive contributes to the retention of parallel structures as a hedge against the limitations of powerful individuals and as a vital aspect of that repertoire of relational possibilities a free man needs if he is to move to effect in a highly changeable world of relationships.
Consistent with this cultural emphasis is the recognition that parallel tracks may also have occasional crossover points. For example, litigants may bring a case involving divorce in the state court at the same time that an associated property dispute is being pursued through the parallel process, and the strategy and outcome of the one may significantly affect the other. In a sense, then, simultaneous opportunities and institutions may be employed, each of which may reinforce or undermine the other. Using multiple avenues simultaneously or sequentially may also be another manifestation of the general ambivalence to power insofar as it may limit the state monopolization of all avenues of redress.
In the realm of parallel structures, then, this very ambivalence to power finds great cultural support. Parallel practices reinforce the basic norms of law while simultaneously diversifying the bases of power so that relationships can remain open-ended, subject to maneuver, and free from totally centralized control.24 The further implication follows that this is a dynamic aspect of political culture, one that can no more be pinned down to singular institutions or their momentary personnel than can the moves in a game of chess. Though rules do exist they stand in service of maneuverability, and in the case of Moroccan culture the image of a free man as one who can seek advantage in whatever forum or relationship best suits the moment has enormous cultural currency.
NEITHER THE STATE NOR GROUPS—WHETHER RELIGIOUS OR POLITICAL—CAN FULLY CONTAIN THE PENCHANT FOR PARALLEL ALTERNATIVES. Non-state institutions—whether political parties, NGOs, or religious movements—may, of course, seek to incorporate this pattern of parallel law into their own programs. Indeed, they may use such mechanisms to assert even greater legitimacy than the state itself is accorded. Here one could point to those fundamentalist groups that have put together a range of non-state services, including medical facilities and disaster aid. Whether as organized parties or informal organizations, fundamentalists play on the corruption of the state system to attract adherents. Such corruption has increased exponentially in recent years in Morocco, as throughout the Arab world, where any court case may now require the payment of bribes simply to get a convenient place on the docket or to have paperwork completed in a timely fashion. By contrast, the fundamentalists not only offer a certain degree of legitimacy to their law-like activities but hope to appear much freer of corruption than the state system.25
It is, frankly, unclear to what extent people are resorting to leaders within the fundamentalist movements to attend to their property arrangements and disputes, though they do appear in a number of instances to consult with members of such groups about family matters. All we know is that in various parts of the Muslim world recourse to fundamentalist organizations rather than state institutions for matters of personal status does not appear to be uncommon.26 Bear in mind, however, that even where states are relatively strong and stable, government-funded social support systems are minimal and state institutions are often perceived as corrupt. Parallel worlds of law and administration no doubt exist in such places and would reward closer study. Whatever these studies may show to be the case, it would be wise, however, to assume that there will be countervailing currents to the momentary claims of legitimacy, and that leveling devices, alternative centers of power, and intensely person-centered practices will prevail over—or at least stand in the wings as a counter to—the claim of any depersonalized institutions.
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Cher Ben Seffar has changed a great deal over the decades. Wandering through it now one certainly would not think of it as a squatter settlement: The houses are of durable materials, and the streets and shops lend it the appearance of a quarter of the city like any other. By the late 1990s the popular name of the settlement had changed to L’Mexique, perhaps reflecting its poorer rural immigrant population or as an ironic counter to Californie, the name given to one of the fanciest quarters in Casablanca. Whatever may be the etymology of its new name, a number of factors have contributed to the overall change in the status of the settlement. Within the last couple of years the head of the municipality—now, for the first time, elected by popular ballot and called “head of the municipal council” (ra’īs l-baladīya) rather than pasha—actively brought the settlement within the ambit of the city boundaries and supplied it with municipal services. A member of the successor to the communist party and eager for transparency in all of the city’s actions, he rendered the area administratively no different from other parts of Sefrou.27 However, new squatter settlements have grown up in still less desirable areas, mainly on the steep hillsides above the Fez road, where, as in Cher Ben Seffar previously, water and electricity are unavailable.28 How much the use of a parallel set of documents and mimicry of the urban regulations contributed to the regularization of Cher Ben Seffar itself is impossible to specify precisely, but everyone—from the mayor to the residents—attributes at least a portion of the result to this parallel practice.
The existence of such parallel worlds of law thus raises intriguing issues of comparison, including the relation of such mechanisms to the reinforcement of ties of kin and community, the relation of such practices to the changing sources of legitimate authority, the use of procedures and propositions drawn from Islamic law and applied within this parallel world, and the use of innovative vehicles for enforcement in the absence of state sanctions. As in the famous nineteenth-century satirical novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, in which those who are able to see multiple dimensions deride the monarch for his inability to see but one, the squatters may have appreciated that in a multifaceted view of their situation lies their greatest security. But the state may also have tolerated parallel tracks for their mutual benefits and because, in a world in which socio-logic is not the same as mathematical or philosophical logic, parallel worlds may not have to wait until infinity to intersect. For those engaged in nation building the existence of such parallel structures may, then, serve as an additional source for development, a way of attending to one’s own track by watching the other’s carefully, or as an unnoticed end-run by each on the state or its uncertain institutions.
Youssef died in the summer of 2015. But to the last he sat in his back office and people from the newer squatter areas came to him at times for documents that look real, feel real, and undoubtedly have real repercussions. To them this is no less the world of law and political culture than are the mayor’s office or the courts. It is in this parallel world that a not insignificant part of the law may continue to reside in a number of Muslim countries: To ignore it is to risk having a truncated view of the life of the law in these cultures.