Sanaa El Aji (b. in 1977 in

Casablanca Casablanca (, ) is the largest city in Morocco and the country's economic and business centre. Located on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Chaouia (Morocco), Chaouia plain in the central-western part of Morocco, the city has a populatio ...

) is a Moroccan sociologist, writer, and journalist.

Biography

Sanaa El Aji was born in 1977 in

to a modest family in a working-class neighborhood. The first of ten siblings, El Aji began her career as a journalist for ''

Nichane ''Nichane'' (meaning "direct" in Moroccan Arabic and Berber: نيشان) (formerly ''Aljareeda Alokhra'') was a Moroccan weekly arabophone and darijophone (in Moroccan Arabic) news magazine. History and profile ''Nichane'' was published from S ...

'' magazine, a

Moroccan Arabic Moroccan Arabic ( ), also known as Darija ( or ), is the dialectal, vernacular form or forms of Arabic spoken in Morocco. It is part of the Maghrebi Arabic dialect continuum and as such is mutually intelligible to some extent with Algerian ...

version of the

French-language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-Romance, a descendant of the Latin spoken in ...

magazine ''

TelQuel ''TelQuel'' () (slogan: ''Morocco as it is''), is a French-language Moroccan weekly news magazine. TelQuel is generally considered a quality magazine and more independent from the Moroccan government than most moroccan media outlets. TelQu ...

''. She edited the weekly article ''Batoul'' between September 2006 and October 2010 and continued her work as a liberated and divorced young woman in opposition to social conventions. In 2006 El Aji was at the center of a scandal when in one of her articles, the Moroccan ''humor'', she wrote jokes that were offensive to religious sensibilities. El Aji and editor-in-chief

Driss Ksikes Driss Ksikes (born 1968 in Casablanca) is a Moroccan writer. Career Driss Ksikes is a Moroccan fiction and nonfiction writer, playwright and scholar. He is professor of methodology and creative writing, and director of Economia, HEM research ce ...

were sentenced to three years, and their magazine was suspended by a court in Casablanca for denigrating

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

. The two received death threats following an aggressive report against them on national television networks. El Aji said she did not intend to offend religious sensibility, apologizing publicly. In the following years Sanaa continued to write for various Moroccan publications and was the editor of an article in the

Arabic-speaking Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic, including ...

newspaper '' Al Ahdath Al Maghribia''. In 2016 she received a PhD in sociology at the

University of Aix-Marseille Aix-Marseille University (AMU; ; formally incorporated as ) is a public research university located in the Provence region of southern France. It was founded in 1409 when Louis II of Anjou, Count of Provence, petitioned the Pisan Antipope Alexand ...

. She is the author of several novels; her most recent book, based on her doctoral thesis in sociology, ''Sexualité et Célibat au Maroc: Pratiques et Verbalisation'', has risen to national prominence. In 2019 she was among the 490 signatories of a petition in favor of sexual freedoms, together with the writer Leïla Slimani, the director Sonia Terrab, and the former minister

Hakima El Haite Hakima El Haite (born 13 May 1963) is a Moroccan climate scientist, entrepreneur and politician. In 1994 she founded EauGlobe, the first environmental engineering firm in the MENA region. She served as minister delegate in charge of the envi ...

, an initiative taken following the arrest of the journalist Hajar Raissouni.

Works

* ''Majnounatou Youssef'' (2003) * ''Lettres à un jeune Marocain'' (2009) * ''Femmes et religions'' (2014) * ''Sexualité et Célibat au Maroc: Pratiques et Verbalisation'' (2018)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aji, Sanaa El Moroccan sociologists Moroccan women sociologists Moroccan journalists Moroccan women journalists Moroccan writers Moroccan women writers 1977 births Living people Islam-related controversies Controversies in Morocco