The decline of civilization: It is necessary to criminalize the destruction of the family, encourage abstaining from marriage, and endorse divorce!!!

Aziz Rabah

The old and new lesson: Building the human being through birth, upbringing, education, and honoring is more guaranteed for survival and urban development.

Advanced countries have realized that they made a mistake in their demographic policy since the 1980s by limiting birth rates through persuasion, medical support, and sometimes coercion, like China did when it forced families not to exceed one child.

This is in addition to the cultural and consumer policy that encouraged individualism values, spread conflict between men and women, and considered children a burden on the family and the state.

At the forefront of these countries are the United States of America, Canada, Britain, Russia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, Poland, Denmark, Hungary, Serbia, Greece, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Australia...

These countries have reached the peak of urban and material achievement unmatched in economy, technology, urbanization, and infrastructure...

Despite this, fertility decline, aging population, and weak generational replacement are considered the greatest threats to their existence and civilizational continuity. They fear extinction... This is in addition to the impact on social, economic, health, and even military conditions.

They also realized that immigration policy and bringing in labor did not contribute to generational replacement or prevent accelerated aging and reluctance to marry.

So now they have made family and childbirth a sovereign priority translated into a public policy directly supervised by their leaders, including the following measures that are not limited to financial incentives addressing the cultural and social fields of the family:

- Fighting the culture of individualism and selfishness.
- Spreading family values.
- Addressing the causes of reluctance and divorce.
- Improving income and creating job opportunities.
- Financial support for marriage and childbirth.
- Tax incentives.
- Healthcare from pregnancy to postnatal care.
- Parental maternity/paternity leave.
- Support and accompaniment in child-rearing.

This civilizational and existential threat has extended to Arab and Islamic countries, which unfortunately have imitated the West either forcibly or willingly in their demographic and cultural policies.

In addition to relying on foreign labor, as in the Gulf countries for example, to develop their economies, resulting in a heterogeneous demographic diversity that threatens identity, sectarian unity, national loyalty, and security sovereignty.

In our country, the national demographic indicators revealed by the 2024 general census do not make us far from the situation of these countries!!

The speech of His Majesty the King on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the Throne Day was decisive in taking these demographic changes seriously into account in public policies.

In addition to the measures taken by the advanced countries mentioned above and others, with which cooperation can be established to derive what suits the Kingdom, it is necessary to adopt more measures based on Moroccan specificity, including:

- Consolidating the culture and values of belonging and identity.
- Combating the promotion of disparaging discourse about the morals of Moroccans and questioning the behavior and honor of men and women.
- Making family, marriage, and childbirth a central focus in the sectors of Islamic affairs, education, media, culture, and youth.
- Developing the family guidance and mediation system.
- Raising parents' awareness to reduce conditions and pressures on their sons and daughters.
- Stopping any public support for productions in art or media that disparage marriage, spread conflict and suspicion among family members, and encourage divorce.
- Criminalizing discourse that disparages family, marriage, and childbirth. Destroying a family is more dangerous than destroying public property, which the law criminalizes.
- Criminalizing encouragement of divorce, separation between spouses, and incitement between them.
- Monitoring international programs and funding directed at the family and rejecting what does not align with the Kingdom’s orientation.
- Creating and supporting a beneficial civil society for family, marriage, and childbirth.
- Significant and effective support for the family in raising children and alleviating their cost burdens.
- Containing and regulating social media means against moral and cultural infiltration.

The lesson from contemporary human experience in all countries confirms that building or destroying a family is more dangerous and severe than building or destroying a large project.

The journey of the nation since Sultan Al-Mansur Al-Dhahabi, may God have mercy on him, and from his predecessors to the Commander of the Faithful Mohammed VI, may God protect him, has taught us that when the Moroccan nation, led by its kings and in response to its loyal and sincere forces, is determined, it performs miracles and reverses the course of history that seems irreversible.

The impossible is not Moroccan..
The Kingdom is capable, God willing, of reversing the demographic course so that the civilizational contribution and its radiance continue.

The Kingdom is capable, thanks to God, of prosperity and resilience at one pace, not two: building the human being and developing urbanization.