As religion in America is churning, with growth largely limited to Evangelicals, Morocco seems to be inching toward greater religious tolerance, according to the Middle East Eye. The trend toward religious conservatism in the United States is disquieting, but Morocco’s nascent movement toward greater tolerance is a positive step.

I have no brief for the clandestine proselytizing by fundamentalist Christians in Morocco while I was there; it is a version of Christianity I find particularly distasteful. However, the state should remain neutral with respect to adherence to or propagation of religious views and protective of the rights of minorities.

مرحبا بكم في هذا الاجتماع التجاري!

The greater metropolitan area of the District of Columbia has a vibrant Moroccan-American community. There are a number of social and professional networks and regular community events. From my experience, many of these events, such as the upcoming Second CEO Small Business Summit, feature a range of distinguished speakers and interesting topics. This year’s Summit will be headlined by Ilyas Al Omari, governor of Tangier, Tetuan, and Al Hoceima. The event will take place on May 19, 2017 from noon to 6 p.m. at the National Press Club. Tickets can be purchased at Eventbrite and must be purchased in advance.

There are few more volatile flashpoints in Moroccan political discourse, in my experience, than the status of the Sahara, known in my day as a “red line.” Depending on one’s point of view, Morocco has either reasserted sovereignty over its Southern Provinces following the Green March in 1975, celebrated in Morocco as a national holiday, or an oppressive occupation denying the rights of the indigenous Sahrawi people to self-determination.

As the United Nations Security Council endorses renewed negotiations after a recent flare up of the conflict in the southern village of Guerguerat, the Washington Post reports that there may be some hope for a negotiated regional autonomy plan floated by Morocco and supported by France, although the Polisario Front guerrilla opposition continues to hold out for “self-determination through a referendum for the local population, which it estimates at between 350,000 and 500,000.” Wash. Post.

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In the opening of The Graduate, Mr. McGuire has one word for the young Benjamin Braddock: “Plastics — there’s a great future in plastics.” The future appears to be less bright for plastics in Morocco, where the government is vigorously pursuing its campaign against the formerly ubiquitous plastic bag or “mika,” which has long littered the Moroccan landscape. In the past year, the government has reportedly seized 420 tons of plastic bags since passing a ban. The initiative follows the opening last year of Morocco’s massive solar power plant in the Sahara.

The ugly side of the Spanish enclaves in Morocco has surfaced once again. The two enclaves — Ceuta and Melilla — are the focus of a host of social ills, notable among them the cross-border duty-free manual portage of goods by desperate and impoverished women. The women — colloquially known as porteadoras or “Melilla mules” — carry hundred pound packs on their backs into Morocco for a few euros a day. So long as the woman are able to carry the goods on their backs, they are classified as “personal items” and therefore are not subject to customs. The authorities justify this barbaric arrangement as an economic benefit to the community. The trade is hugely profitable; the BBC estimates that it brings in at least $300 million euros a year to Melilla alone, and perhaps double that.

Casablanca is a great movie, and it has long been my favorite. I saw it first well before I ever dreamed that I would end up in Morocco, which is perhaps just as well, since this movie’s relationship to the city in which it supposedly takes place is tangential at best. It is basically an American movie about European problems, particularly noteworthy for the complete absence of Moroccan characters.

A couple of months ago a friend of mine — a poet and a broadcaster — asked about novels set in Morocco, since her work was taking her there for a roughly two-week working tour of the country. She’d read Paul Bowles and excluded Hideous Kinky. I did have a couple of suggestions, but my friends had many more. Here’s a rough list, in no particular order:

• Mohamed Choukri, For Bread Alone
• Tahir Shah, The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca
• James Michener, the Drifters
• Jeffrey Tayler, Glory in a Camel’s Eye (nonfiction/travel)
• Linda Holeman, The Saffron Gate
• Laila Lalami, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits
• Laila Lalami, Secret Son
• Gavin Maxwell, Lords of the Atlas (nonfiction, formerly banned in Morocco)
• Elizabeth Fernea, A Street in Marrakech (nonfiction)
• Peter Mayne, A Year in Marrakech (nonfiction)
• Abdellah Taia, Salvation Army
• Abdellah Taia, An Arab Melancholoy
• Abellah Taia, Infidels
• Tahar Ben Jelloun, The Sand Child
• Tahar Ben Jelloun, Leaving Tangier
• Lawrence Osborne, The Forgiven
• Fatima Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass (nonfiction)

Without mentioning specific titles, people also recommended books by Driss Chraibi, Walter Burton Harris, Leila Abouzeid, Mohamed Zefzaf, Abdallah Laraoui, Bensalem Himmich, and Abdelhak Serhane,and Mohammed Mrabet’s collaborations with Paul Bowles and Mohamed Choukri. It looks as though I have my reading cut out for me.

Acclaimed Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami has announced the completion of two new books, a new novel entitled The Other Americans and a work of nonfiction entitled Conditional Citizens.

Although best known for her Pulitzer Prize shortlisted novel the Moor’s Account, Lalami is also the author of Secret Son and Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, in addition to her wide-ranging commentary in such publications as the Nation and the New York Times. (I had a short take on Secret Son and the Moor’s Account when they came out.)