Islam| African|Passionate abt Youth, Social Innovation and Tech| @amaniinst Fellow|Change maker|Community Building|Development&Humanitarian| Views my own
First of all, Africa is not a race. It is a geography. Morocco sits on the African continent, on African soil and African bedrock. No diplomatic quarrel, racial prejudice, or football grievance can rewrite physical geography.
Secondly, claiming that Morocco is not African because you had a racist spat with some strangers on the internet could not be more ignorant. The overwhelming majority of Moroccans are of Amazigh descent, the indigenous people of North Africa, whether or not they still speak an Amazigh language. Centuries of Arabisation may have shifted language and culture towards Arabic, but they did not uproot an indigenous population from its own ancestry. The Amazigh are among Africa’s oldest continuous populations, present on that soil long before Arabs, Romans, or Phoenicians arrived. You cannot be foreign to a continent your ancestors never left. In fact, the most famous Moroccan footballer our generation witnessed was Amazigh, Mustapha Hadji.
Thirdly, Morocco was a founding member of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963, the very body created to advance and defend African solidarity. It left the organisation in 1984 over the Western Sahara dispute and returned to the African Union in 2017, welcomed back by the continent as one of its own. You do not get readmitted to a family you were never part of.
Fourthly, the Almoravid Empire, founded by an Amazigh dynasty and centred in what is now Morocco, stretched from Spain deep into the western Sahara in the 11th century. For centuries, trans-Saharan routes tied Fez and Marrakesh to the great kingdoms and empires of West Africa. Trade, scholarship, faith, and migration connected Morocco to Mali, Songhai, and the wider Sahel long before European colonisers drew the modern borders we now mistake for timeless truths.
Ibn Battuta, a Moroccan, crossed the Sahara and left one of the earliest surviving firsthand accounts of the Mali Empire. An African documenting Africa.
Whatever grievance you have with some strangers on the internet, geography, ancestry, institutions, and history all reject your claim.
And yes, I am supporting Morocco!
Cristiano Ronaldo saw the message of the Venezuelan boy who lost everything after the earthquake and he took action ❤️🩹🙏🏼
In addition to sending him words of encouragement, he invited Andrés to meet him: “I want you to attend one of my games!”.
Sending strenght and all best wishes to Andrés 💭
So close to watching the biggest upset of the World Cup in modern times, or maybe ever, in Miami tonight.
Props to Cape Verde. What a performance. What a second goal.
This is football.
#worldcup