Nichane back on the Newstands

After taking a bit of a beating from the Moroccan authorities, the magazine Nichane is back on the stands. Back in January, the Moroccan courts slapped the magazine's editor and a feature writer with a three-year suspended sentence and thousands of dollars in fines - all for an article analyzing Moroccan jokes. Nichane was also banned from publishing for two months.

Now that Nichane's stint in the penalty box is over, the mag is back, though clearly more cautious than before. Still, the scandal over the court case gave Nichane national exposure and it's selling like hotcakes. Maybe it's Nichane's editors who will get the last laugh over their scandalous "jokes" issue.

(Conspiracy theorists, of course, will no doubt surmise that the whole "Affaire Nichane" was simply a ruse between Nichane's publishers and the Moroccan authorities to boost circulation.)

Comments

[revenger]

dear editor,
i think you missed a lot of details about the the nichane affair dear editor nichane was not only moking the autoroties but also mking our religion and that of course what's appearing in the main pages imean in the cover up but this isn't the first they're moking our religion but they did this a lot of time but this time they did wrong by kicking the authoroties and especially our king mohammed the sixth and what's all they blamming them for i hope every things is now clair for you now and i wish next time before writing any subject you better do your best by englobing all the information from the all insides

[Will]

Revenger, you make a good point. Apparently, the jokes in Nichane poked fun at religion, as well as Mohammed VI. Nichane's editors might have done a better job taking the feelings of Moroccans and Muslims into account.

But so what? A free country's needs to be willing to accept criticism, especially criticism of the country's most important man and its most important religion.