Throngs Rally Over Women’s Rights Plan

Hundreds of thousands of Muslim fundamentalists and representatives of women’s groups took to the streets in two Moroccan cities, holding opposing rallies over a government plan to give women more rights. The plan, which would ban polygamy, offer women greater educational opportunities and rewrite divorce codes, drew an estimated 500,000 fundamentalists to Casablanca in protest. “We defend Islam with our bodies and souls,” the crowds of both men and women chanted. In Rabat, the capital, between 200,000 and 300,000 people representing women’s groups, human rights movements and political parties marched in support of the plan.