1/2/2023–|Last updated: 1/2/202309:08 PM (Makkah Al-Mukarramah)
The Moroccan comedian Abdelali Lamhar, known as “Talis”, sparked a wave of anger among Moroccans after he delivered a joke that some considered offensive to public taste, while others saw that the wave of criticism directed at him was exaggerated.
The National Association for Media and Publishers in Morocco had hired comedian Abdelali Lamhar to present a ceremony honoring the Moroccan national team after its historic achievement in the World Cup in Qatar, and the official attendance was at a high level.
It is noteworthy that the president of the Royal Moroccan Football Federation, Fawzi Lakjaa, and the Moroccan national team coach, Walid Rekragui, were on the list of those present at the ceremony. The Minister of Youth, Culture and Communication, Mohamed Bensaïd, and some of the national team’s players also attended. The ceremony received extensive media coverage.
Tallis used his skill to tell jokes, but one joke made him vulnerable to criticism, as he stated that he liked his own way of celebrating the goals scored by the Moroccan national team.
In response to the artist Thales, he explained that the joke was spontaneous and he did not expect it to cause such a great uproar, offering his apologies for what he called a slip of the tongue, and also stressed his great respect for Moroccan women, who “take into account her feelings in all his artistic performances.”
Many of the tweeters interacted with the clip, between those who saw the joke as normal and those who saw it as offensive to Moroccan women, and the “Shabakat” program (1/2/2023) monitored some tweets in which Moroccans expressed their position on Talis’ joke.
For his part, activist Zakaria criticized Thales’ joke, saying: “The joke or the comic situation for me, as we know, the pure and conservative Morocco that we grew up with and our hands, as Thales, is a fine literary genre that is available from beauty, not ugliness, and from wit, not bullying, and from kindness, not violence and contempt.”
Tweeter Aziz Lasheb considered that Thales’ joke did not rise to the level with which the Moroccan national team appeared in the 2022 World Cup and wrote: “People had their hearts with the team and prayed with them, and the players and coach were at the moral and athletic level and presented the most beautiful picture .. and .. Thales, see what I’m doing “.
As for the activist Osama Badr, he considered that the joke is just a slip of the tongue, and said: “A slip of the tongue can happen to any one of us in any two terms. We have a society that does not have mercy and there is something like the press and the enemies of success are not mistaken, so they ride on the wave of all support for Thales.”
In turn, the activist Mila linked the criticism of the artist to the level of freedom of expression in the country, and wrote: “The great attack on an artist means that freedom of expression is very restricted. Unfortunately, we hope to become at a level that accepts all opinions.”
In a firm position by activist Salim Alawi, he demanded that Thales apologize to the Moroccan people, commenting, “It must be removed from the artistic arena and the technical card withdrawn. Officials must apologize to the Moroccan people in general and Moroccan women in particular.”