Touching a praying rug is very disrespectful for Moroccan (or Islamic) culture if you’re a non-Muslim. They are very accommodated to tourists in cities like Marrakech or Fez, but in more rural areas, you might get harder punishment than just a little warning. Maybe it seems like a quite harsh thing to say, but we need to realize they’re way different culture than westerners. Most will gently say something to you and you’ll feel embarrassed, but do you want to be?
It seems like such an obvious thing to do, but not really. The praying rug looks like any other rug they have so if you’re in a restaurant and want something to cover up it might seem like a good idea to take it. This literally happened to me, but the owner of the rug was very nice and just told me not to take it since it was for praying.
You might not be so lucky to stay away and always ask. Morocco has a totally different culture to ours and it’s incredibly amazing, but in order to enjoy it, you need to be respectful. Many westerners aren’t educated enough about this for various reasons. But I always feel like study at least a wiki page of a country you want to visit is the least you can do.
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