WASHINGTON - Minneapolis attorney Sam Kaplan had been on the job as U.S. ambassador to Morocco less than six months when the government expelled a group of Christian aid workers accused of proselytizing in foreign-run orphanages.
"Jarring is the word," said Kaplan, recounting the episode in March that has put him at the center of a brewing international controversy. "When they chose to expel 50 Americans at one time, it was a jarring ... experience."
Proselytizing, or encouraging someone to convert to another religion, is strictly forbidden in the overwhelmingly Muslim country. Some of the aid workers were rounded up and quickly deported, leaving behind wrenching scenes of dazed and crying children.
The images have been carried around the world over the Internet, largely through Christian aid groups. Meanwhile, Western governments have monitored the situation closely because Morocco, one of the most liberal nations in the Arab world, is regarded as a diplomatic listening post in the Middle East.
Kaplan, one of a handful of Jewish diplomats representing the United States in Arab nations, has spoken out for the "due process" rights of the aid workers, a position that he says has not endeared him to a local Arab press that had been largely welcoming until last month.
"When your press has been almost unanimously positive for 5 1/2 months, the change is something that is different," said Kaplan, a longtime DFL fundraiser and Obama campaign contributor.
Kaplan also has felt the squeeze from some international aid groups who say the American response has been too tepid.
"We want to see action," said Salim Sefiane, a Moroccan immigrant in Chicago who grew up in Children's Haven, one of the Christian orphanages targeted in last month's raids. "We don't think the American government has taken a very forceful stance."
Sefiane, who remains in touch with the aid groups in Morocco, recounted the interrogation of children as young as 8 by Moroccan police. "They asked one girl if she knew how to do Islamic prayer," he said. "That's pretty intimidating."
Sefiane disputes the accusation that religious groups are taking advantage of Moroccan poverty to convert orphaned and abandoned children to Christianity. "They just raise us like their own," he said.
The expulsions were conducted just as Kaplan was preparing his embassy's annual human rights report on Morocco, a document that had to be revised at the last minute to take into account the ongoing developments.
Morocco has a long tradition of tolerance and permits freedom of worship to Jews and Christians, though the latter are largely foreign. But attempts to convert Muslims to other religions are strictly prohibited.
"American citizens have been arrested, detained and/or expelled for discussing or trying to engage Moroccans in debate about Christianity," warns the State Department's website travel report.
Kaplan's human rights report was generally positive. But in a statement that was widely quoted in the Moroccan press, he added that the embassy was "disheartened and distressed" about the expulsions.
"While we expect all American citizens in Morocco to respect Moroccan law," he wrote, "we hope to see meaningful improvements in the application of due process."
While some aid workers would like to see a stronger U.S. protest, Kaplan noted that his was the only foreign embassy to say anything at all, even though the expulsions extended to citizens of other countries, including Great Britain, the Netherlands and South Korea.
As it is, some Moroccan newspapers thought Kaplan stepped over the diplomatic line. But a number of foreign observers, including Kaplan and Sefiane, suggest that the real fault lines lie deeper inside Moroccan society.
Kaplan noted that King Mohammed has spoken about judicial reform in the past. "We're not speaking out in contrast to what the government has said, we're simply joining with His Majesty and saying if we can be helpful, we'd like to do that," Kaplan said.
In the evangelical community, the crackdown is seen as political gesture to Islamic fundamentalists, who represent a force throughout the Middle East.
Either way, Kaplan and his wife, Sylvia, are the face of America in what has turned into one of the Obama administration's more delicate diplomatic assignments.
Back on a home-leave for Passover, Kaplan calls his assignment "the opportunity of a lifetime for a guy from Minnesota."
"We have fallen in love with the people of Morocco," he said. "And they have taken to Sylvia and me. It's been a wonderful experience. We are really students."
Kevin Diaz is a correspondent in the Star Tribune Washington Bureau.
