Since the news of Ms. Filali’s death, outrage has spread virally. Activists have expressed their rage on the Web, through online petitions, Facebook pages and countless postings on Twitter. Ms. Belmahi’s organization and other women’s rights groups, meanwhile, have began organizing protests and sit-ins to call for the abolition of Article 475 of the Moroccan penal code, which permits a rapist to go unpunished if he agrees to marry his victim.

The aim of the law is to restore the lost honor of the victim and her family. But “what it does is legitimize the crime,” said Fatima El Machrafi, who works with the Union de l’Action Féminine, a nonprofit group promoting women’s role in society, and who is national coordinator of Annajda, a network of centers to help female victims of violence.

“The rapist can marry to dodge punishment,” Ms. Machrafi said. “If the family doesn’t want it, the judge can impose it. The victim isn’t taken into account.”

In Ms. Filali’s case, a court imposed the marriage with her parent’s consent.

Ms. Machrafi said the law considers the woman only in the context of her family. “It looks at the woman as a pillar of the family, not as an individual,” she said. “Marrying the woman of rape protects the family. It protects society. That’s their way of thinking.”

Some officials have called for a review of Article 475. Bassima Hakkaoui, minister of solidarity, women and the family, and the only woman among the 29 ministers in the government led by the Islamist Justice and Development Party, acknowledged that there was a “real problem” and called for a debate on changing the law. But she warned that this must not be done under pressure or in haste, which left activists uneasy.

Indeed, after a conference in Casablanca late last month organized by the Moroccan newspaper Al-Massae — which caused an uproar when it was announced that Mustapha Kellak, the alleged rapist, would attend — Ms. Hakkaoui claimed that Ms. Filali had consented to the marriage.

Activists were shocked: “Translation: Amina is guilty,” wrote Ghali Bensouda, a 20-year-old student, on Facebook. “Bassima insults Amina’s memory.”

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Activists were further alarmed when Justice Minister El Mostafa Ramid denied in a news release posted on the ministry’s Web site that Ms. Filali had been raped and also claimed that she had consented to marriage.

“He was talking about it like it was something that was normal, that the only thing that really shocked him was the fact that she killed herself,” Ms. Belmahi said. “I was disappointed. The problem wasn’t the fact that she killed herself. It was that she was forced to marry her rapist.”

The uneasiness that activists like Ms. Belmahi feel about the case extends to their concerns about possible backsliding on women’s rights under the conservative government.

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“Women being victims of horrendous violence like this, women killing themselves to escape from violent situations, is nothing new in Morocco,” said Stephanie Willman Bordat, Maghreb regional director of Global Rights. “It’s the political context, both what is going on here and what is happening regionally. Everyone is on guard, everyone is nervous, everyone is alert.”

Activists continue to organize protests and remain active online discussing this case and other women’s issues. While most media attention has been focused on Article 475, activists say a deep revision of the law is needed and have called for a comprehensive law proscribing violence against women.

“It’s an egregious law that should be abolished, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” said Eric Goldstein, deputy Middle East and North Africa director for Human Rights Watch. “There are many other things Morocco should do if it is serious about protecting women from violence.”

Although Morocco adopted a progressive family code in 2004 that many hailed as a leap forward for reform, Mr. Goldstein and others say that problems persist in the Moroccan penal code, including a provision that makes it a crime to harbor married women who have escaped their husbands.

“You have shelters in Morocco for battered women run by N.G.O.’s,” said Mr. Goldstein, that “could theoretically be prosecuted by this law.”

Another article in the code, he added, makes sex outside of marriage a crime, which further endangers women.

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“If a woman reports a rape, and she doesn’t prove her case,” Mr. Goldstein said, “she is then admitting to sex outside of marriage, and the prosecutor can then turn the case around on her.”

Ms. Bordat said this clause not only led to a fear of reporting rape but also to misreporting. “If a couple is caught having premarital sex, it’s a crime,” she said. “To protect themselves from the law, a woman may say she was raped. To escape being prosecuted for rape, the man marries the woman. Since the law is not responsive to social realities, people have to make up these fictions socially to get a solution that is going to work for them.”

Activists say Ms. Filali’s case has launched a discussion that was once unthinkable in Morocco.

“Amina is our Mohamed Bouazizi,” said Ms. Belmahi, referring to the Tunisian street vendor who in December 2010 set himself on fire in protest and set off the Arab Spring. “The women’s movement is beginning because of Amina, and we can only hope it has the same effect throughout all of the Arab world.”

Ms. Bordat said of the protests she had attended in Rabat: “There are men, there are women, there are young people, there are the traditional women’s rights associations. There are people coming from everywhere across the country. To see this kind of mobilization about violence against women, about rape, something as traditionally taboo as this, it’s amazing.”

The case has brought international attention, she added, noting that Morocco was criticized last November at the United Nations for its stance on violence against women and that it would be under pressure to avoid further condemnation in such global forums.

Rape victims have also begun to speak out online. Houda Lamqaddam, a 20-year-old student from Rabat, posted on her blog an account of being raped three years ago by two men at the beach.

“I never wanted to tell my story to make people feel sorry for me, I just wanted to say I’m not ashamed,” Ms. Lamqaddam said in a telephone interview from Austria where she is studying. “I’m ashamed of the rapist because those people shouldn’t exist.

“The debate has already started,” she added. “We have to keep it going. We have to feed it.”