Civil Protest and Islamic Partisanship in Morocco: Experience of the “Arab Spring”

Abstract

. The author examines the milestones in the emergence and development of the “February 20” movement (F20M) in Morocco during the Arab Spring, which had a profound impact on the social development of the Middle East and North Africa. The level of F20M’s cooperation/rivalry with Islamic parties/associations and reactions of Moroccan state to creation of a center of political mobilization of youth beyond its control is also evaluated. The analysis demonstrates the large set of political, legal and propaganda tools used by Moroccan Alawite monarchy to present the F20M as increasingly incompatible with all the set of traditional Moroccan values. The opposition of F20M to the King’s administration and its ambition to promote liberal democratic ideas in Moroccan society led this association to existential crisis. F20M’s message became inconsistent and less relevant when the King Muhammad VI systematically responded to social demands. Hasty implementation of the new Moroccan Constitution and parliamentary elections, which took place in November 2011, gave chance to the Justice and Development Party not only to enter the government, but to take a significant place in political life of the country. This skilful and moderate ‘Islamic policy’ framed F20M’s image as extreme and composed of fringe radical/revolutionary groups. So, this civic initiative was led to decline in the second half of 2012 – early 2013. A sec-ondary finding of this paper is that policy repressions combined with smearing campaigns turned the young reformists to radical opposition to the throne and helped to reproduce the soft authoritarian regime.