Islamism in Morocco. Religion, Authoritarianism, and Electoral Politics by Malika Zeghal

Abstract

The Maghreb Review, Vol. 34, 4, 2009 © The Maghreb Review 2009 This publication is printed on longlife paper BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS Books reviewed in The Maghreb Review can be ordered from The Maghreb Bookshop: www.maghrebbookshop.com. Our catalogue is also available on our website. Malika Zeghal, Islamism in Morocco. Religion, Authoritarianism, and Electoral Politics. Princeton, NJ, Markus Wiener Publishers, 2008, translated from the 2005 French original by George Holoch, 355 pp., paper back During the 1990s Moroccans followed the unfolding of violence in neighbouring Algeria, where the electoral victory of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) had been nullified by the military, with a mixture of apprehension, revulsion and relief. The stability of the Moroccan monarchy, it was widely agreed, had shielded Morocco from similar brutalization and anarchy. Conversely, the smooth transition of King Muhammad VI to the throne following the death of his father, Hassan II, in the summer of 1999, was widely hailed as an indication of the durability of the Moroccan system. However, on 16 May 2003, Moroccans got their wake-up call to the challenge posed by radical Islamism, as a group of Al-Qaeda wannabes emerged from a Casablanca slum to wreack carnage in the centre of the metropolis. The events of 16 May Morocco’s 9/11 are discussed briefly in the last chapter of Malika Zeghal’s study of the Islamist phenomenon in contemporary Morocco. The bulk of that chapter deals with the responses of the monarchy to those events. It analyses the manner in which the king sought to turn - and to a large extent succeeded - this direct challenge to his regime into an opportunity to redefine his role as Commander of the Faithful. The main theme of the book concerns the changing patterns of the relationship between the monarchy and other actors on the Moroccan political scene. In the first of three parts of the book, Zeghal, who teaches Anthropology and Sociology of Religion at the University of Chicago, leads the reader from the pre-colonial era at the turn of the 20th century through the course of the dual protectorate, the struggle for independence and the long authoritarian reign of Hassan II. In this first part, Zeghal analyses the relationship between the monarchy and the modern Salafiyya movement, the religiously inclined nucleus of the Istiqlal Party, and the divergent and divisive post-independence political system, which was manipulated by the palace to provide the king with an ultimate arbitrary BOOK REVIEWS / COMPTE RENDUS 393 status. The focus of that part is on the relationship between the monarchy and the fiulama and on the manner in which changing patterns of affiliation between the two redefined Islam in the public sphere. ‘While it is quite clear that Islam is today not necessarily the keystone of the Moroccan monarchy’s legitimacy’, states Zeghal, ‘it is just as clear that the regime continues to use Islam strategically’.p. 5 The manner in which higher religious education (notably at the Qarawiyyin University in Fez) was reformed during the course of the 20th century is one of the numerous interesting topics of the Part first. Royal patronage over the formal training of fiulama, implemented after independence by both Muhammad V and Hassan II, was part of a calculated policy to fragment institutional religion and deprive religious scholars of an independent powerbase. Ironically, the institutional fragmentation of the ‘ulama’ had been partly carried out by no other than ‘Allal al-Fasi, leader of Istiqlal and himself a salafi ‘alim, while he served as Minister of Islamic Affairs during the early 1960s. The monarchy’s success in taming the fiulama as well as the secular political parties proved to be short-lived and counterproductive, however. New challenges from the ranks of the military (the two failed coups attempts of the early 1970s) threatened to undo the stability of an authoritarian regime whose severe repression of all opposition increased its isolation. It was amid that background in the early 1970s that Morocco got introduced to the individual who for the next 35 years would personify most Moroccan Islamism. The second part of the book focuses on the biography of Shaykh Abdesalam Yassine (and to a lesser extent that...