Religious Alignment and Criminal Justice Legitimacy in Morocco

Abstract

This study examines perceptions of criminal justice legitimacy in the Kingdom of Morocco. Through qualitative interviews from thirty-six participants, data were collected over six months in Tangier, Morocco. The results reveal the underlying frameworks that participants utilized to conceptualize criminal justice legitimacy through religiously oriented critiques. The broad spectrum of experiences and perceptions on whether the criminal justice system aligned with participants’ own moral/religious interpretations produced four categories: (1) the Moroccan criminal justice system as congruent with their religious interpretation and legitimate; (2) the system as deviant from its essence and can be legitimate only if it reforms to its precolonial Islamic origin; (3) the system as an illegitimate, alien, anti-Islamic institution that is irreconcilable with their religious interpretation; and (4) and finally, those that identify the criminal justice system to be a secular institution centering legitimacy in the realm of universal human and civil rights rather than religious beliefs. The overall results provide alternative insights into criminal justice legitimacy, address literature limitations with policy implications on southern criminology.