‘Spiritual security’ as a (meta-)political strategy to compete over regional leadership: formation of Morocco’s transnational religious policy towards Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the formation process and evolution of Morocco's transnational religious policy toward Africa. Stemming from a pragmatic vision and functioning through multiple complex mechanisms and tools, this transnational religious policy tends to serve ambitious geostrategic goals that range from enhancing Morocco's regional influence in Africa, to providing assistance to several African countries in need to rehabilitate their own religious establishments and back up their institutional capacity-building to prevent the growing extremist ideologies in the region. Built on the basis of common cultural heritage and doctrinal choices that historically associate the ‘Moroccan Islam’ and the ‘Sub-African Islam’, this regional religious policy would bring Morocco about a meta-political strategy to revamp Morocco–Africa relations beyond the selective bilateralism (‘Rabat-Dakar axis’) which has determined Morocco's African policy for decades ago. Additionally, it would lead toward a kind of ‘spiritual security-based integration’ between North and West Africa. Yet, in this ambitious endeavour, Morocco has to face many challenges and difficulties, especially the sharp competition by some Middle Eastern and North African countries, which continually seek, likewise, to increase their spiritual influence in the continent.