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Morocco’s Fundamentalists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Henry Munson Jr
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Extract

Morocco has a number of islamic movements that demand the establishment of a truly Islamic society. Most of them sprouted up in the 1970s and caused considerable anxiety in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian revolution. But these movements have proven to be less powerful than was once feared — or hoped. After describing the main tendencies represented by these groups, I shall suggest some possible reasons for their political inefficacy.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , 01 July 1991 , pp. 331 - 344
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1991

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References

1 Most of the information presented in this paper is based on interviews with leaders and members of Morocco’s Islamic movements and documents and books distributed by them. My research concerning this topic was made possible by grants from the Social Science Research Council (summer 1987), the University of Maine Summer Faculty Research Program (summer 1988), and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Program on Peace and International Cooperation (summer 1990). I am indebted to Jean-François Clément, George Joffé, and Mohamed Tozy for their help. Further references can be found in Munson, Henry Jr, ‘Morocco’, in Hunter, Shireen T. (ed.), The Politics of Islamic Revivalism, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1988, pp. 133–47.Google Scholar

2 For a review of the debate over using the term fundamentalist in the Islamic context, see Munson, Henry Jr, Islam and Revolution in the Middle East, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988, pp. 3–15.Google Scholar

3 See Mohamed Tozy, ‘Champ et contre-champ politico-religieux au Maroc’, Thèse pour le doctorat d’état en science politique, Faculté de Droit et de Science politique d’Aix- Marseille, 1984, pp. 267–80, 307–45; Kepel, Gilles, Les Banlieues de l’Islam: Naissance d’une religion en France, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1987, pp. 177–209.Google Scholar

4 For a complete list of al-Zamzami’s writings and a brief biography, see ‘Abd al-Bari’ al-Ftuh, ‘Fi dhikra wafat al-’allama Muhammad zamzami bin-al-Siddiq’, al-Furqan, Vol. 6, No. 20, February 1990, pp. 6–9.

5 See Munson, Henry Jr, ‘The Social Base of Islamic Militancy in Morocco’, The Middle East Journal, Vol. 40, 1986, pp. 267–84.Google Scholar

6 A schoolteacher arrested in January 1990 told the police: ‘Abd as-Slam Yasin is for me a saint. I prefer him to my father and even to my soul. I am devoted to him and his ideas and works body and soul’. This statement is from a ‘procès-verbal d’enquěte prélirninaire’ prepared by the Gendarmerie Royale de la Région de Kenitra, 12 January 1990.

7 Procès-verbal, Kenitra, 12 Jan. 1990, p. 21

8 ibid., 13.

9 al-Amana al-’amma, al-Shabiba al-islamiyya al-maghribiyya, al-Mu ‘amara àala al- Shabiba al-islamiyya al-mghnbiyya: khalfiyat ightiyal Bin Jallun bi’l-watha ‘iq wa murafa àt al- difa.’, 1984, pp. 8, 51. This is a 151-page tract printed by al-Shabiba al-islamiyya in the Netherlands, to refute the Moroccan government’s charge that the group was involved in the 1975 murder of the socialist ‘Umar Ben Jelloun.

10 Peuples Méditrranéens, No. 21, Oct. - Dec. 1982, p. 57.

11 al-Mu’amara’ ala al-Shabiba al-islamiyya, pp. 16, 35.

12 Burgat, François, L’islamisme au Maghreb: La voix du Sud, Paris, Editions Karthala, 1988, p. 141.Google Scholar

13 Mohamed Tozy, ‘Islam et état au Maghreb’, Maghreb Machrek, No. 126, Oct. -Dec. 1989, p. 38. Similar control over his followers is exercised by Yasin.

14 Mohamed Tozy, ‘Champ et contre-champ’, p. 351.

15 The government’s use of torture has received a great deal of publicity since the publication of Perrault’s, Gilles Notre ami le roi, Paris, Gallimard, 1990 Google Scholar. It is also welldocumented in the reports periodically issued by Amnesty International, Middle East Watch, and the French Comiéh de lutte contre la réression au Maroc. A copy of a Kenitra pracèsverbal of January 1990 in my possession demonstrates the government’s ability to apprehend members and sympathizers of Abd as-Slam Yasin’s movement. (I regret that I cannot publicly thank the individual who gave me this extremely revealing document.)

16 See Munson, Islam and Revolulion in the Middle East.