Zawaya

Islamic parties want a religious State in civilian clothing

By: Said Elakhal

The Moroccan political scene is witnessing a large-scale social movement, involving all society’s groups and stakeholders, especially the February 20 movement which accelerated the process of constitutional reforms.

All these forces call for change, but with different demands. The modernist movement demands real democracy and the supremacy of international treaties over national regulations in order to ensure respecting universally-recognized human rights. To this end, this movement demanded to constitutionally define Morocco as an Islamic country, and not an Islamic State. For its part, the Islamic movement focused on Islamic identity and the supremacy of the Islamic law over other international legislation and conventions.

This current exerted pressure on the committee in charge of reviewing the Constitution, and threatened to resort to all forms of protest, including marches and voting boycott, if the Constitution doesn’t explicitly define Morocco as an Islamic State.

The National Council of the Justice and Development Party stated that “prejudice against the Islamic reference of the State might strengthen fanaticism and extremism”, and it warned against “the danger of adopting ambiguous trends and unclear wordings such as” freedom of belief", which open the door to schemes targeting the religious and sectarian unity of Morocco and Moroccans".

The Islamic movement and the Salafi trend have different stances on the youth’s political and social demands, especially claiming a civil State. The Islamic trend that took part in the political process shows flexibility regarding the youth’s demands to adopt political and civil rights, but rejects the rights and freedoms it deems contrary to the Islamic law.

Such a position may gradually lead to confiscating rights and freedoms of opinion and belief, and imposing restrictions on arts and literature on the grounds of their contradiction with the Islamic law. As for the Salafi trend, it doesn’t only claim the superiority of the Islamic law, but it also issues fatwas accusing of apostasy everything it judges to be opposing Islam, and calls for killing anyone it considers as an apostate.

Al-Fizazi, an extremist Sheikh, demanded that by saying: “The universal public laws, voluntarily ratified by the Moroccan State, should be superior to the local private laws that make this country truly Islamic and not just on paper… However, including apostasy in the freedom of belief doesn’t suit us Muslims like it does others, because we are an Islamic State for which apostasy is a great treason”.

Consequently, Al-Fizazi asked the State to kill apostates: “This is a pure Moroccan characteristic that doesn’t comply with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 10 December 1948, particularly in the 18th article ratified by the Kingdom”. The State is facing the challenge of ensuring freedoms and rights for all citizens, while confronting the extremist current that accuses democracy and its advocates of apostasy.

The Islamic parties taking part in the political process should upgrade the level of their discourses to open up to modern values and human rights, and avoid indirectly supporting the extremist trend. The political climate produced by youth movements, with their claims and demands, provided the extremist trend with a margin of freedom of expression and movement that poses a serious threat to the security and stability of the country.

The attack perpetuated by Tunisian salafists against the Afric’art Cinema is an example of violence committed in the name of religion against intellect and humanity. The cinema hall was destroyed, and citizens were beaten up. This is the Taliban model that extremists hope to impose on Maghreb peoples. Therefore, the State and all active stakeholders have to accelerate political reforms and strengthen constitutional institutions to guarantee freedoms and preserve rights.