𝗣𝗮𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗿𝗲's reportage on Morocco's unique approach to bringing monarchy, politics and Islam together - on the Panos site

 

In many ways, Morocco has charted a different course from its neighbours in the Maghreb. It is a constitutional monarchy and managed to evade the upheavals of the 'Arab Spring' that have brought much pain and conflict to other Arab countries. Though lacking the oil reserves of other North African nations, it has the region's third largest economy underpinned by a vibrant tourism industry and a highly productive agricultural sector that employs 40% of the workforce. Interestingly, it has also largely managed to steer clear of extremist forms of Islam, the religion of 99% of Moroccans, by embedding the religious establishment firmly within state structures. This notion of 'wasatiyya' (or 'golden mean') has been nurtured through a hierarchy of religious authorities and careful government monitoring of Islamic teaching.

The Mohamed VI Institute for the Training of Imams in Rabat, the capital, founded in 2015, is a vital element of this government-sponsored effort to integrate Islam into the education system and provide the country's 52,000 mosques with moderate preachers. Unusually, the institute trains both men and women among its 1,400 students who come from across North and West Africa and, following multiple terrorist attacks in 2015, from France, which signed an agreement with Morocco to train French imams. According to Abdesselam Lazaar, the director, imams in the past were mainly expected to fulfil ritualistic duties in the community. Nowadays they need to act as interpreters of modernity and a bridge between religion and civil society, addressing questions of democracy, equality, women's rights and secular education.

The college's library and the variety of courses on offer attests to its mission in educating a new generation of Islamic teachers. Gone is the learning of the Quran by rote familiar from other parts of the Islamic world. Here, students are taught philosophy, sociology, history and other humanities in Arabic, French and English. There are courses on anything from Christianity to Judaism and from mental health to family law. This broad curriculum is intended to counteract the extremist ideology that has taken hold in some part of the Muslim world and served as a basis of violent, jihadist teaching. Students are also encouraged to take vocational courses that enable those from poorer countries to earn a living outside the mosque when they return home.

Morocco's managed Islamic education system is the product of a reckoning with extremist currents that had been introduced into the country by preachers from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. In May 2003, a series of suicide bombs around Casablanca killed 45 people and in 2011 a bomb left in a bag on the Jemaa el-Fnaa, Marrakech's famous square, left another 17 people dead. What had been a relatively unregulated religious establishment open to extremist ideology from the Gulf was increasingly placed under the stewardship of the Ministry of Islamic Affairs run by Ahmed Toufiq, a historian and writer appointed to his post in 2002. He calls the Ministry's philosophy a 'return to tradition' that eschews 'foreign influences and deviations of all kinds.'

The Ministry also closely monitors the country's registered mosques, demanding full disclosure of the sources of funding and ensuring that they are built in accordance with Moroccan tradition. Though over half of recently built mosques were privately funded, the appointment of imams remains the state's prerogative and applicants are carefully vetted by the Ministry of Islamic Affairs. The country's school curriculum and textbooks have also been revised over the past 10 years and a state-funded radio station called Radio Mohamed VI du Saint Coran aims to infuse the airwaves with moderate Moroccan Islam. De-radicalisation programmes in prisons have shown reasonable success in rehabilitating convicted terrorists.

Pascal Maitre travelled to Morocco to document this unique marriage of monarchy, politics