Morocco: Using Salafis as Pawns By: Ali Ibrahim

Morocco: Using Salafis as Pawns
By: Ali Ibrahim
Published Thursday, October 4, 2012
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/morocco-using-salafis-pawns

After a veritable witch-hunt against Salafis for many years, the Moroccan government changed its tune when it realised that the religious leaders, with their powerful sway, could help it to resist the youth-led protests that took the street last year.

When the uprisings were quelled, the regime once more become hostile to its one-time allies.

Casablanca - Morocco reacted in much the same way as other countries did when it was targeted by al-Qaeda. Following bombings in Casablanca in 1993 carried out by Islamist militants, the Salafi current as a whole was blamed for promoting the kind of extremist thinking that motivated the bombers.

The term "Jihadi Salafism" was coined in police statements. It began being used by the media to describe all Salafis and all other Islamists deemed to be radical and by the security agencies to justify a sweeping campaign of arrests. In the four subsequent years to 2007, more than 12,000 Islamists, mostly Salafis, were apprehended or detained, according to unofficial figures, on suspicion or charges of belonging to this trend though nobody outside the police and media described themselves as its adherents.

Many were jailed after trials which were regularly criticized by Moroccan and international human rights organizations as failing to meet basic standards of justice, on sentences these same groups invariably described as harsh or unfair. Before the popular protests erupted in Morocco in the spring of 2011, merely sporting an unkempt beard or wearing Afghan-style clothes was enough to be suspected of belonging to this current, and could lead to arrest and torture in prison.

It was prison that brought the Salafis together as a current, with followers, leaders, sheikhs and theorists and indeed victims and martyrs and too. The prisons became the main "schools" for recruiting, indoctrinating, organizing and mobilizing members.

Outside jail, advocates of Salafi thought, even the moderates among them, were embattled with the authorities. Their ideas and fatwas were used as a pretext to stifle or put pressure on them, and sometimes to force them to flee the country.

That was the case with a leading traditionalist Salafi sheikh, Mohamed al-Meghrawi. In 2008, he issued a fatwa deeming it permissible for young girls from the age of nine to be married. When the public prosecutor launched a judicial inquiry into the fatwa, the sheikh, who was in Saudi Arabia, decided to stay there.

He remained in his self-imposed exile until the Arab Spring broke out in Tunisia and made its effect felt in Morocco, prompting him to decide to return. He staged a conqueror's homecoming and was given a hero's welcome at the airport. His feet had barely touched Moroccan soil, with the nationwide popular protests at their peak in February 2011, when he issued another fatwa this time in favor of the regime prohibiting demonstrations against "those vested with authority."

The sheikh was thus transformed from a fugitive from justice into an ally of the regime, hosting visits from the minister of justice at the religious schools he runs.

The youth-led popular protests, which were backed by both democratic and Islamist political groups, turned the Salafis from being enemies of the regime and government to being their partners in resisting the forces of change.

While previously the authorities had refused even to review the sentences of detained Salafi leaders, in February four of them were suddenly freed without prior notice: Mohammad al-Fizari, Abdelwaheb Rafiki (better known as Abu Hafs), Hassan al-Kettani and Omar al-Heddouchi. With the exception of the latter, they praised the "royal pardon" they were granted, though they had earlier refused to apply for one on the grounds that they were innocent of the charges on which they were convicted.

After leaving prison, all four sheikhs came out in support of the reforms announced by the king and the new constitution, though the referendum that approved it was boycotted by the youth movements, a number of leftist groups, and the country's biggest Islamist political movement, al-Adl wal-Ihsan (Justice and Charity).

Fizari in particular became one of the regime's key defenders, penning articles and issuing fatwas opposing the forces of change. He did this with a view to forming his own political party, though the authorities are still keeping that option closed to the Salafis.

During the last elections in November 2011, the Salafi current threw its weight in Morocco's urban centers behind the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD), many of whose members and leaders were reared in the lap of the Salafi movement. To the surprise of many, the party managed to win a near-majority of the vote in cities such as Marrakesh and Tangier where the Salafis have a strong following.

When asked, PJD leader Abdelilah Benkirane did not deny that his party had obtained Salafi backing, but declined to quantify it. Like the regime, Benkirane knew the Salafis constituted a major electoral force that could be used to counter his party's adversaries and promote its message. Now heading the government, the PJD continues to want to employ them as reservoir of voters to bolster its political position.

After the Moroccan street quietened down, the regime began reverting to old habits and began viewing the Salafi current as a potential threat whose sheikhs cannot be trusted, ideology is worrying, and followers cannot be controlled.

Its first step backwards in this regard came when it stopped reviewing sentences handed down to jailed Salafi leaders. This served to reignite the conflict between the two sides though, so far, it has mainly been of a legal nature.

Then, amid the fierce ideological struggle raging in the Moroccan media between the Islamists and the secular/modern current (some components of which are pro-regime), the regime opted to support its secular allies against the Salafis. This followed the issuing of a fatwa by an outspoken Salafi sheikh, Abdellah Nhari, sanctioning the killing of a journalist, Elmokhtar Laghzioui, who had spoken in support of sexual freedom. The sheikh and the journalist had both backed the regime against the forces of change and the protest movement. But when put to the test, the regime sided with the latter, and launched an investigation into Nhari's statement which led him to court. The hearing keeps getting postponed while the regime seeks a way out of the dilemma it created for itself.

The case encapsulates the regime's mixed feelings about the Salafi current. It needs its support to counter calls for change and the demands raised by the youth protest movement or leftist parties. But at the same time it is suspicious of it, its ideology, and its leaders especially in light of recent actions committed by Salafis in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, where they have been gaining strength under the new regimes while waiting for their chance to supplant them.

Last month, the formation was announced of a new political organization in Morocco, named, like a number of Salafi groups in Arab Mashreq countries, Ansar al-Sharia (Partisans of Religious Law). It initially had a logo featuring the phrase: "Your Sons at Your Service. Ansar al-Sharia. Campaign to Promote our Religious Law." But it changed that to the slogan "There is no God but God" on a black flag accompanied by a Quranic verse.

According to its manifesto, the group defines itself as "a peaceful, political, religious education organization" set up to "warn against secularism and man-made laws... call for governance by Sharia, and contribute to the restoration of the Caliphate state as a unifying political system for the Umma (the worldwide Muslim nation)." It deems secularism to be a "malignant implantation that is alien to the Umma and its culture, which amounts to blatant blasphemy and open rebellion against religion."

The document, which can be found on the group's Facebook page, says the group was set up because of the "prevalence of political injustice and tyranny and all forms of corruption and backwardness" in Morocco, and also due to "the absence from the arena of those who stand for God's justice." It deems other Islamist groups to have abandoned the demand for the application of Sharia "under the pressure of circumstances."

As for its methods, the group insists it has no "external organizational links," implicitly dissociating itself from similarly-named outfits in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Libya and Tunisia.

The document states that the association wants to create "a [climate of] public opinion committed to Sharia", to encourage people to "abide by the faith, fulfil religious obligations, abjure the prohibited, renounce innovations and engage in righteous behavior," and to "activate the Muslim street with Sharia-committed discourse in support of the Umma's causes" by way of mosque sermons, study circles, meetings and the distribution of books and publications.

It goes on to explain: "We will exploit this margin of freedom that was made available by the Arab Spring revolutions."