Religious Revival (tajdīd) and Politics in Contemporary Morocco

Abstract

The most popular of the so-called Islamist movements in Morocco, Justice and Spirituality (al-ʿAdl wa-l-Iḥsān), was not born out of opposition to Sufism, as was the case for most such theological and political movements in the contemporary Muslim world, which have rejected Sufi practices as reprehensible innovations (bidʿa). On the contrary, it was inspired by Islamic spirituality and the Sufi concept of imitation of the Prophet (ittibāʾ al-nabī) in the interior lives of believers as in their outward acts. The founder of this movement, Shaykh Abdessalam Yassine (d. 2012), laid claim to the earthly heritage of the Prophet, in competition with both Morocco’s monarchy, to which he was openly opposed, and the Sufi brotherhoods from which he sprang and ultimately distanced himself. Unlike the monarchy, Shaykh Yassine does not justify his Prophetic legitimacy by means of sharaf genealogy (although he nevertheless remembered to underline the fact that he was also a descendant of the Prophet, in the Idrīsid branch), but because of his exemplary conduct, conforming in every way to the Muḥammadan model. In addition, his mission is different from that of the monarchy, which exercises political power, or that of his original Sufi brotherhood, the Qādiriyya-Būdshīshiyya, which teaches spiritual progression and realisation: Yassine worked towards reform and social justice, which may explain why his teachings have mostly been studied by sociologists or political scientists.1 Yassine’s ideas were not restricted to the field of politics, in which his positions earned him the status of principal opponent of the monarchy. Above all a man of religion, very heavily influenced by or even impregnated with Sufism, he was a major Muslim thinker of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and author of an important body of work that is much discussed at international conferences. The Qādiriyya-Būdshīshiyya Sufi brotherhood and Justice and