Budhan: Has the Islam of Moroccans regressed with their toppling of the Islamic party?

Since it first began participating in elections, the Justice and Development Party (PJD) has never waited for the official opening date of election campaigns ahead of any vote. It conducts its campaign continuously and without interruption, beyond all calendar limits or constraints, presenting its electoral platform, urging support and votes, and disparaging parties whose programs differ from its “Islamic” agenda. Because this party waves the banner of the “Islamic reference framework,” any commitment to the precepts of Islam—whether in morality, behavior, worship, or transactions, in other words, any practical application of the “Islamic reference framework”—constitutes direct or indirect support for the party’s framework and its electoral program derived from that very same framework. Consequently, every religious practice of Islam amounts to an electoral campaign in favor of the “Islamic reference framework,” which is thereby reduced to the PJD’s platform. And since this practice is daily, as illustrated most notably by the five daily prayers, propaganda for the PJD is daily and permanent. Furthermore, the party’s propaganda offices number in the thousands, materialized by the number of mosques where the five daily prayers are performed in adherence to the “Islamic reference framework” of Muslims, which the PJD has adopted as its partisan and electoral framework. Added to this is the fact that every lesson in preaching, guidance, and Islamic education also serves as an appeal to vote for the party’s platform, to the extent that these lessons defend the “Islamic reference framework” and call for compliance with it.

Thus, as a logical consequence of the foregoing, we can explain the high number of voters who cast their ballots for the PJD in the 2011 and 2016 elections by the fact that they chose to vote in favor of the “Islamic reference framework,” in accordance with their convictions as Muslims wishing for the victory and triumph of Islam. And while this does not necessarily mean that voters supporting other parties voted outside the “Islamic reference framework”—given that this framework is a common good belonging to all Moroccan Muslims—the cunning of the PJD’s partisans lies in the fact that they turned this common good into an almost exclusive reference framework for their party, shared only by those who adopt it by voting for this political formation. They thus transformed their religious frame of reference into a political one, while placing the former at the service of the latter. And while voting for a party other than the PJD in no way strips voters of their religious belonging to the “Islamic reference framework,” as I have emphasized, voting specifically for this party means voting to support and strengthen that “Islamic reference framework,” which belongs to the political formation. According to this logic, voters backing the party with the “Islamic reference framework” would be more Muslim and more zealous in defending Islam than those who voted for other parties. Among the motivations encouraging people to vote for this party are therefore expectations of a “religious development” of the “Islamic reference framework,” even before economic, social, and cultural development, since one of the conditions for the latter is that it be in harmony with this framework… This is why we cannot conceive of a secularist or an agnostic choosing to vote for the PJD. This explains why the PJD securing the highest number of votes is a natural thing, given that Moroccans are Muslims and attached to the “Islamic reference framework,” which the party has also made its political framework, as I have stated.

According to this logic of the “Islamic reference framework,” which explains the PJD’s landslide victory in the 2011 and 2016 elections as a triumph of Islam in Morocco, would the monumental debacle of the same party in the September 8, 2021 election constitute a decline of Islam among Moroccans, who chose to unseat the Islamist party? Is this accurate? Does the decline of the party with the “Islamic reference framework” in these elections reflect a decline of Islam among Moroccans?

Let us stick to the logic of the “Islamic reference framework” and continue our reasoning and deductions. We said that those who voted for the party in 2011 and 2016 did so, among other motivations, driven by the desire for a “religious development” of the “Islamic reference framework.” Did those who voted against this same party on September 8, 2021, therefore abandon the objective of “religious development” of the “Islamic reference framework” due to some decline in their faith?

In reality, those who abandoned the party of the “Islamic reference framework” during the September 8, 2021 election neither renounced their “Islamic reference framework” nor ceased to be as Muslim as those who had voted for this same formation in 2011 and 2016. Quite the contrary, they discovered and became convinced, after ten years of the Islamist party exercising governmental power (rather than sovereign power), that it had done absolutely nothing for the “religious development” of the “Islamic reference framework” that forms the ideological edifice of the party and consequently governs its political and economic choices. Furthermore, they discovered and became certain that this party possesses no genuine Islamic political project to implement once in government, despite the “Islamic reference framework” it boasts about. This is why it spared no effort either for the “religious development” of its “Islamic reference framework” or for the economic development of the country. All its efforts, during its two terms at the head of the government, were channeled toward the “development” of the pockets of its leaders and senior officials, and toward increasing their bank accounts by accumulating money from government rents, parliamentary stipends, and retirement pensions… This is the sole “development” that the party accomplished with a success that exceeded all expectations.

Those who voted against the Islamist party in the September 8, 2021 election therefore did not do so because the party had failed to keep its promises regarding development, employment, education, and health…, but because they discovered and became convinced that, through its behaviors and practices, it has nothing of an Islamic party or an organization endowed with an “Islamic reference framework.” They discovered and became certain that the framework it brandishes as a slogan serves behaviors and practices contrary to Islam itself, as illustrated by the moral scandals of certain party affiliates, the illicit enrichment of its officials at the expense of the public treasury—that is, the people’s money—and the encouragement provided, through silence, to corruption, which reached unprecedented levels during their management of the government.

Those who voted against the party claiming to represent Islam did so after discovering and becoming certain that its leaders, as proven by their management of public affairs, are mere opportunists, careerists, and egoists devoid of any stable doctrine or consistent principles. They feel no compunction about combining unconditional allegiance to the Makhzen—driven by the privileges, economic rents, and exceptional pensions that such allegiance secures—with a simulated opposition designed to reap its rewards and capture disgruntled citizens opposed to Makhzen politics so they cast their ballots for them on election day. Thus, we see them sitting in government, approving laws, decisions, and agreements, only to issue populist statements claiming to oppose those very same laws, decisions, and agreements. The most serious aspect of these reprehensible behaviors by the Justice and Development Party—opportunism, careerism, egoism, and the rest—is that they perpetrate them in the name of Islam, which they brandish as their foundational framework.

Those who swept the Islamist party aside on September 8, 2021, did not do so out of a weakening of their faith, but rather out of zeal for and defense of that very Islam, and to punish anyone who defiled, exploited, and instrumentalized it to serve personal and selfish interests. They overthrew the Islamist party so that true Islam might be reborn and rid itself of those who turned it into cheap merchandise registered in their own names.

I have stated that Moroccans discovered and became convinced that this party possesses not the slightest genuine Islamic political project to implement upon taking office, despite the “Islamic framework” it so proudly boasts of. Why does the Islamist party lack any genuine Islamic political project? Quite simply because it is not, at its core, an Islamic party at all, but rather an Arabizing party that uses Islam merely as a tool to achieve its ultimate goal: the Arabization of Moroccans—meaning their identity conversion, shifting them away from their Amazigh and African identity toward an Arab-Asian one. This is why it stands at the complete opposite pole from genuine Islamic organizations, such as those found in Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, or Afghanistan. And when one mentions Afghanistan, the Taliban’s Islamist organization immediately comes to mind. Although I oppose the ideology of the Taliban’s extremist Wahhabi Islam with all my strength, I respect and esteem them. Why? Because they defend their political Islam within the framework of their Afghan identity rooted in their land, without using that Islam to replace that identity with an Arab one, nor working to convert the Afghan people into a synthetic Arab populace—unlike what the Justice and Development Party does in Morocco alongside other Arabizing currents. The Taliban’s objective is to institute divine precepts, according to their retrograde understanding of them, rather than to erect the precepts of Arabness, which is the ambition of the Justice and Development Party. The latter defends Arabization far more than Islam, which serves its designs only to the extent that it does not hinder this execrable Arabization ideology—an ideology contrary to the teachings of Islam itself, which calls for the dogma of divine oneness rather than the Arabization of peoples.

Some have argued that the cause of the resounding fall of the party with the “Islamic framework” in the September 8, 2021 elections lay in the ruling power’s desire to get rid of it. But why would the power in place want to get rid of the Justice and Development Party? In what way was it disturbing or harmful to its interests? On the contrary, if there is one loser following the collapse of this party, it is power itself. Why? Because the services that this party rendered—and would have continued to render had it remained at the head of the government—to the Makhzen regime were unprecedented; no administrative party or party subservient to the Makhzen had ever provided such services, not even during the era of the late Hassan II and his minister Driss Basri. This is precisely what I explained in a previous article entitled: “The Justice and Development Party, a Godsend for the Makhzen Regime” (to read the subject, click here). It was through this party—brought to power by the ballot box through the instrumentalization of the “Islamic framework” to lead the government—that the Makhzen pushed through all the decisions that eroded what remained of the purchasing power of Moroccans, which it desperately needed to face the budget deficit, without having to shoulder the responsibility incumbent upon the government in accordance with its constitutional duties.

The fall of the Justice and Development Party does not necessarily mean that the parties succeeding it at the head of the government will prove better or worse. That is not the question under debate. The true issue lies in the instrumentalization of the “Islamic framework” for purposes of fraud, opportunism, careerism, the satisfaction of personal interests, and illicit enrichment. These parties that will lead the government, regardless of their failures, missteps, and unfulfilled promises, will never attribute these setbacks to the falsehood of the “Islamic framework.” Such is the nuance, and such is the heart of the debate, as I have written.

For more than thirty years, I have made a habit of voting in every election, even though I was convinced that elections—and the balloting that accompanies them—amount to an absurd and sterile exercise given the nature of Morocco’s political system. But today, in view of the results of the September 8, 2021 election that put an end to the hegemony of the Justice and Development Party, which long abused Moroccans by parading the slogan of the “Islamic framework,” I have become certain that these elections possess undeniable utility. And I sincerely praise God for having lived long enough to witness, in a tangible and concrete way, the fruits of that utility—an outcome I will have experienced only once in my lifetime.

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