Morocco: Fundamentalists seek to impose their project for society
The Moroccan Muslim fundamentalists are riding high. Having made a remarkable entry into parliament at the elections of last September, they are now concentrating on changing the sociocultural life of the kingdom. The fundamentalists henceforth exert a tangible pressure, denouncing indiscriminately the moral decay linked to tourism, wine, and "secular, latin and Western orientations of the left-wing parties within the Moroccan government.
The Islamic Movement for Unification and Reform (MUR) considers that the Islamic character of Moroccan society and the State is not a question to be discussed. Better still, it is forbidden to discuss it. The fundamentalists have stepped up their public speeches against the deterioration of morals, depravity and the cultural aberrations imported from the West. They advocate the establishment of a moral order more in keeping with Islam.
The Party of Justice and Development (PJD), a political opposition group of 42 members, has become the mouthpiece for these demands. They are gaining more and more influence in the universities according to the Moroccan press, who recently published the results of a survey. The Moroccan fundamentalists are also targeting cultural centers, and foreign teaching establishments, which have opened in the Kingdom. They accuse them of popularizing secular and Western ideology, so that the Moroccan students who attend them know nothing of islamic culture, or their countrys history.
The problem lies in the fact that what is considered the elements of Western civlisation are often no more than the licentiousness which results from liberalism, and thus are objective matter for dispute.
The fundamentalist agitation coincides with a noticeable increase in the wearing of the islamic veil among women. However, it is not yet possible to say whether or not this trend towards Islamic dress is linked to a terror campaign targeting women. However, Moroccan newspapers say that in the streets of the larger towns, fierce pressure and increasing threats are exerted on women who do not wear the veil.
