Moroccan Religious Identity to Fight Fundamentalism

This paper examines the religious reforms launched by Morocco in the aftermath of the suicide bombings of Casablanca in May 16, 2003, which aims to foster a national religious identity capable of countering the increasing intrusion of extremism. This religious identity focuses on promoting the Maliki rite ‘madhab’, Ash’ari theology, and Sufism against the growing peril of Jihadi and the rising threat of fundamentalist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIL. The main research question of this paper is to what extent promoting a national religious identity was successful in combatting internal terrorism menace in post 2003’s attacks? This paper argues that Morocco has successfully prevented the occurrence of any major terrorist attack similar to the suicide bombings of 2003, through promoting and enforcing a national religious identity. This paper will test the success of the religious identity in curbing fundamentalism by measuring the number of terrorist attacks carried out across the country, ‘de-radicalization’ of Salafi-Jihadists, and the request made by other countries to import Moroccan expertise in deradicalization, namely Mali and France.