The Casbah Connection
Why Morocco is producing some of the world's most feared terrorists
All this cultural ferment, unsurprisingly, has been a boon for Morocco's Islamists. The Party of Justice and Development promotes what it calls Islamic values but insists that it is not a religious party. Rather, the party cultivates an image as corruption fighters who speak for ordinary Moroccans. It has avoided closure by accepting the king's formal roles as "Commander of the Faithful" and as sovereign. Many of its members favor the adoption of sharia , or Islamic law. Most political analysts believe that if the party is allowed to freely vie for legislative seats, it will prevail in the next elections, in 2007, and they worry about what would happen then. "If they gain power, they'll implement whatever they want," says sociologist Mohammed El Ayadi of Hassan II University in Casablanca. "They're not democrats."
"A true enemy." Another leading Islamist force is tolerated by the government but barred from politics. Justice and Spirituality, a movement that doles out fundamentalism along with largess to the poor, has a large following. The movement's founder, Abdessalam Yassine, spent years in jail and remains under surveillance. His daughter, Nadia Yassine, is an urbane author and movement activist who says Justice and Spirituality wants Morocco to become a republic with freely competing parties--without a king. "The power sees in us a true enemy," Yassine says. "The monarchy is not legitimate. . . . Islam is the nearest system to democracy."
Like Islamist movements elsewhere in the Middle East, those in Morocco have drawn succor from the groundswell of anger over the Bush administration's policies and actions. The invasion of Iraq and U.S. support for Israel are as deeply unpopular here as they are elsewhere in the region. Last year, the Washington-based Pew Research Center found that only 27 percent of Moroccans viewed the United States favorably. More worrisome, 66 percent felt suicide bombings against Americans and westerners in Iraq were justifiable. Jews were viewed unfavorably by 92 percent. And 45 percent of Moroccans saw Osama bin Laden in a favorable light. An important Wahhabi figure in Marrakech, Sheik Abderrahmane Maghraoui, wrote a manifesto condemning the Casablanca bombings as un-Islamic. During a conversation in his spartan prayer room, however, he was asked his opinion of bin Laden and responded by saying only that the al Qaeda leader lacked religious credentials.
_ Islamist groups here have connected with the poor by providing material help where the government has proved ineffectual. Food is handed out to break the Ramadan fast, and access to lawyers is arranged at little or no cost. An Islamist fixer presents a Rabat eye doctor with a list of people whose medical bills will be covered, no questions asked. The costs of a funeral and food for grieving guests are paid for. The Islamists sponsor women's sports clubs and extra classes in science and English for high school boys--a hard-line dose of religious and political perspective included.
Many Moroccans, however, blanch at more ominous encounters--vigilantes stopping couples holding hands and demanding to know whether they are married; acid splattered on unveiled women; drunks beaten; vandalism against liquor outlets. Islamist CD s and cassette tapes in Casablanca's black market spew hate-filled sermons about Americans and Jews. In the city of Fez, a man authorities described as a deranged former drug user jumped a family of French tourists by a mosque in the medina in February, knifing to death a teenage boy and wounding his mother. Just five days earlier, U.S. News has learned, the same man visited the home of an American Arabic-language student to do carpentry work. The man tried to convert the student to Islam, and the anxious student played along by pretending to convert. Even as an isolated incident, the Fez murder sent jitters through Morocco's tourism sector.
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