Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the Moroccan religious policy (1984 -2002) has relatively succeeded in forming a strong state fundamentalism that is used effectively by the Moroccan regime to cope with the political development and enhance the modern state building.

Paper long abstract:

Unlike many securitist-based analysis that overestimated the importance of the Islamist actor as the exclusive determiner of Morocco's State religious strategy since the end of 1970s, it seems that the official Islam was facing during that period, besides the Islamist challenge, other constraints related to the socio-political transformations marking the Moroccan society. In parallel to the growing activity of the Islamist movements boosted by the Iranian revolution, some political forces and modernist currents (political parties and feminist movements) have sought in their part to impose their visions and demands in the confictual context between the opposition parties and the Monarchical institution.

This paper highlights this paradoxical situation that the Moroccan political system was forced to deal with, in a way to ensure its balance and stability as well as to promote the principle of consensus in order to strengthen the modern state legitimacy.

This paper argues that the religious policy (1984 -2002) has relatively succeeded in forming a strong states fundamentalism which is used effectively to cope with the political development process. The Moroccan experience shows that political modernity can be undertaked through an investment of the "public religion" inseparably from the cultural and political local context. However, this modernization function does not work always in the same way as in Western classical experiences. Yet, this one may function in conservative, authoritarian way. The point, therefore, concerns more precisely a kind of «authoritarian conservative modernization», which positively interacts with the political process in the contemporary Morocco.