Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan: From a group to a front

After the death of King Hassan II on July 23th, 1999, the party as well as the organization declared their full support for the new King Mohammed VI. Ahmed Raissouni, the then president of At-Tauhid Wal-Islah explained that “the new Amir Al-Mu’minin (Commander of the Faithful) will enhance the Islamicity of the Moroccan state”.

In 2002 September’s legislative elections, Al-Adala Wat-Tanmiya emerged as the third largest party in Parliament and among the major opposition parties in the country.

They captured 42 of 325 seats in the lower house of parliament. The party is concentrated in urban areas. Having succeeded in obtaining almost 15 percent of the total votes and up to 40 percent in major cities, including four seats in Casablanca, they enjoyed relatively massive following in the big cities. Old popular quarters close to the city centre and peripheral suburban quarters were the main source of support.

The party cuts across different social segments in society. The diversity of the social composition of its constituency came about as a result of its increasing social awareness and its evolution from an apolitical to a political organization. Almost all the party’s parliamentary and candidates in parliamentary elections in 1997 and 2002 held graduate and post-graduate degrees, and a significant portion of the leadership and membership can be described as middle-class professionals.

In May 2004, the party chose a new president. The party congress elected Saadeddine Othmani as secretary-general, replacing the party’s founder, Abdelkrim Khatib. The party congress opened with a declaration of loyalty and commitment to Morocco’s monarchy and to democracy.⁷⁹ Othmani stated the party’s rejection of

“terrorism and all forms of violence”.⁸⁰ He recalled that the party was among the first to condemn the Casablanca attacks in May 2003.⁸¹ In his speech, he said that the key interest for his party remains the political, social and economic development of Morocco.

The initial stage in the development of the organization Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan began to take shape when Abdessalam Yassine⁸² directed his open letter, Al-Islam Au At-Tufan: Risala Maftuha Ila Malik Al-Maghrib (Islam or the Deluge), to King Hassan II in 1973.

Abdessalam Yassine was detained for three and a half years. After being released from prison in March 1978, Abdessalam Yassine engaged himself in preaching on religious and political affairs in a number of mosques. In May 1978, Abdessalam Yassine was banned from delivering lectures in the mosques without a license. Consequently, he established in 1979 the magazine, Al-Jama’a (The Group) (Darif, 1992: 321).⁸³

On his release in 1981 he started seriously thinking on building up an organization.

He sustained networks of participants that stretched around the country. In September 1981, he announced the creation of the Usrat Al-Jama’a (Family Group), using the name of his magazine, Al-Jama’a. In September 1982, Abdessalam Yassine applied for legal recognition for his association. The request was rejected for the organization “plans to enter politics in the name of religion”. In April 1983, Abdessalam Yassine re-applied under a new name for creating an association. Abdessalam Yassine asserted that Jamiya Al-Jama’a Al-Khairiya (Charitable Group Association) had “political nature” and concern itself with “political re-socializing” its members in particular and Moroccan in general along Islamic lines.

In 1987, the association raised the slogan, Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan and has become known by that name. In Abdessalam Yassine’s view, the concepts of Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan summarize the objectives of the association and the means to achieve them. Abdessalam Yassine explained in an interview with an Algerian magazine in the early 1990s that

“These two words were revealed in the Al-Qur'an: Allah commands justice, doing of good...Justice is a popular demand and a divine command. It therefore must be achieved in all aspects of life.

Benevolence is an educational program addressing the individual and the community. We thus combine two duties: the duty of the state and the duty of calling to Allah” (Darif, 1992).

82 He was a former regional inspector in the Ministry of National Education. Originally from the Sous (in southern Morocco), Yassine was raised and educated in Marrakech. He had a spiritual crisis in 1965 and recovered through the Sufi mysticism, but he broke with the Boutchichiyya order and made his entrance on the political scene by writing his first book, Al-Islam Bayna Al-Dawa wa Al-Dawla (Islam between the Call and the State) in 1971/2).

83 For more detail see chapter 4.

The organization had become popular. This popularity was evident when, in December 1989, Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan’s members, students and followers could organize activities in a number of Morocco’s universities and high schools to support the Palestinian Intifada in its second anniversary. As a response, on 30 December 1989 the regime put Abdessalam Yassine under confinement in his house, without any court order (Darif, 1992). On January 13th, 1990, the regime dissolved the association and restricted its activities, fearing a growing expansion, which the regime could not control. The regime arrested all the members of its Guidance Bureau.⁸⁴ They spent two years in prison and paid 10.000 DH. Within two years, the organization has gained influence and popularity.

Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan has been by far the best organized Islam-oriented organization in Morocco (Darif, 2000). An analysis of the organizational structure of Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan reflects a well-planned pyramidal hierarchy. Initially, Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan had an amateur-like organization, but since 1987, it began to professionalize its structures. Abdessalam Yassine had built an organization of a million followers with an elaborate apparatus. The association appeared to reflect the organizational apparatus of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt (Tozy, 1999) which maintains a pyramidal shape. At the top of the pyramid resided Al-Murshid Al-Am (the supreme guide).

In 1999, it was reported that Abdessalam Yassine created Al-Majlis Ar-Rabbani, a new structure that assured him the total control of the association. In the same year, Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan created Ad-Daira As-Siyasiya (political bureau). The bureau is composed of four members headed by Al-Murshid Al-Am and functions as a public organ. As far as political communication is concerned, it issued public statements on various domestic and foreign issues and staged media events such as holding press conferences with foreign journalists, giving interviews and issuing communiqués. The members of the political bureau appeared frequently in cultural and political gatherings held by other organizations and participate in marches and public demonstrations.

To understand the political potential of Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan, it is important at this point of analysis to explore and examine the social composition of its constituency. Among the movement’s priority targets is the student world, which Abdessalam Yassine’s organization has penetrated with effectiveness. They have gained particular support among recent university graduates and young professionals, male and female. The movement

84 They are Mohammad Alawi, Mohammad Albacheri, Mohammad Al-Abadi, Fathallah Arsalane, Abdulwahid Almotawakil and Abdullah Shibani.

recruits on campuses and from religious faculties, law and the humanities, but their concentration and success is in science, engineering and medicine faculties. The teachers and students were the dominant segments.⁸⁵ The loci of the movement’s recruitment activities remained the universities and high schools. According to Darif’s profile of members, adherents and sympathizers indicate that 70 percent were students and teachers.

In its initial phase, Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan was a student movement, but in today’s Morocco, it has developed into a social movement. The association worked laboriously on recruiting massively followers, teachers and civil servants.⁸⁶

The leaders of the organization believe in a political change resulted from a

“bottom-up” strategy of socialisation, acculturation and education. The long-term strategy of the organization focuses on the gradual capture of society, not just the state. Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan puts its weight wholly towards the end of reshaping society. The organization’s large constituency is based in the centre of Morocco, especially in the main cities of Sale, Casablanca, Fez, Tangier and Marrakech. The rural lower-middle-class and the urbanized off-shoots of the rural areas constitute an important element in organization. This expansion of the social base of the movement was achieved due to its social activities, such as offering Islamic education, combating illiteracy, organizing summer camps and public health campaigns. They socialise youth through educational, religious, artistic, and athletic activities. The organization has since February 1991, when it mobilized ten thousand members to the streets in protest against the Gulf War, demonstrated a high level of realism by avoiding any unnecessary and direct confrontation with the regime. This pragmatic and realistic attitude has helped Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan to recruit massively among many segments of the Moroccan society.

Since the mid 1990s, the organization has followed a pragmatic strategy with the regime by focusing on recruitment. This concentration was made possible, because the regime had been integrating At-Tauhid Wal-Islah, believing that the integration of this group into the political system will weaken it. This integrative strategy has helped Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan, because the attention was drawn away from it. This was helped by the fact that the organization has not accepted the political parameters as set by the regime and has shown no willingness to give concessions. Meanwhile, the movements has built an

85 Some estimates said that teachers represented 15 percent of the constituents. Teachers are the traditional recruit target of socialist.

86 Moreover, the Sufi influences of Yassine and of the moral and spiritual program which he devised for his followers make Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan attractive to a wider following, middle and lower classes, civil servants, peasants, and workers, who are the usual recruits of Sufi orders.

organization of a half million followers. The strength of Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan is best measured in terms of its sympathisers rather than in terms of its members (Darif, 2000: 295). For Darif, the movement is being in the process of transforming into a social movement (2000:

147).

One of the most searching questions put to Abdessalam Yassine’s press conference on May 20 2000 was whether Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan was planning to convert itself into a political party ready to contest elections. Abdessalam Yassine asserted that his organization was not preoccupied with achieving power, but with changing society through

“education, education and education”. In the same vein, Fathallah Arsalane, spokesman of the Al-Adl Wal-Ihsan asserted that in any case the organization would not fight elections for some time.⁸⁷