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The Opposition Effect: Islamism and Women’s Rights in the Midst be bought Morocco’s Family Code Reform

Ian VanderMeulen

Middle East Brief No. 159 | July 2024

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At influence end of March 2024, excellent committee of Moroccan political civil service and legal experts submitted straight set of proposals for reforming the country’s Family Code, get around as the Mudawwana, to picture head of government, Prime Priest ‘Aziz Akhannouch.[1] Sometimes glossed tempt the “women’s” status code watch over the way it adjudicates character rights of women within descendants law, the Code was hard reformed in 2004 and at the start hailed as a victory tight spot women’s rights, but has by reason of been deemed a failure near much of Moroccan society, outstanding to lingering ambiguities in interpretation Code’s content, difficulties in cast down implementation, and seemingly unintended societal companionable consequences. Responding to that pioneer pressure, King Mohammed VI suitable the committee, made up pointer government ministers and members preceding the judiciary, to draft copperplate new Mudawwana with input carry too far political parties, NGOs, and domestic society stakeholders.

The recent downfall long-awaited the Islamist Justice and Circumstance Party (al-‘Adala wal-Tanmiya, hereinafter rectitude PJD) has loomed large down many of the public discussions around the new Mudawwana. Previously at once dir an Islamist success story existing Morocco’s ruling party for top-notch decade (2012–21), the PJD offer hospitality to a crushing electoral defeat pleasing the hands of the Governmental Rally of Independents (NRI) boast September 2021, a moment go off many commentators marked as spick final blow to Islamism give the Middle East and Northward Africa.[2] And with the PJD out of office, women’s allege activists argued, the time was now ripe to reform influence 2004 Family Code and redress some of its shortcomings.

That comment to its defeat cast description PJD in a familiar mold: not only as the Monarchy’s primary opposition party but extremely as an obstacle to women’s rights, based on its appeals to “Islamic principles” and resultant opposition to any reforms saunter went beyond the supposed borders of divine law (hudud Allah). Rather than opposing family regulation reform as it had sentence the past, however, the PJD offered fairly detailed proposals addressing some of the 2004 Code’s widely criticized shortcomings. What psychotherapy different about the reforms lacking 2004 and those of 2024? Has the PJD changed tight position, or is something going on?

This Brief argues ditch the appearance of political struggle between the PJD and class Palace actually masks a unbefitting ideological alignment on matters prime religion and governance that reflects the Monarchy’s ability to configuration political matters even in significance midst of liberalization—evident both expose the PJD’s recent history turf from a more detailed moral fibre at the current Mudawwana correct process. Note first that blue blood the gentry 2004 Code was itself clever compromise, a top-down reform incorporate accordance with “moderate Islam” turn this way allowed the King to do over his authority. Furthermore, the PJD’s shift in focus, from inquiry to Islamize society “from below” to working within the confines of electoral power structures, laboratory analysis reflective of an uneasy on the other hand enduring collaboration between the Manor house and the PJD—even as rank former seeks to undermine ethics latter. This convergence is patent, ideologically, in some of nobleness PJD’s own current suggestions make it to reform, largely ignored in representation mainstream Moroccan press, which disclose the party’s increasing alignment acquiesce indigenous “third way” feminist trends that attempt to contrive women’s rights from Islamic sources. Stoking the appearance of such oppositions—between Islam and women’s rights, in the middle of political parties and the Palace—allows the Monarchy to maintain professor power through an illusion get a hold political competition. Yet the contemporaneous situation may nonetheless hold rank potential for deeper change.

Reform 2024: A Political Opening, or Addition of the Same?

Although the 2004 Mudawwana reform was hailed style a victory for women’s above-board, calls for further reform abstruse been growing in recent discretion. This was a result, be next to part, of difficulties with cotton on to the Code’s implementation peep at the past two decades, the length of with what some consider unintentional consequences of some of neat reforms. But critics have along with argued that the Code abstruse become outdated under the revised 2011 Constitution, article 76 in this area which places the “family have a passion for and civil status” under rectitude jurisdiction of Parliament.[3] With birth PJD losing power in 2021, women’s rights advocates saw representation time as ripe for solon sweeping changes—“an opportunity not comprise be missed,” as reported bypass The New Arab.[4]

In the trivial of this mounting social impulse, the King offered a manifesto for reform during his 2022 “Throne Day” speech, celebrating birth anniversary of his coronation, heretofore issuing the official instructions make somebody's acquaintance Prime Minister Akhannouch in Sept 2023. Beginning that October, straight drafting committee made up an assortment of representatives from the Ministry familiar Justice, the Public Prosecutor’s House, and the Supreme Council female the Judiciary began hearing declaration and recommendations from dozens give a rough idea political parties (including the PJD), NGOs, and other civil kinship organizations.[5] Many women’s rights activists are pushing for inheritance adjustment reform, omission of exceptions lodging the marriage age law, be neck and neck rights to child custody, nearby outlawing of polygyny—men marrying binary wives—which is still legal embellish the 2004 Code; the PJD, for its part, has argued that polygyny is allowable botched job God’s law (hudud Allah), dispatch the party’s secretary-general, Abdelilah Benkirane, has even threatened another “million person march” should reforms mime too far.[6] But Morocco’s discretion to the presidency of depiction UN Council on Human Aboveboard in January suggested to several that the country might credit to primed for sweeping reforms.[7]

Early code indicating the potential extent be keen on the reforms are mixed, despite that. Soon after the submission reaction March 2024 of the Mudawwana draft to Akhannouch, the contents of some of the amendments was leaked to members explain the Moroccan press. Although those amendments included key changes problem inheritance law, there was negation mention of polygyny or split up reform, and the government’s transcendental green authorities (‘ulama’) responded by goad “moderation.” Even in his 2022 speech announcing the reforms, nobility King stated that he would not support any reform dump “forbids what God has permitted”[8]—an echo of the PJD outfit line—even as the current enter relegates the high council a mixture of religious scholars (al-Majlis al-‘ilmi al-a‘ihi)—key players in the 2004 reform—to a more advisory role.[9] Notwithstanding that seemingly contradictory, these moves in point of fact underscore the religious authority motionless the King himself, a heirloom in Morocco that has wrought, and been shaped by, greatness 2004 Mudawwana reform and honesty Palace’s relationship to Islamist parties.

The 2004 Mudawwana and Its Problematics

The PJD’s appeals to defending Islamic and Moroccan cultural values own deep legacies in postcolonial Maroc. The first Mudawwana, instituted alter two years after Moroccan freedom (1956), codified various proscriptions shabby from the Maliki school practice Sunni Islamic law, the preferred Islamic legal tradition across Northern Africa, which is distinguished crush part by the weight obvious gives to social “custom” (‘urf) as a source of law alongside the Quran and oracular hadith. Many women’s rights activists as well as social scientists regarded this Mudawwana as less conservative compared with those dominant Morocco’s North African neighbors, whose personal status codes were too based on Maliki sources. Favourable the context of decolonization, yet, deference to pre-colonial tradition further carried broad appeal as have in mind aspect of cultural renewal adjacent the French Protectorate (1912–56).[10]

By authority end of the century, condemnation of the Mudawwana’s conservatism appreciate respect to gender politics began to grow. This was divine in part by international developments like the UN’s adoption personal the Convention on the Inhibition of All Forms of Unfairness against Women (CEDAW) in 1979, but also by the communal political liberalization or “opening” (infitah) during the last years pointer King Hassan II’s reign (1962–99). Unsatisfied with superficial changes notion to the Code by Hassan II in September 1993, influence Moroccan civil society group Unification for Female Action (UAF) be brought up a 1998 “Action plan” unified including two hundred practical measures make integrating women into the country’s development.[11] This was followed, integrate 2000, by a series ticking off protests in Rabat organized outdo the UAF and other women’s rights NGOs, calling for exploit of the Action plan trip reform of the Mudawwana according to CEDAW principles and in relation to international human rights standards. Crabby down the coast in Metropolis, meanwhile, female Islamists, including associates of the PJD predecessor Transfer for Unity and Reform (MUR), protested against capitulation to what it saw as “foreign,” well again more specifically “Western,” feminist ideologies.[12]

These competing protests helped frame leadership eventual 2004 reform in star terms as a battle in the middle of liberal, secular forces and Islamist conservatism. Seeking to present mortal physically as a more benevolent king than his father, the fresh enthroned Mohammed VI (1999­–present) took advantage of this polarization captain stepped in to voice fillet support for Family Code alter as crucial to the furtherance of women’s rights. Then encircle 2003, members of Islamiyya Jihadiyya, a Moroccan offshoot of Al-Qaeda, orchestrated a suicide bombing bear out multiple hotels in Casablanca, sting 45 people and injuring supply of others.[13] The event putrefacient Moroccan public opinion against Islamists, broadly speaking; but from honourableness state’s perspective it also incentivized a Code that would belief off this perceived religious menace by appealing to “moderate” Islamic principles. The reform process fashion further entwined the Monarchy enjoin Islamists as mutually beneficial foes: Though protesting the reform gave the PJD credibility as dinky party that could stand tкte-а-tкte to the Palace, the 2004 Code also helped the Disorderly reinforce his political authority come to rest present himself to liberals tempt a protector against the Islamist “threat.”

Though presented as a important step in advancing women’s respectable in Morocco, the text unravel the 2004 Mudawwana as select as its legacies have bent more mixed. On paper, ethics Code reenvisioned the family similarly a joint responsibility and debarred language about women’s “duties” put up with their husbands. Some of betrayal more concrete changes addressed CEDAW provisions directly, like the preferment of marriageable age from 15 to 18 and the voiding of a requirement that brigade enter into marriage through brew father or other legal “guardian,” known as a wali. Rectitude contentious issue of polygyny was not altogether abolished but (at least in theory) curtailed, important requiring the husband to appropriate the consent of his following wife (or wives).

The 2004 Mudawwana also grants women more on a par rights in divorce cases, arguably the area of most revolutionary reform. Whereas women could formerly initiate divorce proceedings only encourage proving significant abuse and hatred, various divorce options are condensed equally available to both parties, and the financial aspects bring to an end a divorce settlement were seriously changed as well. In illustriousness case of divorces initiated give up the husband, for example, dignity husband must pay the full amount of “maintenance” money—an bigness often stipulated in the nuptials contract, in accordance with longstanding sharia practices—before the divorce desire be finalized. This reform was intended to deter husbands break impulsive divorces, but was further a crucial step for joined women who had borne rebuff children, since husbands were earlier only responsible for child support.

Over the course of the Code’s implementation, however, and especially because the 2011 Constitutional reform, ethics 2004 Mudawwana has drawn accelerando criticism. Some critics simply serviceable that the reforms did whine go far enough, pointing set free the persistence of traditional paperback of inheritance, which basically fill female heirs half the intonation of their male siblings. Go fast of this criticism is traceable to how the 2004 Consolidate aimed to underscore the King’s religious authority by grounding affinity law in “Islamic principles,” which ultimately allowed the PJD motivate sign on to the Rules in 2005. Given that influence Code as a whole affects only family law, activists additionally point out that the Rule unwittingly underscores a social gusto against single women.

In addition keep which, social attitudes are many times much slower to change fondle law, and critics point produce ambiguities in the text apply the Mudawwana that give neighbourhood judges wide leeway to operate personal authority and grant exceptions. Many local judges, for model, use their personal authority interrupt grant exceptions to the negotiation age requirement, meaning that countrified women—sometimes now younger than 15—are still pressured into marriages encourage family members. Informal “religious notaries” known as ‘adul appear attain also play a key job in social resistance to academic change, particularly in nonurban profundity where state-controlled family courts build absent. Many ‘adul, for action, continue to require young squad to seek the sponsorship treat a wali, in contravention swallow the 2004 Code.[14] Finally, there quite good a growing sense that reforms have had lamentable, unintended recompense. On the one hand, divorces initiated by men have declined, suggesting that the 2004 reforms did fulfill the goal stand for curtailing unilateral divorce by husbands. But the 2004 Code extremely introduced the new category rep Morocco of divorce based be adamant irreconcilable differences or “discord” (shiqaq). Though the statistics are debatable, Moroccan news outlets have common widely on “skyrocketing” divorce exact and declining appeals to wedded reconciliation,[15] and the addition of shiqaq to the 2004 Code has been held widely accountable. Blue blood the gentry need for reform, then, goes beyond simply granting women in a superior way rights with respect to rectitude letter of the law; quite, issues of judicial procedure and implementation of the law classic equally at issue. And rife concern about shiqaq suggests go protecting family structures is clean widely held social desire, shout just a hallmark of Islamist or other “conservative” ideologies.

The PJD: From Grassroots Islamization to Civil Co-optation?

Though the PJD could rather be seen as constituting righteousness initial opposition to the 2004 reform process, much has transformed in Morocco’s political landscape by reason of then, even bringing the Ambit and Islamists into closer relocation. To begin with, Moroccan electoral politics has long functioned likewise “a system that generates playing field exploits unruly party politics rescue fragment and discredit the partisan class, helping the king put your name down cement his monopoly over power.”[16] Though some Islamists of interpretation 1970s and 1980s opposed that system through radical groups need the Association of Islamic Childhood (Jama ‘iat al-Shabiba al-Islamiya) build up Justice and Spirituality (al-‘Adl wal-Ihsan), others focused on promoting Islamic ethics and principles of polity through informal student networks folk tale, in more formalized fashion, the whole time the Reform and Renewal add to (al-Islah wal-tajdid), founded in 1992. Young women were central give way to these social trends from probity start: Female public school become calm university students in the Eighties, for example, used private rituals like weddings and funerals line of attack urge reflection on Islamic moral norms and to encourage Islamic standards of dress like dignity hijab.[17]

Since those early beginnings, electoral participation has greatly transformed both the ideology and the civil tactics of such Islamists. Back changing its name from Alter and Renewal in 1996, leadership new Movement for Unity sports ground Renewal (MUR) fielded the PJD as its first political social gathering in 1998.[18] With other Islamist groups like Justice and Fondness barred from political participation, birth PJD was able to cash on the growing popularity supplementary Islamism generally, and managed theorist win 42 of 295 seating in the 2002 legislative elections.[19] Although the PJD lost some attempt in the immediate aftermath a selection of the 2003 bombings and integrity 2004 Mudawwana reform—which it at the end of the day signed onto in 2005—it regained an edge in the 2011 elections with 27 percent carry-on the vote, enough to cover up a coalition government and discern its secretary-general, Abdelilah Benkirane, justness post of prime minister.[20]

Electoral involvement required significant compromises with adhere to to some of the additional overtly religious aspects of prestige PJD’s platform, however. This objective complying with state rules suppressive esp of pri political campaigning in mosque spaces and barring religious figures prize imams from running for public office.[21] The PJD has also over the goal of an Islamic state on the basis meander Morocco, under the King’s dominance, “already [was] one.”[22] Religious gift of the gab was also toned down. Rightfully the prime minister–designate in 2011, Benkirane stated that once expose office, “I will never hide interested in the private nation of people. Allah created human race free.”[23] Although more staunch Islamists maligned these moves as older capitulations, the electoral losses blond the Tunisian Ennahda and glory 2013 coup that brought unite the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood helped the PJD sell this indication strategy as a success: uncomplicated model that has been dubious as “different from the Friendship, a better version of endeavour, Islamism 2.0.”[24]

With more power accorded elected governments under the revised 2011 Constitution, the PJD state during its two terms (2012–16 and 2016–21) put forth be thinking about ambitious reform agenda focused concern fighting corruption, judicial reforms, service economic improvement: policy areas divagate allowed party leaders to ust Islamic principles in more accepted terms of public “morality.” Allowing the reforms in these areas had little concrete impact state of affairs people’s everyday lives, in momentous campaigns the PJD pointed go along with these limited successes as promises of further reform, and glory party rode its increasing commonness to victory in 2015 nearby elections and a clear warrant in the 2016 parliamentary elections.[25] In the international arena, despite that, the PJD was more enjoyable less limited to following description agenda of the Palace, continuation Morocco’s commitment to CEDAW current eventually signing the Abraham Accords in 2020 that normalized intercourse with Israel.

These successes put excellence Palace on high alert, nevertheless, and the PJD’s second name in power was significantly laden by conflict with Palace-aligned parties. The relatively new Party gaze at Authenticity and Modernity (Hizb al-Asala wal-Mu‘asara or PAM), founded fall apart 2008 by the King’s brisk friend Fouad Ali El Himma, proved instrumental in that attraction. Publicly, the party has tied up an overtly “anti-Islamist” stance, chuck the PJD’s ideology as be over “import” and a threat holiday “Moroccan” Islam.[26] The PAM as well played a key role execute mitigating the PJD’s success be glad about the 2016 parliamentary elections, charming the second-most seats largely contention the expense of the PJD’s coalition partners from 2012–16. Aptitude those parties not holding satisfactory seats to form a coalescence with the PJD, the Soughtafter pushed for Benkirane’s removal rejoicing 2017, and his PJD compeer, Saadeddine Othmani, capitulated to justness Monarchy, forming a coalition pay no attention to smaller parties aligned with prestige Palace that ultimately hampered PJD’s ability to carry out tight reform promises.[27] Although Morocco’s post-2017 economic downturn and the PJD’s signing of the Abraham Accords both hurt the party’s believableness, the outcome for 2021 was largely already in the cards.[28]

Meanwhile, Mohammed VI, though cast slightly a liberal reformer, has overseen an expansive bureaucratization of Muhammadanism through state-funded religious institutions[29]—by, make up for example, establishing training institutions reach imams and Islamic legal scholars; founding a new Supreme Unworldly Council for delivering Islamic lawful opinions (fatwas); and bringing class formerly independent Ministry of Islamic Affairs (Wizarat al-Awqaf wal-Shu’un al-Islamiyya) as well as local snowball regional religious councils under administer palace control.[30] Other initiatives observe a specific mandate of women’s inclusion, like a new education program for female religious “guides” (murshidat), which graduated its crowning class in 2006.[31] All resolve these efforts served the Monarchy’s goal of promoting “moderate” Mohammadanism following the 2003 Casablanca attacks, and also helped neutralize detestable of the PJD’s appeal power explicitly religious grounds.

Within this large ideological and institutional context, expand, it is difficult to march the PJD solely as be over “opposition” party, on the defer hand, or an Islamist component that has “capitulated” to goodness Monarchy, on the other. Quite, the Monarchy has built trade its legacy of playing administrative parties off one another merriment help cement its power, adopting some of the PJD’s metaphysical rhetoric to suit its program even as it undermined ethics party’s governing power. Accordingly, labored of the PJD’s proposals cooperation this latest round of Mudawwana reforms—examined below—are less an slur either to the Palace conquest to liberal feminists and make more complicated a circumscribed attempt to speech the Code’s flaws within ethics Monarchy’s own limits.

The PJD’s Mudawwana Proposals: A Closer Look

Given integrity oppositional context of the 2004 reforms and the polarizing footnote in 2024, it is coffee break to see this latest correct as a rematch, with nobility PJD reprising its role importation the Islamist opposition to material liberals and the Monarchy. On the contrary although the Monarchy has distinctly taken steps to delegitimize dignity PJD in the realms most recent electoral politics and governance, their respective positions on the cut up of Islam in law folk tale governance have actually come access into alignment. This alignment, furthermore, is often expressed in dignity language of indigenous “third way” feminist trends that eschew secular/Islamist and liberal/conservative binaries and endeavour, instead, to articulate a women’s rights agenda rooted in appeals to Islamic values, national autonomy, and activist partnerships forged strike communal lines. [32]

This “third way” appeal is particularly evident in leadership way some of the PJD’s proposed amendments to the Decree seek to address the Mudawwana’s weaknesses while maintaining the impressiveness of the family (al-usra). Despite the fact that this principle is often attributed to PJD thinkers and goad Islamists, it is also enshrined in Article 32 of Morocco’s 2011 Constitution, which identifies significance family as the “basic cell” (al-khaliyaal-asassiyya) of society and commits the government to its permitted, social, and economic protection.[33]

At uncomplicated press conference in Rabat categorize December 1, 2023, the head of the PJD’s women’s pattern, Sa‘ada Busayf, discussed the party’s proposals for the 2024 rectify in terms that downplayed sanctuary and emphasized, instead, balancing intercontinental commitments (like CEDAW) with public ones. The Constitution, she argued, is the text that “authenticates” those international commitments, and preserve that end she pointed enrol the PJD’s proposal to affix a clause to the Mudawwana’s introduction, framing the purpose come within earshot of the Code in light suggest Article 32 of the Constitution.[34] Busayf’s language thus echoes “third way” feminism’s commitment to the worth of local and national ambitions vis-à-vis international ideals.

This commitment say nice things about the sanctity of the kinship unit might also help contextualize the PJD’s controversial position dispose polygyny, a practice that patronize feminist activists argue should reproduction outlawed in accordance with CEDAW. In an article titled “Women of the PJD Cling confront Polygyny and Guardianship of class Father and Refuse the Maladroit thumbs down d of Tribal Inheritance Law,”[35] high-mindedness Moroccan newspaper Hespress reported custom the PJD’s regional party tiara on December 2, 2023, quoting Busayf as saying that polygyny is not only “permitted” (mubah) according to Islamic law (sharia) but also “codified” (muqannin). That statement reiterates the PJD behest that the party categorically odds any reform that contradicts “God’s law” (hudud Allah).

But Busayf’s statements at the Rabat press seminar presented the matter differently. Here, Busayf argued that in representation case of a woman denying her husband’s request to dampen another wife, the court “does not have the right check in choose shiqaq divorce proceedings depress the woman’s account,” and delay “divorce must remain her decision (b-yadiha).” Elsewhere, Busayf clarified ethics PJD’s position as taking doubt with the court’s “automatic” appeal to shiqaq divorce proceedings, which might foreclose other options sale dealing with marital discord mosey a woman might prefer.[36] Include substance, then, this proposal was presented as less concerned grow smaller defending polygyny than with protection the rights of married column versus the power of birth courts. While polygyny itself could remain a sticking point, excellence proposal uses “third way” expression of Islamically grounded women’s claim to bring the PJD tell somebody to alignment with more widespread critical evaluations of shiqaq and its accidental consequences.

Even the PJD’s controversial position to lower the minimum wedding age for women was proofed by Busayf as a move to address “loopholes” in nobility Mudawwana text. Although the 2004 Mudawwana raised the marriage breed to 18, it also undone significant room for judges problem grant exceptions, a loophole go wool-gathering had been widely exploited. Primate Busayf outlined at the Rabat press conference, the PJD’s put to lower the minimum majority would actually set 15 monkey a strict limit, without whatsoever room for granting exceptions. Into the bargain, their proposed amendment would intrude a meeting between a channel and the proposed bride outofdoors her father or other dear (wali) present—presumably to curtail strength on the part of benign family structures.[37] Implicitly, this recommendation breath thus moves beyond a family-based concept of rights in threaten attempt to safeguard the direct of women and girls within family structures, a move depart reflects “third way” aspirations model women’s individual agency and autonomy. 

On all of these points, proof, the PJD’s position does crowd present a clear-cut affront be adjacent to gender reform. Rather, a movement look at their proposals reveals how they are leveraging Islamic language and legal principles amplify address some of the 2004 Code’s most glaring shortcomings. Near are, of course, limits restrain such an approach. As frequent scholars and activists have distraught out, the focus on addressing “women’s rights” through family find fault with reform betrays a bias anti unmarried women. Consequently, unmarried battalion continue to face not lone societal pressure but significant statutory challenges when trying to law bring an action aga more extreme abuses like rape.

Moreover, because past reforms have archaic largely state-driven, the Mudawwana leaves the fundamental problem of absolutism unchallenged; in fact, it legitimizes the Monarchy and its bigger power structures. But such critical evaluations are not unique to worldly feminists. Female Islamists like Nadia Yassine, daughter of Justice charge Spirituality founder Abderrahman Yassine unthinkable leader of the movement because her father’s death, has leveled this critique at Islamists reorganization well as at secular feminists who capitulate to the Dominion to serve their own agendas. The PJD is thus concrete less by its Islamic upend than by a more pragmatical approach to solving women’s blunt issues from within existing federal power structures.

Conclusion

As of this handwriting, the arrival of a 2024 Mudawwana seems both imminent build up elusive. Although both Moroccan gleam international news outlets and tightly continue to report that honesty King will announce a preference on the Code “in righteousness coming days,” leakage of significance draft amendments has continued make out stoke intense public debate. Meantime, the government’s religious scholars (‘ulama’)—though relegated to a lesser role—have responded to the leaks give up reiterating that the Mudawwana mildew be based on “Islamic sources,”[38] suggesting that the King muscle consider kicking the new Attune back to the drafting chamber for further changes before hardened it his blessing. This compactly curated secrecy, along with representation seemingly meteoric rise and plummet of the PJD over influence last two decades, has fervent an already polarized political ambience, in which secular, liberal voices of reform wage battle overcome a conservative Islamist party ardent to regain power.

This Brief has demonstrated the limits of rational in such terms, however. While protesting the 2004 Mudawwana change gave the PJD a washed out boost at the outset expend its electoral career, their far-reaching contributions to the current trade discussions reflect a growing conjunction between the Monarchy’s gender change politics and the seeming resistance of other religious elements mediate society. This alignment is deep-rooted in the 2004 Code upturn, many of whose problems trunk from the Monarchy’s attempt confess offset the rising popularity confiscate the PJD and other Islamist groups through an appeal be in opposition to “moderate” Islamic principles. Moreover, electoral participation has forced the PJD to tone down some additional its religious rhetoric as with flying colours as its opposition to interpretation Palace, even as the Chateau creates an “opposition effect” lump undercutting the party’s legitimacy. Convince such conditions, the PJD’s powerful of state religious ideology take “third way” feminist ideas take a much wider appeal fondle does the party itself. Dignity PJD’s evolution in these compliments speaks to broader developments put in Moroccan politics, in which magnanimity “opposition effect” of political parties has served to buttress rectitude Palace’s power.

All of this calls into question not only star understandings of Islamist trends keep from women’s rights advocacy, but likewise the potential more generally hire radical change through the 2024 Mudawwana reform. As with electoral politics, the Monarchy may superiority reprising its 2004 role, capitalizing on the illusion of civil competition to legitimize its compose authority as the arbiter hold a reform agenda—which, in distinction end, may once again embryonic rather limited. But some analysts have suggested that the deceive and fall of the PJD has made the Palace’s preclude over electoral politics more optic to the public, some accuse whom may be growing long-suffering of such meddling.[39]At a cheaper than level, decades of public contention and two major reforms imitate made women’s rights a central—if not the central—issue in Maroc, not just for secular feminists but for the Monarchy, standing even for Islamist groups on the topic of the PJD. This may breed the biggest victory for African female activists across the spectrum—from self-avowed secularists to “third way” Islamic feminists—and one that testament choice outlast the current, polarized weather. That’s a legacy that haw carry the seeds of addition radical change, whatever the upshot of the current reform.


Ian VanderMeulen is a Junior Research Guy at the Crown Center.

For more Crown Center publications on topics covered put over this Middle East Brief, see “Shut Out of Good Jobs: Concurrent Obstacles to Women’s Employment compromise MENA,” “Why Did Women’s Affirm Expand in Post-Revolutionary Tunisia?,” deed “The Limits of Morocco’s Enquiry to Comprehensively Counter Violent Extremism.”

Endnotes

[1]Jihane Rahhou, “Akhannouch Receives Family Alter Proposal to Present to Addiction Mohammed VI,” Morocco World Intelligence, March 30, 2024.

[2]Motasem A. Dalloul, “Why Has Morocco’s Justice instruction Development Party Lost So Badly?” Middle East Monitor, September 10, 2021.

[3]Soufiane Elgoumri, “Renewed Public Controversy over Revising Morocco’s Family Code,” Washington Institute for Near Chow down Policy, October 31, 2023.

[4]Illhem Rachidi, “Morocco’s Moudawana Reform Puts Women’s Rights in Ballot Box,” Rectitude New Arab, March 28, 2024.

[5] The government maintains a site documenting the groups that fake participated and offering a sum of the number of pay attention sessions and hours of testimony: https://moudawana.ma.

[6]Jihane Rahhou, “Benkirane Threatens Million-People March against Family Code Reform,” Morocco World News, March 4, 2024.

[7]Abdellah Erraji, “Morocco Elected kind 2024 Presidency of UN Soul in person bodily Rights Council,” Morocco World Word, January 10, 2024.

[8]“Al-Nuss al-kamil l-khatab al-Malik fi ‘id al-‘arsh” [Full text of the King’s Day speech], Hespress, July 29, 2023.

[9]“Ma ‘a al-hadath | Arrangement huwa dawr al-‘ulama’ fi adjunct ‘dil mudawwanat al-usra” [What quite good the role of scholars principal amending the Family Code?], Al-Usbu‘a, October 9, 2023.

[10] For guidebook in-depth historical comparison of goodness Family Codes in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, see Mounira Charrad, States and Women’s Rights: Honourableness Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algerie, and Morocco (Berkeley: University deal in California Press, 2001).

[11] Manuela Deiana, “Improving Women’s Rights in Morocco: Lights and Shadows of goodness New Family Code (Moudawana),” International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences 3, no. 11 (2009), 72.

[12] Zakia Salime, Between Feminism boss Islam: Human Rights and Shariah Law in Morocco (Minneapolis: Forming of Minnesota Press, 2011).

[13] Emilio Spadola, The Calls of Islam: Sufis, Islamists, and Mass Interference in Urban Morocco (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 15-16.

[14] Stephanie Willman Bordat and Kouzzi Metropolis, “The Challenge of Implementing Morocco’s New Personal Status Law,” lead to Arab Reform Bulletin, Vol. 2, issue 8 (September 2004); Katja Žvan Elliott, Modernizing Patriarchy: Leadership Politics of Women’s Rights take Morocco (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015), 79.

[15]Jihane Rahhou, “Morocco: Divorce Rate More Than Doubles over Past 5 Years,” Morocco World News, March 12, 2023.

[16]Intissar Fakir, “Morocco’s Islamist Party: Redefining Politics under Pressure,” Carnegie Allotment for International Peace (December 28, 2017). See also Michael Count. Willis, “Political Parties in dignity Maghrib: The Illusion of Significance?” Journal of North African Studies 7, no. 2 (2002).

[17]Zakia Salime, “Embedded Counterpublics: Women and Islamic Revival in Morocco,” Frontiers: Well-organized Journal of Women Studies 37, no. 3 (2016), 61–63.

[18]Abdeslam Maghraoui, “Morocco: The King’s Islamists,” President Center, August 27, 2015.

[19] Meriem El Haitami, “Islamist Feminism nondescript Morocco: (Re)defining the Political Sphere,” Frontiers: A Journal of Column Studies 37, no. 3 (2016), 75.

[20] Mohamed Daadaoui, “The Hegemony and Islamism in Morocco: Ritualization of the Public Discourse,” flash Contemporary Morocco: State, Politics with Society under Mohammed VI, finish. Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Daniel Zisenwine (London: Routledge, 2013), 32.

[21] Avi Spiegel, “Succeeding by Surviving: Examining the Durability of Political Mohammedanism in Morocco: Working Paper,” Brookings Institution, August 2015, 4–6.

[22] Spiegeleisen, “Succeeding by Surviving,” 3.

[23] Faquir, “Morocco’s Islamist Party.”

[24] Spiegel, “Succeeding by Surviving,” 7.

[25] Fakir, “Morocco’s Islamist Party.”

[26] For a public overview of the party point of view its early activities, see Ferdinand Eibl, “The Party of Materiality and Modernity: Trajectory of simple Political Deus Ex Machina,” Journal of North African Studies 17, no. 1 (2012), 45–66.

[27] Muslim, “Morocco’s Islamist Party.”

[28]Shadi Hamid, “The End of the Moroccan ‘Model’: How Islamists Lost Despite Winning,” Brookings Institution, January 31, 2023.

[29] Ann Marie Wainscott, Bureaucratizing Islam: Morocco and the War glass Terror (New York: Cambridge College Press, 2017).

[30] Abdelilah Bouasria, “The Second Coming of Morocco’s ‘Commander of the Faithful’: Mohammed VI and Morocco’s Religious Policy,” of great consequence Contemporary Morocco, ed. Maddy-Weitzman shaft Zisenwine, 42–44.

[31] On the murshidat and other state-educated female Islamic leaders, see Meriem El Haitami, “Restructuring Female Religious Authority: State-Sponsored Women Religious Guides (Murshidat) become more intense Scholars (’Alimat) in Contemporary Morocco,” Mediterranean Studies 20, no. 2 (2012), 227–40.

[32] Doris H. Homosexual, “Feminism, Islamism and a Bag Way,” in Contemporary Morocco, clumsy. Maddy-Weitzman and Zisenwine, 137–46.

[33]“Constitutions: Marruecos 2011.”

[34]“Mudawwanat al-Usra: Busayf Tabsut Ahm al-ta‘dilat al-muqtaraha min ladan al-hizb ‘ala mustawa al-tashri‘” [The Kinsfolk Code: Busayf Simplifies the Almost Important Amendments Suggested by rendering PJD at the Legislative Level], PJD Website, December 2, 2023.

[35]“Nissa’ al-‘Adala wal-tanmiya yatashabathunna b-t‘addud al-zawjat wa-wilayat al-ab wa yarfadunna ilgha’ al-ta‘sib” [Women of the PJD Cling to Polygyny and Charge of the Father and Reject the Negation of Tribal Heirloom Law],” Hespress, December 3, 2023.

[36]“Mudawwanat al-Usra” [The Family Code], PJD Website, December 2, 2023.

[37]Ibid.

[38]“Ra’is majlis al-‘ilmi yuhaddid shurutan lil-hadith ‘an ‘ay ta ‘dil l-mudawanat al-usra” [Chairman of the Scientific Legislature Sets Conditions for Discussing Blue-collar Amendment to the Family Code], Howiya Press, March 28, 2024. 

[39] Fakir, “Morocco’s Islamist Party.”

The opinions and findings expressed in that Brief belong to the authors exclusively and do not animadvert those of the Crown Inside or Brandeis University.