Morocco's Constitutional Reforms
The Koutoubiyya Minaret, 12th c. CE, Marrakesh, Morocco – Photograph 2011 by Nicolas Loeuillet, Via Wikimedia Commons.
The tenth anniversary of the Islamist attacks on the U.S., on September 11, 2001, approaches. In the Muslim lands, Libyan tyrant Mu'ammar Al-Qadhdhafi still eludes capture, and, in the eastern zone of the current "chain of revolutions" in the Arab states, the dictatorship of Bashar Al-Assad continues the mass murder of Syrian citizens. But one country in North Africa – Morocco – has completed a constitutional reform, beginning a reorganization of its political legal system and providing a nonviolent example of social change. Perhaps because it has been bloodless, the Moroccan process seems to have been overlooked in global media.
Morocco is a leading cultural power in the Muslim world, with additional influence in the West because of its relation to the Iberian peninsula as its neighbor and, in great part, its former possession. Moroccan Muslim emigrants account for sizable communities, with as many as a million in France, and large numbers in Spain and the Netherlands; Moroccan Jews number up to a million in Israel. The country's King, Muhammad VI, aged 48, has ruled since 1999. He bears the title "Commander of the Faithful" and is "the only legitimate contender for the Islamic Caliphate," according to the 2010 edition of The 500 Most Influential Muslims – published by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center (RISSC) in Jordan, and usually referred to simply as "The Muslim 500." In the repetitious idiom of this volume, "As successor to a 350 year-old dynasty, King Muhammad VI's lineage makes him the only legitimate contender for the Islamic Caliphate. The Alaouite Dynasty links back to the Prophet Muhammad. King Muhammad VI possesses the only authentic claim to an Islamic Caliphate, if one were to be established. Indeed, the Moroccans never recognized the Ottoman Caliphate on the grounds that the Ottomans were not descendents of the Prophet Muhammad."
"The Muslim 500" continues, "King Muhammad VI also leads the oldest Islamic establishment of Maliki Muslims. The Maliki madhdhab is the third largest school of jurisprudence in Islam. This school bases its rulings on the Qur'an and Hadith but also predominantly derives its practices from the work of Malik ibn Anas (711-795 CE) and his texts, the Al Muwatta and Al Mudawana. Since early in his reign, King Muhammad VI has implemented the Mudawana family law code that gives rights to women in divorce and property ownership, as well as citizenship to children born to non-Moroccan fathers. He has also commissioned the Islamic Affairs Ministry to train women preachers, or Morchidat, who are now active chaplains to Moroccans across the globe."
Finally, the directory states, "King Muhammad VI leads the largest African monarchy, with a population of 35 million. Besides political links, Morocco maintains strong spiritual ties with Muslims all over Africa. Morocco is the site of the tomb of a highly revered Sufi shaykh, Mawlana Ahmed Ibn Muhammad Tijani al Hassani al Maghribi (1735-1815 CE), the founder of the Tijaniyya Sufi order. The shrine attracts millions of people from across the continent. Morocco is also recognized as a source for the spread of Islam through West Africa. Thus, King Muhammad VI exercises vast amounts of power and influence over Muslims in Morocco, throughout Africa, and the rest of the world. He leads one of the most stable constitutional monarchies in the region, which is also the center of a moderate, flourishing Muslim culture." Tijani Sufis are active on other continents, including in the Balkans, in southeast Asia, and in the United States.
While eligibility to head a caliphate, and support for a traditional school of Islamic law, might brand the Moroccan king a radical or at least retrograde in the opinions of some Westerners, the monarch has followed a path that is counter-intuitive to such suspicions. Since the beginning of the Arab political upheavals, in Tunisia at the end of last year, he has embraced a vigorous program for reshaping of his country's institutions. In February and March 2011, demonstrations in the capital, Rabat, in Casablanca, and elsewhere around the country, called for rapid transformation of the country's governing apparatus. But these meetings did not face a military or police reaction.
On March 9, King Muhammad VI announced that a new constitution, replacing that promulgated in 1996 by his father, King Hassan II, would be proposed by a national commission and submitted to a popular referendum. After publication of the draft constitution, the King declared that he would limit his powers voluntarily, installing an elected parliament as the foundation of a constitutional monarchy.
The constitutional referendum was held on July 1. BBC News reported that the poll came after "weekly demonstrations involving tens of thousands of people both for and against the reforms. In Casablanca and Rabat there have been violent clashes between pro-government and pro-reform activists. The latter protest that the draft reforms leave the King's absolute powers intact and he would continue as the top religious figure and head of the army. They complain that Morocco's 400-year-old dynasty has a long history of enacting superficial reforms." The main dissident youth network, the February 20 Movement, appealed for a boycott of the vote, and, demanding more extensive changes, has continued to hold demonstrations, without significant interference by the state. An Islamist group, "Justice and Charity," also called for disapproval of the draft constitution. The leftist Unified Socialist party criticized the government for utilizing Friday sermons in the country's mosques to support the draft charter.
The new constitution, as published in Arabic and French, declares in its preamble the country's adherence to human rights as "recognized universally." It defines Morocco as "a sovereign Muslim state, attached to its national unity and its territorial integrity, intending to preserve, in its fullness and diversity, its sole and indivisible national identity. Its unity, forged by the convergence of its Arabo-Islamic, Amazigh, and Saharo-Hassani components, is nourished and enriched by its African, Andalusian, Hebraic, and Mediterranean contributions. The preeminence granted to the Muslim religion in this national self-definition goes along with the attachment of the Moroccan people to values of openness, moderation, tolerance, and dialogue for mutual comprehension between all the cultures and civilizations of the world."
This description of the Moroccan heritage, as noted by local observers, does more than recognize the Amazigh (Berber) people, previously subject to widespread discrimination in their North African home, as participants in the formation of national identity. It also confirms the Moroccan claim to the former Spanish Sahara territories, which have been contested between the Kingdom and partisans of the so-called "Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic," a guerrilla group dating from the leftist apogee of national liberation movements. As its southern provinces, Morocco controls, at present, as much as 80 percent of the former Spanish Sahara, while the "Sahrawi" insurgency functions in the small areas it occupies and in refugee camps in Algeria. The Hassani language is a form of Arabic mainly spoken in Morocco's neighbor, Mauritania, but also in the former Spanish Sahara. In a novel and forward-looking phenomenon that may resonate across the North African territories in which Amazigh is spoken by uncounted millions, the new constitution creates a "National Council of Moroccan Languages and Culture," to protect and develop both Arabic and Amazigh. At the same time, the constitution recognizes the need for Moroccans to study and master the (unspecified) "foreign languages most widely-used in the world, as tools for communication, integration, and interaction with knowledge in society, and access to different contemporary cultures and civilizations."
Composed of 180 articles, the new constitution affirms that public law, before which all persons are equal, is the supreme expression of the national will, with the governing powers serving to broaden the effectiveness of the freedom and equality of male and female citizens, as well as their participation in the political, economic, cultural, and social life of the country.
The new constitution bars the formation of religious, linguistic, ethnic, or regional political parties on any basis that would discriminate against human rights. The freedom of democratic labor organizing and the right to strike are protected, and recognized political parties and unions cannot be suspended or dissolved without the completion of judicial due process. Opposition parties are afforded freedom of opinion, expression, and peaceful assembly, equality of access to broadcast media, public financial support, meaningful participation in legislative procedures, and other parliamentary rights, including participation in the election of a new Constitutional Court. Regarding local governance, the constitution proclaims Morocco a federal state, decentralized and based on an advanced degree of regionalization.
In an important step for the improvement of women's status in Muslim societies, the new Moroccan constitution defines men and women as equal in civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights, to be realized through a government authority for gender equality and removal of any form of discrimination. To further safeguard individual and collective dignity, the constitution outlaws torture, extralegal detention, and isolation of arrested individuals without external communications. The presumption of innocence of the accused and the right to legal defense are guaranteed. The privacy of the home and secrecy of personal communications cannot be violated. Official searches may be carried out only with legal authorization. In other clauses, private property and freedom of commerce are secured, along with preservation of national resources for the use of future generations. A national body for struggle against trafficking in influence and corruption is to be set up.
Supporting freedom of expression, the new constitution invokes the liberty of thought, opinion, and expression "in all its forms." These include publication and display of literary and artistic works and scientific and technical research. Censorship is prohibited. Opinions challenging the monarchy, the Muslim faith, or the respect due the King may, however, be punished – the new constitution is neither republican nor secular. Still, the new constitution proclaims the freedom of religion, with the activities of Muslim clerics and the issuance of religious opinions (fatwas) subject to a Higher Council of Ulema reporting to the King, based on "tolerant precepts and intentions within Islam." One representative of the Higher Council of Ulema will be included in a Higher Council for the Judicial Power, out of 20 members of the latter, 10 of them elected. The Moroccan kingdom will promise health care, health coverage, and insurance, as well as modern, accessible, and quality education to its citizens. It treats professional training, decent housing, state support for employment and self-employment, a merit-based system of public employment, and access to clean water and environmental conditions as rights. Young people are promised assistance in social integration.
In an important shift in political functions, the King will appoint a Prime Minister (Chief of Government), who will exercise executive power, from the ranks of the party receiving the most votes in free elections to the Parliament. The legislative branch will include a House of Representatives and a House of Councillors. Based on the recommendations of the Prime Minister, the King will appoint the royal cabinet, members of which may be removed at the instance of the Prime Minister. The cabinet will deliberate on strategic, constitutional, legal, and financial matters, a projected amnesty law, decrees on military affairs, declarations of war, and the nomination by the Prime Minister and cabinet members of the civil governors of the national bank, the ambassadors, high security officials, and supervisors of strategic public enterprises and establishments, which will be publically named. Under the supervision of the Prime Minister, a Governing Council will develop policies for presentation to the cabinet, encompassing regulatory systems and similar governmental functions. The judiciary will be separated from the executive and legislative authorities.
The Moroccan people voted overwhelmingly for the new constitution, with 73 percent of those eligible casting ballots and 98.5 percent in favor. Parliamentary elections are set for November. Last month, the judicial system was modified to conform to the new constitutional provisions. Neglected by global commentators, who are distracted by the fall of Al-Qadhdhafi and the continuing bloodshed in Syria, Morocco may have produced a new alternative to both authoritarian and Islamist rule in the Muslim world: a constitutional monarchy with Islamic precedents and credibility, but embodying more fully than Bahrain, Jordan, or Kuwait the political freedoms the world equates with popular sovereignty in the West and in the developed and emerging Asian societies.