ABSTRACT
In Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco, the state controls the institutionalized practice and formal public teaching of Islam. In the eighteenth century, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco developed different religious structures that influenced the future course of Islam in those countries. Islam remained a factor of continuity in the political values and responses in the three North African countries. Tunisia and Morocco were subjected to similar forms of colonial domination and external challenges. In Morocco, one major effect of foreign control was the weakening of the economic base and authority of the central government, and, eventually, the sultan. The nationalization of the Islamic ideology was one component of the regime's policy of controlling the religious domain. The relationship between the Moroccan regime and religion can be characterized as the state's use of religious symbols to formulate its own objectives. It considers the religious opposition groups within the country as marginal.
