ABSTRACT
The following chapter incorporates ethnographic fieldwork, online media, and textual sources to unpack the ‘politics of festivity’ in Morocco, analyzing multiple Sufi festivals in Morocco including the Sidi ʿAlī Festival, the mawsim Ibn Mashish of the ʿAlāwiyya, and two versions of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday celebration among Karkariyya and Budshishiyya Sufi orders. In addition to describing festivals and their related music and dance practices characteristic of Muslim ‘folk religiosities,’ I explore constructions and performances of authority (political and religious) in these festivals. Over the past twenty years, the Moroccan state has embarked on a program of religious reform in its efforts to combat the global spread of radical and militant islams. Within that context, Sufism has been promoted as the basis of a ‘public piety’ in which the security and moral order of the nation has been tied to the spiritual and ethical cultivation of citizens. Sufi festivals in particular have operated as an important part of Morocco’s state strategy of sponsoring Sufism by ‘staging the sacred,’ which has in turn transformed these ritual/disciplinary practices into a symbol of cultural identity and instrument for ‘tuning the nation’s’ public religiosity.
