ABSTRACT

In the last decade, the Moroccan public scene has witnessed the emergence of Islamic movements that are primarily of a spiritual nature, in that they gently invite the seekers to reconnect with their inner self rather than/in addition to the outward manifestations of religiosity. This book aims at describing the main actors of this new inner spirituality, Sufi orders, which have always been and remain central actors in political change in the Arab and Muslim world generally and Morocco specifically, riding the winning waves at times, taking the offside action or swimming against the current at others. The work is a reflection on whether Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, acts like Prozac for religious Mujahedeen by turning their gaze quietly inwards, or on the contrary enables social justice to rebel steadfastly against political tyranny. The two largest and most popular Sufi movements in Morocco are the Qadiri Boutchichi Sufi order, led by sheikh Hamza, which is politically quietist towards the Moroccan regime, and the movement of Justice and Charity or Al Adl wal Ihssane (AWI), headed by the now deceased Abdessalam Yassine, an ex-member of the Boutchichi order, who left the latter due to its lack of political involvement and went on to create his own politically motivated

movement with a clear anti-establishment agenda. Both movements and their leaders adhere to a Sufi paradigm, but their political behaviors are different. This book identifies the ways in which AWI and the Boutchichi order create the politics of obedience and protest in Morocco, by comparing the moves of these two social movements in order to see why Sufism in the Boutchichi order produced a submissive model while it produced a revolutionary model in AWI, with the hope of erasing the stereotype among some critics of Sufism who make it the cultural foundation of docile submission to authoritarianism (Hammoudi 1997). The Boutchichi brotherhood has historically enjoyed an amicable relationship

with the Moroccan monarchy, as it has grown to become the single most formally organized Sufi movement in Morocco, alongside the Tijani order as some might claim. The monarchy does not react to Yassine’s group as amicably as it does to the Boutchichi movement, which does not openly support political activism. In fact, its recurrent discourse asks its members not to get involved in politics because it is “dirty.” However, the current minister of Islamic affairs, Ahmed Taoufiq, is a member of the Boutchichi order, an appointment that proves that this Sufi order lends its elites to the political arm of the state, thus becoming the fertile daycare of his Majesty’s public servants. On the other hand, AWI and its members never participated in the official political sphere, and instead operate as a movement of opposition, on the side of other rebellious players such as the 20th February movement, criticizing the king and political spectacle. In order to understand the relationship between Sufism and politics in

Morocco, one needs to analyze the political ways in which Sufi orders or lodges express themselves. The central questions that this book tries to answer are: Is Sufism apolitical or does it practice alternative ways of political activism? Does Sufism produce quiet or loud agents? What are the points of intersection between Sufi saints and kings in Moroccan pre-modern and modern politics? My book discusses the linkages between Sufis in Morocco and the practice of Moroccan politics. A combination of changed religious policies on the part of the Moroccan monarchy and an adaptation to market politics by AWI and the Boutchichi order led to the revival of the political importance of Sufism in Morocco. This book identifies the role of Sufi saints in modern political life in Morocco

by looking at the role of AWI and the Boutchichi order after the country’s independence in 1956 to show that Sufism regained saliency in Moroccan politics due to an international change that raised the awareness of policymakers concerning the role that Sufism can play as a counterweight to radical Islam. Both the monarchy and the Sufi orders, in their mutual exploitation of each other, borrow from a historical Sufi, and at times secular, repertoire that dates back to the pre-modern period. Exploring the linkages between these two movements is justified by the fact that “the only true master that Abdessalam Yassine mentions as a direct influence is ‘Abbas al-Qadiri, sheikh of the Budshishiyya” (Zeghal 2008: 87). In fact, as Malika Zeghal argues, “Sheikh

Abdessalam Yassine and his followers use a repertoire that blends messianism and mysticism with political resistance” (2008: 145), and as Zakia Salime puts it, the “Sufi inspiration of al-adl w-al-ihsane makes up the main difference between this movement and the ‘mainstream’ political Islam, which remains suspicious of the Sufi tradition because of its alleged deviance from the pure teachings of the Quran and Sunna” (2005: 11). In addition, the Moroccan foremost expert of Yassine’s movement, Mohamed Darif, said on the occasion of the first anniversary of Yassine’s death that the sheikh was the only one fighting the Wahabi movement when the regime had used the latter to counterbalance leftist movements. Sufism in the Boutchichi order produced a submissive model, while it pro-

duced a revolutionary model in AWI. However, upon deeper analysis, one finds out that the Boutchichi order practices resistance at an informal, “infrared” level. I argue that the lack of formal politicization in this Sufi movement is not a sign of its political apathy since the Boutchichi order maintains a public discourse of “staying away from politics” on the basis of keeping moral purity, but the real goal is to reassure an always skeptic monarchical monitor that the order means “no harm” in its social activism. Using Sufi symbolism, I found that the Boutchichi order practices what I call kryptopolitics. The latter comes from the Greek word kryptos, which means “hidden” and refers to esoteric politics. Understanding the relation between politics and Sufism requires widening our understanding of the locus of politics to include the paranormal register. This register that I called kryptopolitics mixes the politics of time with that of eternity and blurs the line between earthly transcripts and godly ones. Kryptopolitics deconstructs the claim, held by Sufis as well, that Sufi orders are either politically apathetic or bedfellows of the state. Because the occult and the paranormal are not considered by mainstream political scientists as political categories, one should not jump to the conclusion – often encouraged by Sufis themselves – that Sufis are not engaged in politics. Kryptopolitics is too symbolic and too occult to attract the attention of political analysts schooled in the secular traditions of their own fields, or religious studies scholars too embedded in the geopolitics of the holder of the purse. My argument is relevant to places where Sufis are important and is not limited to Morocco, even if it applies primarily to the Moroccan case which I intimately know. Sufis are ignored by reigning typologies of politics, and even when the latter

include a dimension of informal politics in which they engage, they discount divine and paranormal events as occurrences beyond the control of the state. The few works that have looked at the occult either did not link it to politics or simply portrayed it as a site of hegemony rather than resistance. While informal politics corrected the realpolitik understanding of politics as related to state-sanctioned institutions such as elections and political parties, it still recognizes citizens as being politically active if they engage in power struggles in the real world of visible collective action and does not shed light on the occult as a locus of politics. It is true that “society manifests political activity in

different ways, depending on an ever-changing variety of factors, and political scientists need to be more aware and sensitive to the creative mechanism people use to further their aim” (Singerman 1996: 4). Looking at the Boutchichi order from a cultural perspective allows us to

understand its rhetoric of dissent in invisible occult realms, outside of the contours of classical political corridors. I argue here that members of the Boutchichi order, contrary to what they claim, engage in political action either visibly through recruiting for the group, purchasing products (rosary, portraits of the saint), participating in Sufi ceremonies, publicly displaying symbols of the order in their houses such as hanging the portrait of the guru on their walls, and displaying pictures of them with him, or invisibly by communicating with each other via dreams and other paranormal means, as well as by establishing esoteric hierarchies in which the king resorts to the saint for help. My main argument is that the Boutchichi Sufi order appears to be politi-

cally quiescent when one looks at the official, open, and observed interaction between the Sufi order and the political monarchy, a site known as political public transcripts (appointments of its members to public positions, public marches, writings of the members, and public positions towards politics), but when one analyzes the apparently non-political off-stage texts and subtexts of the Boutchichi order (dreams, coded songs, and occult rituals), one finds that the order has potential for invisible political dissent or kryptopolitics. Dreams were used in my analysis as sites of resistance, as “hidden transcripts” that inform us about an inner dream-world “out there” that becomes a repertoire of contention by all dreamers who share the same dream language. Another purpose of the dreams is to prove the spiritual master’s status through showing that he maintains intimate relations with the prophets and dead saints as he is the center of most dreams of his disciples. By telling and living their dreams, the followers participate in constructing the guru’s saintly status, feeding his powerful dominion. I also argue that the Moroccan monarchy does not stay idle in front of the paranormal register of the Sufi orders as it defeats the purpose of kryptopolitics, not by fighting it in its own terrain but rather by injecting it with the antidote: visibility. Through diluting the Boutchichi order in the logic of visible marketability, it pushes it to be grounded in the reality of market capitalism that will ultimately destroy it precisely by exorcizing the invisibility that characterizes its kryptopolitics. The anti-Boutchichi tactic that the Moroccan state uses is operated through two mechanisms: privatization (Sufism becomes an individual choice) and branding (Sufism becomes a logo). In the Boutchichi order, privatization is manifest in shifting the order’s frame to people’s private lives (spiritual development, family matters, moral education). Branding can be seen in the order’s selling of the saint’s relics and artifacts and in the incessant and vain attempts by the disciples of the order to use marketing and programmation neuro-linguistique (PNL) techniques to establish the competitive market advantage of their brand. Does kryptopolitics represent the essence of entrepreneurial market-oriented capitalism or is it a return to traditional and pre-modern forms of religiosity?