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| By Nadia Yassine, on June 18th ,2005 |
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| The foreign observer views the Justice and Spirituality Association as an “Islamist” movement, and often adds the attribute «extremist». To dissect such definition is my intention in this paper.Are we “Islamists” (a term loaded with all negative connotations) ?Are we a political movement ?Are we extremists ? |
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| I- Are We Islamists ? |
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| If being Islamist means defining oneself in relation to an Islamic system of reference, then we are Islamists. However, such definition in relation to the Islamic system of reference does not befit the simplistic image that compares Islam to terrorism. It is therefore absolutely essential to come out of such over-simplification that jeopardizes for ever any hope of dialog. The reality of the Muslim world is much more complicated than the argument developed by such simplistic approach due often to intellectual laziness and to Islamophobia still in vogue after 9/11.Islamism – or the resort to the Islamic system of reference – is so much varied that its theses become sometimes antinomic in relation to one another. Islam is neither a monolithic ideological bloc nor a single sociopolitical reality. What relationship is there between Wahhabism and Sufism, between Turkey and Morocco, between Qatar and Malaysia?When they talk about Islamism in Morocco (for instance), they think that it is a monolithic bloc with only a few variables. They just don’t know that I was personally declared as apostate by the Salafiya Jihadiya.Not only because I am a woman who must not have a face nor enjoy the right of speech, but also because our ideas are adjudged as too disturbing for many traditional readings for which the legitimacy of autocratic power is sacrosanct.I have said all this in order to underline that there is a real debate in the Muslim world and a new thinking, protesting and self-critical, that may match up with the spirit of this forum. To be Islamist for our movement is first of all to find one’s roots in a spiritual system of reference (that of the Muslim peoples, of course) and draw from it the requisite legitimacy and consensus to better cope with the realities of the modern world and surpass our political archaistic views. |
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| II- Are We a Political Movement ? |
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| It is obviously clear that the political dimension of our project is very much present in our theory just as in our practice. |
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| 1. In Theory |
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| Our fundamental writings question the official history of political power and point out at all the political schemes concocted against the Qur’anic Message, with a view to rerouting its original course, at the time of the great splits of Islam (a few decades after the death of the Prophet.). They condemn the reversing of the process that originally wanted political power to be in the service of a Message bearing universal spirituality and social equity with multiple applications.Indeed, as of the Umayyad coup d’état the Revelation was taken as a hostage by political power and was made to serve the cause of tyrants with the complicity, conscious or unconscious, of a particular jurisprudence.The salutary and universal dynamic, launched by the Qur’anic Revelation and the Prophet’s pedagogy, was consequently upset. All was put again into question: from the theory of power to the quality of our political societies to the family code. The Islamic peoples gradually found themselves confined in the imbroglio of a legal and political system legitimizing autocracy, depriving them of any political culture and excluding them from any voluntarist initiative. All the living forces of our nations were deviated to counter the foreign enemies, and the only actions allowed were those serving the wishes and interests of the Princes.We are astonished at the degree of violence that is developing in our societies. The enemy can only be foreign and physical. Self-criticism and the building of our societies are not on the agenda in our culture estranged from the spirit of the Message.Originally the forerunner of a universal model that ties up with the most civilized democratic models, the Muslim world became the breeding ground of all sorts of extremism, the nursery for all excesses as regards despotism – the reason behind the psychological and economic misery we live in today. |
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| 2. In Practice |
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| If it is clear for us that autocracy must be denounced as not befitting our spiritual sources and our original historic frames of reference, it is also obviously clear that there is no question of opting for violence against the regime in power. Power is certainly essential for a real change, but there is no question of aiming at power for the sake of power. That’s why we have established our political action on three “no’s”.- No to violence- No to underground activity- No to foreign financing. |
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| a) No to Violence |
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| Based on nonviolence, our action can only be voluntarist because we think that the initial choice of Islam is Education and that man is the basis of everything and every society. Change man to change society; power will follow in one way or another. Education is therefore for us a key workshop in which we renew our sources and raise the ambition of man towards spiritual horizons (horizons that ennoble him and prepare him for his eternal bliss that the divine alone enables him to perceive). It is also a workshop that frees consciences from the historic fetters. |
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| b) No to Underground Activity |
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| We reject the subversive underground action and have chosen legality by submitting to the authorities a file in due form as a legal association. Unfortunately, the regime put itself outside the frame of legality by transgressing its own laws and by declaring us as a semi-underground movement.The regime wants to imprison us in the party game in order to discredit us. Our educational workshop has been established for over thirty years now. We count on the long term, but that does not mean that we are quietists. If Morocco ever moves, it is just because we shake it up each time possible so that the regime may make concessions. It is we who have established the culture of civilized demonstration during the series of proceedings that the regime has incessantly instituted against us for three decades now. We have furthered the freedom of expression after the Left had been curbed from political life or taken over on account of its intrinsic and fatal weaknesses. We pay the price of such progress from our freedom and our personal peace. |
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| c) No to Foreign Financing |
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| The “no” to foreign financing ensures us the freedom of thinking and protects us from the deviations that 9/11 has revealed. Having no account to give to anybody, we are a poor movement but free in our thinking. |
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| III- Are We Extremists? |
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| We owe such accusation to our intransigent attitude towards the regime in power. We certainly have a most firm attitude towards the autocratic regimes and irrevocably condemn them whether they take the form of a hereditary monarchical regime or that of a pseudo-Republic excluding popular sovereignty to the extent of becoming more hereditary than Monarchy (cf. Syria, and soon Egypt, Libya, Iraq…).Those who take time to analyze our thinking immediately realize that we are of Sufi allegiance. Spirituality is a powerful antidote against barbarity. Our educational programs are essentially based on this dimension. It is a question of persuading, not imposing.We also advocate the idea that the Qur’an is certainly the point of reference par excellence of our identity and that, far from condemning the effort of thinking, it rather encourages it and make it even an obligation. To say « there is everything in the Qur’an » is again the subterfuge of a jurisprudence conniving with the regimes in place that reject the idea that the earth turns. The Qur’an is certainly a Constitution. Yet a Constitution never gives details but guarantees only the major options of societies. If the Qur’an guarantees anything at the level of the political options, it guarantees popular sovereignty provided that its interpretation is sheltered from the jurisprudence acting as the accomplice of any autocracy. We want to liberate the Muslim peoples by means of clearing the Qur’an from these compromised readings. |
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