Religious Instruction for Counter-Terrorism: Morocco’s Moderate Imams

by Deirdre Dlugoleski

Behind the car burnings, anti-Israel rallies and riots, Europe’s young expatriate Muslim community makes a quieter, more enduring protest. For many, it begins with a renewed commitment to Islam – but a different version than that of their grandparents. Alienated from both the society in which they live and far from their country of origin, many choose to ground themselves in a hard-line interpretation of their religion. Conservative foreign groups have only exacerbated this trend. Milli Gorus, a Turkish group in the Netherlands, for example, denounces the Western way of life. It seems a vicious cycle of polarization.

We rarely hear, however, of other foreign groups like these with a very different goal in mind.

For years, Morocco has sent imams abroad during the holy month of Ramadan to minister to its expatriate communities in Europe and North America. These imams have traditionally focused on a moderate Islam, one that explicitly rejects the messages of radical groups in Europe. The Moroccan Ministry for Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs chooses them under stringent criteria – they must be known as devout individuals with high moral standards, and have a thorough knowledge of theology and the Qur’an. Only in 2008, however, did the religious affairs ministry specifically charge them to address – and counter –extremism. In this respect, Morocco joins a host of other countries that have adopted similar initiatives. Algeria and Turkey also send imams abroad to their own expatriate populations in Europe, and Tunisia and Pakistan have both adopted programs with a similar focus on moderate Islam.

Religious scholars in Morocco learn English through a British council-led project (Flickr, Creative Commons)

These governments do not advertise any goal in combating terrorism through religious instruction. According to the Ministry for Religious Endowments and Islamic Affairs, the imams focus primarily on addressing the needs of Moroccan communities abroad – communities that, in an age of television and radio broadcasts, demand that their imams know more than a few verses of the Qur’an. With a new European Council of Ulemas, the Ministry hopes to improve Islamic instruction in Europe, and ensure that imams there are well-trained and socially active. It seems plausible enough, in February 2010, the religious affairs ministry began training Bahraini imans as well, with the same focus on moderation.

Morocco does, however, play a unique geopolitical role in its relations with Europe, one that comes with much international pressure to promote moderate theology.  Many European governments fear that Algeria-based al Qaeda could use Morocco as a springboard for attacks in Europe – a legitimate worry, considering the 2003 wave of suicide bombings in Morocco and the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, in which two Moroccans were convicted. The Moroccan government, for its part, responded with a massive security sweep that saw the closure of unregulated mosques and the arrests of thousands of people, often on shaky evidence. The government also, however, sent 1,500 imams into its towns and villages, preaching moderate Islam and respect for the role of King Muhammad VI as the leader of Morocco’s Muslims. Clearly, Morocco’s imams play a much more significant role in government attempts to deter terrorism than the Ministry for Religious Endowment cares to admit. The very chronology of Morocco’s program seems to support this – although the need for religious instruction for expatriate Moroccan communities in Europe has existed since the 1960’s, the government only began its program after September 11th, 2001.

Whether these imams can derail radical Islam in Europe remains to be seen. Regardless of their impact on their respective expatriate communities, however, they can have a positive effect on the dominant European attitude towards Muslims – one that has come increasingly to associate them with terrorists. The presence of active, government-sponsored instruction in moderate Islam may just combat both the draw of fundamentalist groups and the paranoid European mentality that fuels it.